<p>3:19 <em>Hereby shall we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before him</em>- &quot;The truth&quot; as often in John refers to the Lord, who is &quot;the truth&quot;. The &quot;Him&quot; before whom we assure our hearts at the last day is the Lord; &quot;the truth&quot;. The extent to which we are intended to be Christ-centred is reflected in how John speaks of Him as &ldquo;the truth&rdquo;. Indeed, He appears to refer to the Name of Jesus with the same sensitivity with which a Jew would refer to the Name of God, and uses a similarly wide range of titles for Him. John seems to use <em>aletheia</em>, &lsquo;the truth&rsquo;, as a kind of periphrasis for &ldquo;Jesus&rdquo;; <em>en aletheia</em>, in the truth, appears to match Paul&rsquo;s <em>en kyrio </em>&lsquo;in the Lord&rsquo; or <em>en christo </em>&lsquo;in Christ&rsquo;. John refers to missionaries being sent out &ldquo;for the sake of the name&rdquo;, when the other records say that they were sent out in the name of Jesus. The exalted Name of Jesus was therefore, to John, &lsquo;the truth&rsquo;; the person of Jesus, which the Name encapsulates, is to be the deciding, central truth in the life of the believer.</p><p>We can know whether we are living in love; and if we are, then we come to judgment day with stable hearts. All those who uphold exclusive policies against fellowshipping their brethren need to ponder long and hard what they are doing, and whether they can face the Lord in that day with an assured heart... as they see brethren they have excluded entering His Kingdom. If we have a good conscience that we have lived in love, then we shall assure, or calm down, our fluttering hearts before Him at the last day. To live in love, with the spirit of the Lord Jesus, is to live the eternal life, the kind of life we shall eternally live. If we know we are living in love, we shall be assured when we meet Him that we shall seamlessly continue that life.</p>