For an explanation of this layout and the key to the books referenced, read here.
God’s Love and Ours (cont.), 4:7-15 NIV
v. 11, Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “4:9-11 … Nothing less than God’s love in Christ is the model for the love Christian should have toward one another.”
v. 12, No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “4:12-13. In His divine nature and essence, God has never been seen by any living man. … Yet in the experience of mutual love among believers, this invisible God actually lives in us and His love is made complete in us.”
(Vincent’s II) “His Love. Not our love to Him, nor His love to us, but the love which is peculiarly His; which answers to His nature.”
(Life) “Jesus … has revealed God to us. When we love one another, the invisible God reveals himself to others through us, and his love is made complete. … If God sees that we are ready to love others, he will bring them to us.”
(Moody) “When believers love one another, it shows (1) that God abides in us—i.e., it is evidence of our relationship with an invisible God; (2) that His love is perfected in us—i.e., we display divine affection toward others.” (Recovery) “His love here denotes God’s love within us that becomes our love toward one another, and it is with this love that we love one another. … This love is perfected and completed in its manifestation when we express it in our living by habitually loving one another with it.”
v. 13, This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “The mutual abiding of a believer in God and God in that believer … is indicated by that believer’s experience of the Spirit. … When a believer loves, he is drawing that love from God’s Spirit.”
(Moody) “The Spirit fosters affection in us toward the brethren (v. 13).”
(Recovery) of his Spirit “Lit., out of. God has given us out of His Spirit. … this does not mean that God has given us something of His Spirit, such as the various gifts I 1 Cor. 12:4, but that He has given the Spirit Himself as the all-inclusive gift (Acts. 2:38). … is bountiful and without measure.”
v. 14, And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “4:14. … The indwelling God, whose presence is manifested in the midst of a loving Christian community, thus becomes in a sense truly visible to the eye of faith. … Christians who behold this manifestation have in fact ‘seen’ and can ‘testify’ to the fundamental truth that ‘the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.’ … With these words, John reached the goal he had announced in the prologue (1:1-4), namely, that his readers might share the apostles’ experience.”
(Vincent’s II) “We have seen. Have deliberately and steadfastly contemplated.”
(ESV) “The presence and activity of the Holy Spirit within Christians are evidence that they are abiding in God.”
(Recovery) “The Father’s sending of the Son to be our Savior is an external act, so that through our confessing of the Son He can abide in us and we in Him (v. 15). … God’s internal act toward us is the sending of His Spirit to dwell in us as inward evidence that we abide in Him and He in us (v. 13).”
v. 15, If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.
(ESV) “here it is required that they affirm his full deity.”
(Recovery) “the heretical Cerinthians did not confess this; hence, they did not have God abiding in them.”
FIRST JOHN 4 MEDITATION vv. 11-15
God showed us His great love by sending His Son to lay down His life for an undeserving world. God still wants to show this kind of love to the world. He has a specific way to accomplish this. By His Spirit leading each individual to love one another in the church, we can all grow in the realization that the love seen there is not seen anywhere else in our lives. We see by our own changed life and love for one another that God is working in us and through us. We love the church and find ourselves going out of the way to help someone in need, whether with time, wisdom, gifting, financially—however the Lord Spirit leads.
We can be polite; we can love those who love us; we can gather with those of our tribe. But this passage is not about being good in church. Only God abiding within by His Spirit can make us love sacrificially from the heart as He loved. Not just as He loved, but by the Spirit we love with the same love that God pours through us by the Spirit. The Spirit releases that love through a heart that’s willing to help and be used. Will you be committing to this work of God?
John wrote at the beginning of his epistle that we can know the joy he has seen in the churches by fellowshipping with the Father and the Son. (Not by putting on their Sunday best and pasting a smile on.) We enter this abiding union over time as we read the word day by day, responding appropriately and faithfully. Through the lessons, we’ll know about hearing His voice, about faith, grace, putting off the old man and putting on the new, and so much more. We will know the truth and the truth will set us free; free from prejudices and biases; freed from the world, the flesh, and the devil; free to love as He loved.
Along the way of this sanctification process of the one who has a heart to know God, the disciple will struggle with obedience and find reasons to repent for the more abundant life Christ promises. Reasons to repent of the flesh and the world. Repent of pride and prejudices. All to be conformed to His image. By this change of life, we know He has given us His Spirit. We can’t make these changes for the kingdom of God on our own. He changes our love for things to love for Him. He shifts our love from ourselves to care for others. When we want to reach more people with a love we don’t have room for, then His love overflows when we ask. Then we really know that He is abiding in us. That kind of selfless love is not our own.
