<p>8:3 <i>But if anyone loves God- </i>This alludes to the first commandment, to love God; and the Lord assures us that this still stands for His people today. The idea of loving God was used in a similar context earlier, in 1 Cor. 2:9, in arguing that human knowledge and learning will not lead us to real faith and relationship with God; but the spiritually minded &quot;love God&quot; and so have His Son revealed to them by the Spirit.</p><p><i>The same is known by Him- </i>See on :2. Here we have the same tension between love and knowledge which was introduced in :1. But there is a nuance; for God to know <i>us </i>means that He is in relationship with us, and we on our part love Him. It is for us to love Him; it is for Him to know us. This stands as a caveat to our rightful emphasis upon the need to correctly know doctrine about God. Isaac Newton remarked that he was only gathering pebbles on the shore of the ocean of truth. Truly &quot;How little a portion is heard of Him&quot; (Job 26:14). In other words, we will never know God to perfection in this life; but what we can be sure of and rejoice in is that <i>He knows us</i>. Paul almost implies that we can easily forget this wondrous fact, because of our obsession with wanting to fully know about <i>Him</i>. It was this emphasis upon relationship with God which had been missed by the Corinthians, for they did not have the Spirit (3:1) and were therefore left with only technical knowledge of Him. And that can be so with those who pride themselves on being 'Bible students' and yet resist the entrance and leading of the Spirit, and despise the idea of 'relationship with God' as being nebulous and not really what they think their religion is all about.</p><p>Paul will later remark that the Corinthians are living in sin because they do not have the knowledge of God (1 Cor. 15:34). &quot;The knowledge of God&quot; is an ambiguous genitive, meaning both 'our knowing about God' and 'God's knowing of us'. It is mutual relationship which is the intention of Christianity and the person of the Lord Jesus, through whom this &quot;knowledge of God&quot; is mediated.</p>