Down an Unfamiliar Road

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

By Dr. Robert R Seyda

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

CHAPTER FOUR (Lesson LIII) 04/01/22

^4:8 If a person isn’t loving and kind, it shows that they don’t know God – for God is love.

John Trapp (1601-1669) quotes Greek philosopher Plato, who said, “If moral virtue could be viewed with mortal eyes, it would draw all hearts to it.” So, if God were well known, He would certainly be the best beloved, and all that is His, for His sake. When it comes to saying that God is love, some scholars add that He is the “fountain of love,”[1] attracting all hearts who heard of Him.[2]

John Owen (1616-1683) states that we read “God is love” in verse eight. But he points out in the original Greek it reads: “God love is.”[3] He is the fountain and prototype of all love as eternal and necessary. All other acts of love are in God and released from Him and its effects. Since He does good because He is good, He loves because He is love. He is love eternally and necessarily in this agápe-love of the Son, and all other workings of love are but acts of His will, whereby somewhat of it is outwardly expressed. And all love in creation was introduced from this fountain and mirrored it.[4]

Then Owen talks about completing communion with the Father in love; two things are required of believers: (1) They accept it from Him. (2) They make suitable returns to Him that they obtained it. Communion consists in giving and receiving. Until the love of the Father is received, we have no communion with Him therein. How, then, is this agápe-love of the Father to be acknowledged and initiate fellowship with Him? I answer, says Owen, the receiving of it is believing it. God revealed His agápe-love so that it could be admitted to His family by faith. “You believe in God,” said Jesus, “so also believe in me.”[5] And what is to believe in Him? His agápe-love; for He is “love.”[6] [7]

George Swinnock (1627-1673) says that this unparalleled God calls for incomparable love, the top, the cream of our affections. “Good is the object of love,” according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, “The greater the good, the greater the love required.” Therefore, with God being the greatest good, He must have the greatest love for Him. This is the great first commandment, [8] and I might say the only commandment;[9] this is all the commandments in one.[10] The God of the greatest perfection must have the greatest affection. Therefore, the greatest love (for God is love)[11] calls for the incomparable God, who is the greatest love. He deserves the most understanding heart, soul, mind, strength; the greatest comprehensive heart, soul, mind, and all the strength.[12]

Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) follows the thinking of Job’s friend, Eliphaz, who asked: “Is a mere human worth anything to God?” Even the wisest are of value only to themselves. No, says Barrow. Goodness is offered freely and communicative; love is active and fruitful; such high excellence is void of envy, selfishness, and self-determination. The Apostle John says[13] that goodness is inherent to God’s nature, since He is love in his epistle. He is essentially loving and caring enough to bestow so much of His being, beauty, delight, and comfort on His creatures.[14] [15]

Daniel Whitby (1638-1726) thinks that the Apostle John did not intend to express, in this verse, what God is in His essence, or to say, as the Roman seminarians do, that He is occasionally love, as the cause; or object of His agápe-love. Instead, He is affectionate and shows great charity to mankind in all His communications with them, as in verses nine and ten.[16]

Thomas Pyle (1674-1756) says that when we claim to be the true children of God, let us take special care to give proof of it by imitating God’s unusual attribute of love and mercy, so abundantly displayed to all humanity and us Christians in particular. Without such love, we fail in the most critical moment of resembling Him, proving we are not one of His.[17]

James Macknight (1721-1800) is struck by the Apostle John’s words, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”[18] John is talking about the love of benevolence joined with God. Those who do not love their neighbor with loving compassion do not know God. They have no real knowledge of God’s character, whose generosity extends to all, even to the evil and unthankful. That’s why all who know Him should attempt to imitate Him. According to Estius, [19] God is love, even as He is essentially and adequately power, wisdom, and goodness. But it does not appear that John meant to declare God’s essence, but only to teach us that God delights in the exercise of goodwill and perhaps that His other perfections are exerted for accomplishing his compassionate purposes.[20]

John Brown of Haddington (1722-1787) says we should all concentrate on the main aim of this epistle, in that we all maintain, work hard to express, and project brotherly affection to one another. Those that live with the desire to be a good child of God, regenerated by His Spirit, and in possession of the proven, fascinating, and transforming knowledge of the blessings and will of God. On the other hand, those that are strangers to the exercise of love for the saints or their neighbors appear ignorant of the nature and will of God. For God is, in His very nature, infinite grace, mercy, and love. His thoughts, purpose, and patience have manifested Himself in an endless, glorious, and engaging pattern of kindness and goodwill.[21]

Richard Rothe (1799-1867) now puts a big exclamation mark on what he said in verse seven about how love is necessary to be God’s property and fellowshipping with God. Here he shouts out, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love!” Seeing that God is love, it naturally follows that no one can know God without knowing love is the only way love can be known. Experimentally through his own loving, John points here to the universal way of attaining knowledge of God.  Learning to love is a way to this knowledge that is open to all. This way must be navigated even by those who develop a concept of God in their mind. But until meeting God, there is no other way one can never attain insight into the fact that love is God’s characteristic being.[22]

Augustus Neander (1789-1850) believes that the apostolic age differed from later periods only in this: that as Christianity first made its appearance in the world, as the divine world-transforming power, there was a more significant predominance of that immediate religious impulse and inspiration; the appearing of prophets, and the various manifestations of the prophetic gift, belonged more to the ordinary phenomena of the church. But, from the very beginning, corrupt human nature mingled its disturbing and adulterating influence in all these divine manifestations. Thereby, this genuine inspiration connected itself to a false one. Sadly, it suggested that the Holy Spirit was in those of an undivine nature.[23]

Gottfried C. F. Lücke (1791-1855) proposes that the knowledge of divine characteristics achieves the family relationship. Since, concerning redemption, God’s most essential attribute is “agápe-love,” and agápe-love has no earthly origin but has its source in God. It naturally follows those who know God, and are born of God, love the brethren, and practice love. Consequently, says Lücke, verses seven and eight are founded on this reasoning.

The Apostle John places loving others before loving Him. This is John’s meaning in verse seven: in our loving one another, as those who truly are of God, and correctly know Him because brotherly love is not of this world but belongs to that life of God. The Alexandria Greek Manuscript reads, “agápe-love of God.” But both here and in verse eight is seen, both from the context and compared with verses eleven, twenty, and twenty-one, “agápe-love is used, and denotes brotherly love.” Thus, the Apostle Paul also uses agápe-love in the sense of brotherly love.[24] [25]

Charles Hodge (1797-1878) agrees that everyone is a sinner, justly chargeable with inexcusable godlessness and immorality. Thus, salvation is not possible by any effort or resource of theirs.[26] More than this, the Bible teaches us that a person may be outwardly religious, but their heart is the seat of pride, envy, or malice. In other words, they may be moral in their conduct and, because of inward evil passions, be immoral in their heart and mind as the chief of sinners, as was the case with Paul.[27] And more even than this, although a person is free from outward sins, this unproductive goodness would not suffice to remove the sins of the heart. Without holiness, “no one shall see the Lord.”[28]  And as the Apostle John says here in verse eight, anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

Furthermore, we are not to love this world nor the things it offers us, for when we love the world, we do not have the Father’s love in us.[29] Who then can be saved? The Bible excludes from God’s kingdom all those who are immoral; hearts corrupted by pride, envy, malice, or covetousness; all who love the world; all who are not holy; all in whom the agápe-love of God. Is this not the supreme and controlling principle of action? Therefore, it is evident that salvation must be confined to very narrow limits so far as adults are concerned. It is also apparent that mere natural religion, the sheer objective power of general religious truth, is ineffective in preparing people for God’s presence.[30]

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[1] Song of Solomon 1:3

[2] Trapp, John: Commentary upon all books of New Testament (1647), op. cit., p. 476

[3] 1 John 4:8

[4] Owen, John: Christologia, Ch. 11, p. 194

[5] John 14:1

[6] 1 John 4:8

[7] Owen, John: Of Communion with God, op. cit., Ch. 3, p. 29

[8] Matthew 22:37

[9] Deuteronomy 10:12

[10] Romans 13:37

[11] 1 John 4:8

[12] Swinnock, George: op. cit., The Incomparableness of God, Ch. XXI, pp. 174-175

[13] 1 John 4:8, 16

[14] Psalm 33:5; 119:64

[15] Barrow, Isaac: An Exposition on the Creed, op. cit., p. 146

[16] Whitby, Daniel: op cit., p. 467

[17] Pyle, Thomas: Paraphrase, op. cit., p. 396

[18] 1 John 4:8

[19] Estius (1542-1613) was a famous Dutch commentator on the Pauline epistles. In 1580, he received his Th.D.

[20] Macknight, James: Literal Paraphrase, op. cit., p. 91

[21] Brown, John of Haddington: Self-Interpreting Bible, op. cit., pp. 1327-1328

[22] Rothe, Richard: The Expository Times, op. cit., February 1894, p. 231

[23] Neander, Augustus: First Epistle of John, op. cit., Chapters IV, V, p. 237

[24] Cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1; Philippians 2:2

[25] Lücke, Gottfried: Commentary on First Epistle of John, op. cit., Section Eight,  

[26] 1 Corinthians 6:9; Ephesians 5:5

[27] 1 Timothy 1:15

[28] Hebrews 12:14; John 3:3

[29] 1 John 2:15

[30] Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology, op.7 cit., Vol. I., pp. 42-43

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

By Dr. Robert R Seyda

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

CHAPTER FOUR (Lesson LII) 03/31/22

4:8       Those who do not love one another do not understand God because God is love.

EXPOSITION

Moses found this out when he pleaded with God to do something to help him understand more about Him. When God responded by passing in front of Moses, instead of appearing in brilliance, light, flashing, glory, magnificence, etc., God asked him to remember, “Yahweh, the Lord, is a kind, merciful God, slow to become angry, and full of great love. He can be trusted. He shows His faithful love to thousands of people, forgives people for their wrongdoings, but does not forget to punish the guilty.”[1]  David must have remembered this as he prayed: “My Lord, you are good and merciful. You love all those who call to you for help … My Lord, you are a kind and merciful God. You are patient, loyal, and full of love.”[2]

This phrase “manifested” refers to what follows. John shows how the nature of God’s agápe-love exhibits itself. In fact, God’s agápe-love was manifested [aorist tense – a continuing effect from the past] toward us, God’s agápe-love for His Son eternally existed, but He manifested His agápe-love for us by sending His Son as a Messenger of Good News. That’s how God demonstrated His agápe-love by sending His Son to die for our sins.  God’s agápe-love is not motivated by any worthiness in us, [3] but God “sent” His Son into the world in keeping with His character. The word “sent” carries the idea of being ordained for a mission. God dispatched His Son on a special assignment to pay for the world’s sins.[4] Therefore, God sending His Son into the world was no passing act of sentimentality. This phrase does not imply that Jesus was reluctant to come into the world to die. On the contrary, He was willing to come.[5] The standard of God’s agápe-love then is complete voluntary sacrifice.

John does not state the object of love but the fact of love’s existence. The issue is whether it’s Christian love or not. Lack of love shows that a believer does not have an intimate fellowship with God. This is the point where the believer is not in union with God. This person may be a Christian in name only because they are unconnected with the nature of God’s agápe-love. In other words, they are not filled with the Spirit. God accepts that anyone who knows Him will love. 

 “God is love” only occurs in the Bible here and in verse sixteen. This phrase affirms a condition about the nature of God; all that God does is love. If He provides, He provides in love; judges in love. Love is inherent in God’s nature; it is at the heart of all God is. It is impossible to reverse “God is love” to “love is God.”[6] Love cannot be God, as though His essence and character revolve around love. Agápe-love does not exist without God; it is His essence and nature. In addition to love, God is also truth, justice, righteousness, and patience. True love comes from capturing an understanding of the nature of God’s unilateral and unconditional love. Therefore, God loves us individually. The only way we can share God’s love is to be a part of the family of God. We receive God’s love by accepting God’s plan of salvation through Jesus the Anointed One. His death fully and sufficiently paid for our sins. 

COMMENTARY

Clement of Alexandria (150-216 AD) spoke about how love affects every aspect of our lives and how agápe-love transforms into goodness.[7] God’s agápe-love does not harm a neighbor, neither does it seek to do any injury nor revenge, but, in a word, doing good to all according to the image of God. Love is, then, the fulfilling of the law;[8] just like the Anointed One, that is the presence of the Lord who loves us; and our loving teaches us and disciplines us according to the Anointed One’s words. By love, then, the commands not to commit adultery and not lust for a neighbor’s wife are fulfilled, [these sins being] formerly prohibited by fear.[9] 

Lactantius (260-325 AD) was an early church author who became an advisor to Roman Emperor Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages, and a tutor to his son Crispus. But possibly, someone may ask us the same question Quintus Hortensius (BC 114-50AD)[10] asks in Cicero’s, On the Nature of the Gods: “If God is one only?”[11] At first glance, this might not have any relevance to verse eight. But when put into context, it should be no surprise that Christianity burst on the scene when Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, and Pagan gods were lining the streets of cities and villages throughout the Middle East. But the one big difference between them and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was that YaHWeH said we must love others in order to worship Him. That’s why, says John, they don’t understand God.

Early Church preacher Chrysostom (347-407 AD) asks a crucial question: “What kind of love are we talking about here?” It is true love and not simply what people use it to mean. It comes from our attitude and knowledge and must proceed from a pure heart, for there is also a love of evil things. Robbers love other robbers, and murderers love each other too, not out of love which comes from a good conscience but from a bad one.[12]

And there are other voices from early church scholars who speak on this subject; Augustine (354-430 AD) states: “If God is love, it makes sense then that the more who join us in the faith through the new birth, in addition to ourselves, the more demonstrative will be the love in which we rejoice, since it is the possession of His agápe-love which is presented.”[13] But Augustine also says that love is so much the gift of God that it is called God.[14] Therefore, although your course of action is different from others, shared love has made both methods necessary for our brother’s and sister’s salvation; for one, God has done it all, and God is love.[15] So then, Isaac the Syrian (613-700 AD)[16] writes, “God is love. Wherefore, the man who lives in love reaps the fruit of life from God, and while yet in this world, he even now breathes the air of the resurrection.”[17] 

Bede the Venerable (672-735 AD) also joins in this concept of love by saying: “Let no one say that when they sin, they sin against other people but not against God, for how can you not be sinning against God when you are sinning against love?”[18] So it’s another way of saying that life flows out of love, and since God is love, and He is in us, then His life is in us; therefore, we are already breathing the life that goes beyond the grave. In fact, the Cabalistic Jews[19] refer to the Shekinah glory of God as “love.”[20]

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) says that he calls love undefined because it never keeps back anything of itself. When a man boasts of nothing as his own, surely all he has is God’s; and what is God’s cannot be unclean. The undefiled law of the Lord is that love which bids men seek not their own, but every man another’s wealth. It is the law of the Lord because they live in accordance with it. After all, no one has it except by gift from Him. Nor is it improper to say that even God lives by law when that law is the law of love. For what preserves the glorious and ineffable Unity of the blessed Trinity, except love? Charity, the law of the Lord, joins the Three Persons into the unity of the Godhead and unites the Holy Trinity in the bond of peace.

Do not suppose that I am implying that charity exists as an accidental quality of Deity, says Bernard, for whatever could be conceived of as wanting in the divine Nature is not God. No, it is the very substance of the Godhead; and my assertion is neither novel nor extraordinary, since the Apostle John says, “God is love.” Therefore, one may accurately say that love is at once God and the gift of God. It is the essence of love, imparting the quality of love. Where it refers to the Giver, it is the name of His very being; where the gift is meant, it is the name of quality. Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled. Since all things are ordered in measure and number and weight, and nothing is left outside the realm of law, that universal law cannot itself be without a law, which is itself. So, love, though it did not create itself, does indeed govern itself by its decree.[21]

John Calvin (1509-1564) sees the Apostle John emphasizing that there is no knowledge of God where there is no love. And he takes it for granted as a general principle or truth that God is love. That is, that His divine nature is to love people. I know that many analyze more logically, and that the ancients especially perverted this passage to prove the Spirit’s divinity. But the meaning of the Apostle is simply this: as God is the fountain of love, this flows from Him and is dispersed wherever he goes. That’s why John called Him Light at the beginning of this epistle. There is nothing dark in Him, but on the contrary, He illuminates all things by His brightness. Here, then, John does not speak of the essence of God but only shows what He is found to be.

But two things in the Apostle’s words ought to be noticed – that the proper knowledge of God is that which regenerates and renews us so that we become new creatures; and that it cannot be anything other than that it conforms us to the image of God. Away, then, with that foolish marginal thinking respecting formless faith. For when anyone tries to separate faith from love, it is the same as though they attempt to take away heat from the sun.[22]

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[1] Exodus 34:6-7

[2] Psalm 86:5, 15

[3] Romans 5:5-9

[4] John 3:17, 34; 5:36-37; 7:29; 8:42; 10:36; 17:3, 18; 20:21

[5] Romans 5:8; Galatians 5:22-23

[6] I saw “Love is God” on a taxi bumper sticker in Tamil Nadu, India. I pointed this out to my Indian pastor friend, Wellesley Solomon, and asked him if that was true. “No! No!” he said, “It’s the other way around.”

[7] 1 John 4:8

[8] Romans 13:10

[9] Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Bk. IV, Ch. 18

[10] Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, Roman Orator and politician

[11] Lactantius Divine Institutes: On the Nature of the Gods, Ch. 7

[12] Chrysostom: Catena

[13] Sermons of Augustine, Sermon 260c.1

[14] Letters of Augustine, Letter 186

[15] Ibid. Letter 219

[16] Isaac the Syrian (aka Isaac of Nineveh), was a monk who became a bishop and theologian

[17] Isaac the Syrian: Ascetical Homilies 46

[18] Bede the Venerable, Ancient Christian Commentary, Vol. XI, Bray, G. (Ed.), James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John

[19] Cabalistic Jews are those who look for mystical interpretations in Jewish theology, especially those pertaining to the Messiah

[20] Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah, folio 15a

[21] Bernard of Clairvaux: On Loving God, Eremitical Press, 2010, Ch. 12, pp. 81-82

[22] Calvin, John: Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, op. cit., loc. cit.

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

By Dr. Robert R Seyda

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

CHAPTER FOUR (Lesson LI) 03/30/22

^4:7 Dear friends, let us practice loving each other, for love comes from God, and those who are loving and kind show that they are God’s children and are getting to know Him better.

John Painter (1935) sees that the obligation to love is grounded in “as I have loved you.”[1] The Greek adverb kathōs (“as”) has a double sense. First, it means “in the same manner,” “just as,” and “to the same degree.” Secondly, kathōs can also be the relevant element for our discussion here based on the love command in Jesus’ words, “because I have loved you.” That is both the moral ground of the obligation and the affective source to move the person so loved to love others. The foundation and affective basis point to God in verses seven to twelve. So, the ground, here in verse eight, for loving one another is “because[NIV] God is Love.” That is, God is the ultimate source of love.

This means, says Painter, that the person who loves draws from the divine source of love – being born of God. Human love is not the cause but the manifestation of being birthed by God. From the human side, believing that Jesus the Anointed One is come in the flesh is the foundation belief that puts the believer in a relationship with the divine source of love. Those who love that relationship reveal the divine origin of the life of the one who loves. Divine origin is understood in the metaphor “to be born of God.” Simply to love is the evidence, and God defines love from whom this love comes. Because the divine love here describes itself, it does not need any other qualification except to love “one another.”[2]

Muncia Walls (1937) notes that the Apostle John locates the origin of the love he is talking about here as being “of God” It is not in human nature to manifest this agápe-love. Humans cannot learn this love through any school of higher learning. This love only comes from God. If God does not give this love to us, and, if this love is not manifested through our life by the Spirit of God, then we do not possess this love.[3] This is because, for some Christians, there are three loves at work in their lives. There is Philautia: self-love; Storge: familial love; and Agápe: God’s love. The first two are from nature; the last is purely divine. The problem is that the two natural passions get in the way of agápe-love. So, even if a person shows love for God by loving their family and other believers, they still find it impossible to get over the resentment they are harboring over some treatment they received from certain individuals. So, the question is, “If you can’t show God’s love to someone, do any of your other acts of love count as loving God?”[4]

Michael Eaton (1942-2017) points out that the Apostle John again urges love, building on what he has just said. First and foremost, “the God of the Bible is the only source of love.” After all, since God is the Love we need, where else could we find it except in God?[5] Then secondly, John writes that “love requires the new birth.” No one can genuinely exhibit this kind of love except being “born again.” Now, John continues: Thirdly, “love is essential to fellowship with God.” Love not only shows to others that the person is born of God, but it also means that the Christian’s knowledge of God is currently being enjoyed. John distinguishes the two. His readers are born of God. Yet, he writes to restore fellowship with the Father and the Son. The two are not unavoidably intertwined; otherwise, there would be no need for this epistle. Love arises from and demonstrates two things: new birth and its development, and fellowship with God.[6]

William Loader (1944) says that this command to love one another is not a directive to live in isolation but flows from a relationship. We would love one another because the source of love is God. It is more than an exhortation to follow God’s example of love. The Apostle John immediately expresses this connection by saying that everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. Again, this is more than a matter of identification. We are not still dealing with the need for criteria about who is not a child of God. Rather, John is assuming the connection between our love and God’s agápe-love is within a dynamic system, where agápe-love produces our love.[7] There, too, John expressed it by identifying the believer as a child of God and arguing that this relationship enables the Christian to love. To do so means that the person loving knows God personally.[8]

Robert W. Yarbrough (1948) states that the Apostle John now points to the effect of God’s love. It gives rise to love in those to whom God grants spiritual rebirth. To love as John counsels is to be confirmed in the faith he is explaining. It means that “love alone … is not a sign of being born of God” when we take the broader context of John’s letter into account. Further, love is a means of “knowing God.” John has just advised how his readers can “recognize the Spirit of God” in Christological doctrine in verse two. But now, in verse seven, he implies that doctrine is not the entire issue. An agápe-love reality comes into play for spiritual discernment to occur. A key component in effective discernment is Love. And so, John has urged his readers to love. He links that love directly to God. But John realizes that to persuade often requires more than mere assertion. John can imagine that there will be those who do not heed his counsel. So, he prepares to clarify things for them.[9]

Colin G. Kruse (1950) notes that the expression “born of God” is best explained by reference to the Apostle John’s Gospel.[10] It emphasizes that people become children of God, not by natural birth, but by being born of God. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born “from above,” which is equivalent to being “born of the Spirit.”[11] Then, being born of God is quite distinct from natural human procreation. It is brought about by God through His Spirit, in conjunction with faith in the Anointed One on the part of those concerned. When John says that “God is love,” he is not making a philosophical statement describing what God is in His essence. Instead, John is speaking about the loving nature of God revealed in His saving action on behalf of humankind.[12] [13]

Bruce G. Schuchard (1958) Sees parallelisms here, much like in the Psalms:

            Let us love one another,

                        Because love is of God.

Like the realities of the truth of light and life, love comes from above, as does the gift of the only-begotten One and the gift of our being birthed by God. The logic is that those who belong to God are born of God or know God, will love. With the form of direct address “beloved,” the reasonably exceptional instance of a command, “let us love,” also helps to mark the beginning of the passage. An abba pattern begins here.

            (a) – Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. – 1 John 4:8

                        (b) – This is how God showed His love among us:

(b) He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.1 John

4:9

            (a) – This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. – 1 John 4:10

But for John, love is not merely one among many things, finding distinctive rootage in God. Rather, love is an informing principal attribute of God that necessarily defines the believer if the believer is to belong to God. Thus, John describes “a non-negotiable necessity in the household of faith.” Because love is from God and belongs to God, John instructs his hearers to live from and for it in the lives of those in the Christian community.[14]

Duncan Heaster (1967) offers another proof of having been born of God through the Spirit[15] is whether we love one another. The love in view is not of a secular nature but the love of the new commandment, to love as the Lord loved us, by His death on a cross. To be born “of God” is to have the love which is “of God,” the love which came to its ultimate term in the gift of His Son for the sins of the world.[16] Although John’s audience was all born of God, they still had to be encouraged to “love one another.” The love between us is not as the Spirit imposed it against our will; the work of the Spirit requires our willing partnership. Knowing God means living in the sacrificial love of the Father and Son. We do not “know” God simply by perceiving the orthodox theologies about Him and placing and making a mental note of disagreement with them.[17]

Karen H. Jobes (1968) says that the Apostle John’s thinking for the agápe-love command is that it is a defining characteristic of God. Therefore, those born of God are defined by their love for others. As the old saying goes, “like father, like son.” In fact, exhibiting the love characteristic of the Father evidences personal knowledge of God. Not everyone loves in whatever way pleases them or has been born of God, but everyone who loves as God defines love.[18]

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) admits that he does not find it necessary to have unbreakable sympathy for all his relatives. Nevertheless, Browne is hopeful that this attitude does not break the fifth commandment.[19] He wonders what people would say if he loved a fellow Christian more than his nearest relative, even his father or mother. It is hard for him to conceive how God loves all humanity the same. Oh, what happiness there is in the love of God.[20]

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[1] John 13:34; cf. 1 John 4:17

[2] Painter, John. Sacra Pagina: 1, 2, and 3 John: Vol. 18, loc. cit.

[3] Walls, Muncia: Epistles of John & Jude, op. cit., pp. 70-71

[4] Cf. Mark 11:25; 1 Corinthians 13:5; Ephesians 4:31; James 5:16

[5] Cf. Psalm 121:1

[6] Eaton, Michael: Focus on the Bible, 1,2,3 John, op. cit., pp. 141-142

[7] 1 John 3:7-10

[8] Loader, William: Epworth Commentary, op. cit., p. 52

[9] Yarbrough, Robert W., 1-3 John (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) op. cit., pp. 235-236

[10] John 1:12-13

[11] Ibid 3:1-8

[12] See Ibid. 4:9-10

[13] Kruse, Colin G,, The Letters of John (The Pillar New Testament Commentary (PNTC)), op. cit., loc. cit., Kindle Edition

[14] Schuchard, Bruce G., Concordia Commentary, op. cit., p. 443

[15] John 1:13; 3:5

[16] Ibid. 3:16

[17] Heaster, Duncan: New European Commentary, op. cit., 1 John, p. 31

[18] Jobes, Karen H., 1, 2, and 3 John (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on The New Testament, Book 18), p. 190

[19] Exodus 20:6; Deuteronomy 5:10

[20] Browne, Thomas: Religio Medici, op. cit., Part 1, Section 5

This is my promise to you, that my wife and I will be that someone praying for you.

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

By Dr. Robert R Seyda

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

CHAPTER FOUR (Lesson L) 03/29/22

^4:7 Dear friends, let us practice loving each other, for love comes from God, and those who are loving and kind show that they are God’s children and are getting to know Him better.

Greville P. Lewis (1891-1976) notes that in the Apostle John’s Gospel, Jesus uses the phrase “He who sent Me” no fewer than twenty-six times. It must have been in John’s mind when he used “sent” here and in verses ten and fourteen. Martin Luther once said: “If I were as our Lord God, and had committed the government to my Son, as He to His Son, and these vile people were as disobedient as they are now, I would knock the world into pieces.”[1] But God did not abandon His “human experiment,” nor did He wait impassively in high heaven for sinners to grope their way up to His footstool, pleading for pardon and a second chance. The word “sent,” like the word “gave,”[2] stresses the astounding fact that God so loved us that He took the initiative and “sent” His Son on a redemptive Mission which could only be fulfilled at an awful cost to both the Father and the Son.[3]

Amos N. Wilder (1895-1993) notes that the Gnostics might say that wisdom or power is of God but hardly love, whose involvements would not fit divine detachment. Pagan gods were thought of as the object of mystical desire rather than their subject. In verse ten, the Apostle John directly denies the general Hellenistic view that love is, first of all, an impulse that goes out from the material world to spiritual order. We would not otherwise have known what love is.[4] Therefore, those who love show they are born of God and know God. They are the true Gnostics! Because they have experiential knowledge of God, which disposes them to a deepening understanding of God’s action and revelation, it is far superior to any supposition or shadowy mysticism.[5]

Paul Waitman Hoon (1910-2000) states that certain oriental religions consider God to be somber, unmoved. Followers are so engaged in self-meditation, they have little concern about human life around them. Other pagan religions have defiled God by likening Him to the force behind fertility. Ancient and modern philosophies conceived God as a pure Mind, Wisdom, and Beauty. Moralistic religion envisions God as Righteousness. Ancient and contemporary science have imagined God as Energy. But the insight of the Apostle John surpasses these in defining God’s essential nature as Love, and represents the highest conception of the divine nature humankind can hold.

Therefore, says Hoon, one must believe that divine Love is eternal. It is “that which was from the beginning.” It requires one to think that love governs all other attributes in the Godhead. “God is Love” implies that all His activities are the result of love. If He creates, He creates in love; if He rules, He rules in Love; if He judges, He judges in Love. God’s agápe-love is dynamic; it acts decisively; because God is Love, He is not passionless. He manifested that by sending His only Son to lead us back to Him.

Robert S. Candlish (1806-1873) explains that the phrase “Love is of God” does not simply mean love comes from God, has its source in God, that He is the author or creator of it. All created things are of God, for by Him all things were made, [6] and on Him, they all depend. But love is not a created thing. It is a Divine characteristic, holy affection. And it is of its essence to be a cause which brings change, a communication that establishes contact, and, as it were, to reproduce itself in others. Love is also a good gift resulting from an act of the will. Wherewith God expresses Himself, wherever it is found, it is the very love. If it is seen in us, it is our loving with God’s agápe-love; it is in our loving with Divine love, a love that is thus emphatically and exclusively of God.[7]

Professor F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) points out that the love of which the Apostle John, like Paul, speaks is self-giving love, not giving-self. It is sometimes suggested that the Greek verb agapaō and the noun agapē, used here as in the Final Covenant, bear the same basic sense as the secular Greek noun erōs, [8] which denotes possessive love. But it is not a question of the inherent meaning of the words used but of the sense placed on them by speakers or writers.[9] No doubt that is why John used the Greek noun Philadelphia, “love for the brethren.”[10]

Rudolf Schnackenburg (1914-2002) agrees that everyone who loves is born of God insofar as they actually do so. Of course, this does not mean that being born of God consists in love but, as elsewhere, [11] that being born of God can be recognized by love. In other words, being born again comes first, not love. Next to being born of God comes our knowing Him. Love is the principle of such knowledge.[12] The idea itself is already a familiar refrain, confined only to mutual love or fulfilling the commandments.[13] If “being born of God” refers instead to the believers’ origin, “to know God” means most emphatically to have lasting fellowship with Him. Only those who prove themselves by loving with this “love-share” divine nature and have fellowship with God. John deliberately adopts these terms, for they define the common religious aspirations both of Christianity and other religions. It is to emphasize the requirement of love and, at the same time, crush the opposition.[14]

John Phillips (1927-2010) agrees that all true faith is built on the gold standard of love, and that’s the measure to which John always returns. The section of this epistle now opening up before us is the Apostle John’s hymn of love, comparable to Paul’s.[15] John begins with agápe love – where else could he begin? = telling us of the overflow of that love in our hearts and life. More specifically, he tells us who we should love: “My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God.”[16] [17]

Raymond E. Brown (1928-1998) says that the Apostle John speaks about love without specifying which type. It is not brotherly love, love for God, or the agápe-love of God for men, but love in itself. (You can see this illustrated in a well-known art piece by Jacques Charlier (1720-1790) called “Venus desarmant l’amour”). The Jewish world to which John belongs ignores any distinction between object and subject. In other words, it’s just “love.” However, if there is any specification of the love found here in verse seven, it would be in love for a “brother” rather than of agápe-love of God.[18] To say this another way, God planted His agápe-love in us when we were born again but did not target any specific group or person. In fact, Christians can love everybody. That marks them as being born of God.

David E. Hiebert (1928-1995) says that the Apostle John’s urging to practice loving others is grounded in doctrinal reality: “Love comes from God.” The use of the article “the”[19] with “love” centers attention on the kind of love John was urging, “the love” that has its source in God. It is not the natural love of the world for its own, [20] nor the love of tax collectors for fellow collectors, [21] but a self-sacrificing love motivated by goodwill and implemented in action.[22] The Greek preposition ek (“out of”) translated as “from” denotes that His agápe-love “flows from Him,” as the one spring, and the connection with the source remains unbroken. That’s why John used the Greek agápe for love. It is a special kind of love that only God can produce. The call to love is undergirded by its practice of being a sure revelation of character. Verse seven states the positive disclosure, while verse eight states the negative fact.[23]

Stephen S. Smalley (1931-2018) makes a good point here by observing that this verse contains two sentences that do not depend on each other. Here the Apostle John sets out the spiritual origins of Love and the one who loves in that both come from God. The use of “everyone (who is loving)” is characteristic of John’s style and emphasizes the need for love in every believer. He does not simply say “the one who is loving.” The reference is to love in all its forms. Although John supplies no object, [24] the words of Jesus recorded in John’s Gospel[25] speak about love in absolute terms: the love of one’s neighbor in the community and love in general, wherever and however that may be expressed.[26] Therefore, while Love comes from God, it isn’t until believers use Love can they claim that they know God as His children.

Edward J. Malatesta (1932-1998) sees the Apostle John now building a bridge between verses 1:5 to 2:28 and 4:7-5:13. This last section characterizes the threefold concentration on personal faith, mutual love, and reciprocal relationship between Christians and the Spirit, Jesus, and the Father. Here John begins with a consideration of love which corresponds to a parallel treatment.[27] John’s interest is to continue with his theme of faith and love and where he wants to treat them in their mutual relationship. That’s why the Apostle expresses his deepest thoughts about the mystery of communion with God and how it compares to our communion with our fellow believers. John has no intention of repeating himself, but constantly emphasizing the importance of these two factors can make his point more forcefully. They must keep in mind that love comes from God; everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God personally.[28]

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[1] Luther, Martin: Table Talk, op. cit., CXI (111)

[2] John 3:16

[3] Lewis, Greville P., The Epworth Commentary, The Johannine Epistles, op. cit., p.98

[4] 1 John 4:19

[5] Wilder, Amos N., The Interpreter’s Bible, op. cit., 1 John, Exposition, pp. 278-279

[6] Colossians 1:16

[7] Candlish, Robert S., The Biblical Illustrator, op. cit., 1 John 4, p. 28

[8] Erōs is the Greek god of erotic (sexual) love.

[9] Bruce, F. F. Bruce, The Epistles of John: A Verse-by-Verse Exposition. Kingsley Books, Inc. Kindle Edition

[10] Cf. 1 Peter 1:22 There are six main words for love in Greek: Eros, sexual passion; Philia, deep friendship; Ludus, playful love (“Puppy love”); Agápe, selfless divine love; Pragma, long standing love; and Philautia, self-love.

[11] See 1 John 2:29; 5:1

[12] Ibid. 4:8

[13] Ibid. 2:3ff

[14] Schnackenburg, Rudolf: The Johannine Epistles, op. cit., p. 207

[15] 1 Corinthians 13

[16] 1 John 4:7 – The Message

[17] Phillips, John: Exploring the First Epistle of John, op. cit., pp. 135-136

[18] Brown, Raymond E., The Anchor Bible, op. cit., vol. 30, p. 514

[19] The Greek definite article ho (“the”) is not seen in the English translation. The Greek text reads: “that the love out of God.”

[20] John 15:19

[21] Matthew 5:46

[22] See 1 John 4:9-10

[23] Hiebert, David E., Bibliotheca Sacra, op. cit., January-March 1990, p. 71

[24] As in 1 John 3:11, 23

[25] John 13:34; 15:12, 17

[26] Smalley, Stephen S., Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 51, op. cit., p. 237

[27] See 1 John 2:3-11

[28] Malatesta, Edward J., Interiority and Covenant, op. cit., pp. 293-194

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

By Dr. Robert R Seyda

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

CHAPTER FOUR (Lesson XLIX) 03/28/22

^4:7 Dear friends, let us practice loving each other, for love comes from God, and those who are loving and kind show that they are God’s children and are getting to know Him better

Here are four things we can expect from this great foundation, says Wood. (a) First, our text comes to us as an invitation, “Beloved, let us love one another.” (b) It is a binding obligation, a debt we ought to pay.[1] If you are proud of yourself for paying your bills, here is a debt that needs much effort to pay in full. If God so loved us – if, that is, we have received so much love – we owe it as a debt to love one another. So, it is an invitation; it is a binding duty. But John is not finished. He puts it before us in sweeter, more alluring tones in another form. He, as it were, turns the prism once again to show us a more beautiful ray of colored light. (c) He shows us the indescribably blessed result which follows from loving one another; it is nothing else than this, God abiding within us.[2] However, (d) John knew people’s hearts; he knew its tendency to be slow in responding to an invitation, to regard it even when coming from the King of kings as something to be accepted or refused at one’s will. But John wants to make sure everyone understands God’s offer is more than an invitation; it is a commandment that if we claim to love Him, we owe a debt of love to our brothers and sisters in the Lord. God saved us by His Son’s blood; now He intends to sanctify us with that blood.[3]

Henry A. Sawtelle (1832-1913) is impressed by how much John dwells on this grace of loving one another! It is a significant part of Christianity to him! Along with faith, it is paramount.[4] Faith unites us to the Anointed One and love for each other. New convictions of the importance and necessity of brotherly love will come with the study of this Epistle. We see that those who do not have it are not Christians; however correct they may be in other respects. A new heart will not be persistently hard toward a brother or sister. To carry hatred and spite into the fellowship of the Anointed One’s Church is to carry in the spirit of Cain and the devil. It is to take a piece of hell into heaven.

What this agápe-love is, says Sawtelle, distinguished from general kindness and neighborliness, has been fully stated. It is the family affection of God’s house, as exclusive as a mother’s love for her child. Didn’t Jesus love John more than King Herod and high priest Caiaphas? This agápe-love of spiritual kinship, like the gift of the Spirit, distinguishes Christianity generically from all other religions. It does not exist in their emotional category. On the contrary, it is a grace that urges us to exercise, not toward perfect or agreeable Christians only, but toward very imperfect and not wholly pleasant Christians.

Therefore, notes Sawtelle, we must exercise a love that despite the imperfections of a brother or sister, loves them for the Anointed One’s sake, even at the cost of self-denial. But, if the Anointed One loved us, as some Christians bestow their love – namely, on a principle of loving only agreeable Christians, where might we stand? For love is God’s basic nature. Not natural love, which all humans are supposed to have, but agápe-love. It is not anything we have by nature; it does not spring out of biological relationships. It is not born of the flesh; does not belong to the category of earthly loves; is not, as some have said, natural love, directed to new objects; but is a heavenly principle, created in us out of the very nature of God. So, it was in God before it was in us.[5] [6]

As others have, John James Lias (1834-1923) notes that the Apostle John commences a new section of the Epistle. Once more, he takes up the duty of love, but from a different and far more profound point of view. John emphasizes the commitment to love[7] as a sign of belonging to the kingdom of Light and not darkness. It is the necessary proof of our kinship to God.[8] Furthermore, God’s love commandment stamps us as abiding in the Anointed One.[9] Consequently, the duty to love depends upon God’s essential nature and every believer’s inward fellowship with Him through His Spirit.[10]

Lias then adds, we speak of living for God, but what is living for God? It is possible even to renounce the world and be no nearer to God.[11] It is possible to have a fierce abstinent hatred of this world’s goods. It is possible to seek the kingdom of heaven in a spirit of refined selfishness. It is possible to hate and despise those selfish creatures who seek only earthly joys. It is possible even to serve God in a spirit of Pharisaic pride, high self-conceit, and contempt of others. Is this the spirit of truth? We reply, No!

And why? The contempt of this world is useless for its sake. The hate of our fellow creatures is no part of true religion. There can be no faithful obedience to God where there is an over-estimation of ourselves or contempt of others. It is what the Anointed One told us in many discourses and parables. But here we see that it is and why it is. Religion consists in uniting ourselves to God, and God is Love. If we are united to God, we must show the results of that union by displaying our likeness to Him. We should not relish contempt for the world but the desire to seek the welfare of others before ours. It is God’s object; therefore, it must be ours.[12]

Robert Cameron (1839-1904) begins by saying that no one can know God until they are born again. The possession of divine nature is necessary to understand what that nature is. It is knowledge that someone who is only a creature of God’s hand is utterly incapable of knowing, however wise and learned they might be. They lack the mental and spiritual capacity to grasp it. The Son alone knows the Father, and He alone can reveal them to those who have the spirit and nature of sons.[13] That’s why everything depends on participation in the divine nature.

So, no matter how religious a person may be, it is not a religion but spiritual life uniting us with God. By having the eternal life of God’s Son, we have the Father’s love and knowledge.[14] The only proof that we know God exists is that we are like Him in love. It is more profound than the previous thought of keeping the commandments.[15] That was outward uniformity to His revelation, while this is inward conformity with His nature. Without that union, a person cannot know agápe-love and doesn’t know God. We saw the same fellowship with God in the first chapter. It is communing with God as He is in Himself, and not merely delight in His ways or works. God is Light, and we walk in its glow; He is Love, and we bathe in its glimmer. We favor the light, but we feel the love. Step by step, we rise. We keep the commandments, we consent to His will, and we share the nature of the only God. The Lord’s prayer realized, “I will be in them, and You will be in Me so that they will be completely one.”[16]

The reason for this is evident, “for God is love.” Love is of the very essence of his nature. Even justice is but one manifestation of His agápe-love. The more tenderly a mother loves her child, the more severely she will resent any attempt to do him hurt. Love will seek the good of all who are the objects of its affection, even when justice demands the punishment of those who would do them wrong. Since the essence of God is love, the one who does not love can never have known him. Not to love is to be ignorant of love, and to be unaware of love is to be ignorant of God, for God is love.[17]

Erich Haupt (1841-1910) says that verse seven clearly shows that “knowledge” is very different from “thinking” based upon mere logic, to the Apostle John. Dr. Haupt says a person may understand all the teaching of Scripture concerning God and receive it into their mind without real love. But, does such a concept contradict the Apostle John’s assertion? If a person knows all plants by their scientific names, classes, and orders but has never seen them, it is far from understanding the plants. This adjective “knowing” means showing or suggesting that one has knowledge or awareness that is secret or known to only a few people.

In like manner, those who profess to know God without love have no spiritual perception, no experience of Him; because their ideas are only constituent elements out of which they seek to produce a living reality. They, therefore, prove that their idea of God is a false one, since God is not a compound substance of symbols and attributes. Only from experience and devotion can any deep knowledge flow from God. Love is represented here as a token of divine birth and a pure copy of divine love. We, of course, must not limit it to the love for fellow Christians but must be understood in its broadest meaning.[18]

Alfred Plummer (1841-1926) notices that the Apostle John made an abrupt transition from what he was saying. It is almost like he had summarily dismissed an unwelcome subject. But the connections of thought in John’s writings are often so subtle, a hurried idea, that there’s no place in the Apostle’s writings where two consecutive verses or sections lack any connecting links. However, we find two links here. First, in this chapter, the power to love one another, no less than the power to confess the Incarnation, is the gift of the Spirit.[19] This is the case, even person to person. We also see the transformation of agápe-love into Faith and Trust. The antichristian spirit is selfish; it makes “self,” namely, one’s intellect and interest, the measure of all things. Just as it separates the Divine from the human in the Anointed One, so it severs Divine love from human conduct in humans. So, no matter what amount or type of fellowship you have with others, John says, “Beloved, let us do even more. Let us love one another.”[20]

Alan E. Brooke (1863-1934) states that true love is not merely a quality of nature, and include it in our conception of the Deity. It has its origin in God. Human love is a reflection of something in the Divine nature itself. Its presence shows that they have experienced the new birth and share in that higher life which consists in gradually becoming acquainted with God. Where love is absent there has not been even the beginning of the knowledge of God, for love is the very nature and being of God.[21]

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[1] 1 John 4:11

[2] Ibid. 4:12

[3] Wood, John Allen: The Church Pulpit Commentary, op. cit., pp. 293-294

[4] Ibid. 3:23

[5] Romans 5:5

[6] Sawtelle, Henry A., An American Commentary, Alvah Hovey Ed., op. cit., p. 48

[7] 1 John 2:5-11

[8] Ibid. 3:10-18

[9] Ibid. 3:23

[10] Lias, John James: The First Epistle of St. John with Exposition, p. 304

[11] 1 Corinthians 13:3

[12] Lias, John James: The First Epistle of St. John with Homiletical Treatment, pp. 304-305

[13] Matthew 11:27

[14] John 17:25

[15] Ibid. 2:2-5

[16] Ibid. 17:23a

[17] Cameron, Robert: First Epistle of John, op. cit., loc. cit.

[18] Haupt, Erich: The First Epistle of St. John, op. cit., pp. 256-257

[19] See 1 John 4:2, 12-13

[20] Plummer, Alfred: Cambridge Commentary, op. cit., p. 146

[21] Brooke, Alan E., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, op. cit., p. 117

CYNICS may ask, how many have profited by the innumerable proverbs and maxims of prudence that have been current in the world for centuries? They will say they’re only used to repeat after some unhappy right has “gone wrong.” When, for instance, a person gambles and loses all they have, including their house, that leads to remembering the old Scottish proverb which declares that “willful waste leads to woeful want.” But did not the gambler know this well-worn saying from early years to the present? But, what good, then, did it do? Are the maxims of morality useless, then because people disregard them? For Christians and Jews, the Book of Proverbs is a great example. But what about other religions?

Here is one to consider by Persian poet Nizāmī Ganjevi (1141-1209 AD).

“In the hour of adversity, be not without hope, for crystal rain falls from black clouds.”

It sounds very similar to what the Psalmist David said, “O my soul, don’t be discouraged. Don’t be upset. Expect God to act! For I know that I shall again have plenty of reason to praise Him for all that He will do. He is my help! He is my God!” (Psalm 42:11) Living Bible

THE USE OF SEASONS OF SPIRITUAL PEACE

No doubt you’ve heard people talk about having “peace of mind” and perhaps listened to the song, “Let there be peace on earth.”[1] But in numerous instances, it’s only a matter of “ceasefire,” and our tensions remain high. So, here are some words that may help us understand more about having the peace we all think about and desire.

When God gives yon inward and outward peace, you can believe that He who has begun this good work in you will continue until the day of our Lord’s return.[2] You need then to make use of peaceful days to grow in recollection. Also, you ought to sing with your whole heart the Amen and Alleluia that reecho in the heavenly Jerusalem; this is a token of continual acceptance of God’s will and the unreserved sacrifice of your will to His.

At the same time, you should listen inwardly to God with a heart free from all flattering prejudices of self-love and self-pity, so that you may faithfully receive His light as to anything that needs correction. Then, as soon as He points these out, yield without argument or excuse, and give up whatever touches the jealous love of our coming Bridegroom without hesitation.

Those who yield to the Spirit in this manner will see imperfection in their purest deeds and an ever-growing measure of refined evil in their hearts. All this leaves us in dismay so that we cry out that only God is good. We strive to correct ourselves calmly and simply but continuously and steadfastly, and we do so even more because our heart is undivided and peaceful. We depend on nothing as to ourselves and hope only in God. Furthermore, we give way neither to self-delusion nor to carelessness. We know that God never fails us, though we often fail Him. We yield ourselves entirely to grace, and above all things dread any resistance to it. Not only that, but we blame ourselves without being discouraged. We cope with ourselves while striving to improve.[3]

Archbishop François Fénelon

 (1651-1725)

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[1] Let There be Peace on Earth, written by Jill Jackson/Sy Miller and sung by Vince Gill

[2] Philippians 1:6

[3] Fénelon, François: Paraclete Giants, The Complete Fénelon, Translated and Edited by Robert J. Edmonson, Paraclete Press, Brewster, Massachusetts, 2008, pp. 52-53; Vocabulary and grammar redacted by Dr. Robert R Seyda

NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

By Dr. Robert R Seyda

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

CHAPTER FOUR (Lesson XLVIII) 03/25/22

^4:7 Dear friends, let us practice loving each other, for love comes from God, and those who are loving and kind show that they are God’s children and are getting to know Him better.

William E. Jelf (1811-1875) states that as agápe-love flows from God, it follows that everyone possessed of this attribute could have only received it from God. It was part of God’s creation. We may observe that the love here spoken of is not limited to love between Christians born of God, but it is “everyone.” If love existed in a heathen, it was part of God’s original creation, created in God’s image. Even heathen virtues flow from and are the gift of God’s creative power. There is no reason why we should not receive this or view it as incompatible with the notion of the re-created Christian, in which also love forms an important element.[1]

John Stock (1817-1884) makes these points: The Apostle John enforces the duty of a believer’s agápe-love. The Apostle Paul also affirms that no gift or possession void of love is helpful to anyone who claims them.[2] In fact, as it pertains to respecting a person’s spiritual life, they are insignificant if their acts of kindness are not permeated with love. No doubt, that’s why John exalts love, showing its happy possessor to be one that is born of God. Nevertheless, even they require fresh stimulants to keep alive the divine flame, so John urges mutual love. They were no mountain peak that chilled the atmosphere and enveloped in dense fog, endangering navigation. Instead, they are a star of no small radiance in their Redeemer’s hand and filled with the Holy Spirit. Therefore, mutual respect and lukewarm affection do not fulfill our Lord’s commandment. John joins the Apostle Peter, who said, “You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.”[3] [4]

Johannes H. A. Ebrard (1818-1888) says that on that very account, the presence of love in a person is a token that they are born of God – thus that they are born again. Think of it, the fact that people can see God’s agápe-love in you is all they need to believe that you are God’s child. Agápe-love means true, self-consecrating, self-devoting, self-sacrificing love. It bears no resemblance to that natural pseudo-love with roots in the flesh, in self-seeking and subtle self-satisfaction, and either puffs itself up with sentimentality or strives to earn its approval. And knowing God: how the knowledge of God is connected with those born of God, may be seen in other verses.[5] [6]

Bishop Harvey Goodwin (1818-1891) says that it should be expected that in some quarters today, there exists a denial that brotherly love rests upon loving God because there are numerous doubts about being of God altogether. It is not merely the proposition “God is love,” which is contested, but the previous and more straightforward proposition “God is.” It is as old as the fool in Psalm fourteenth. On many occasions, political and social attitudes assumed by some of our scientific community and the trend in much of our current literature tend to give prominence and practical importance to the denial that “God is,” which was unheard of a century ago.[7]

But there is another tendency of our times, says Goodwin, which ought to be noted, and it is the tendency to deny that “God is love.” The first part of the proposition, we are sometimes told, may be accepted if you think it worth asserting: if you like to explain the order of the physical universe by the hypothesis of what you call God, there is no harm in it, any more than making the theory of an elastic medium pervading space, or of fluid electricity, or anything else which is theoretical: but the moment you attribute purpose, and will, and love, and the exercise of moral government to this imaginary God, then you are told that you fly in the face of modern observation and discovery. You are told, in fact, that the God whom science has revealed is an unbending, invariable, relentless, pitiless law, as different from love as the strokes of a steam engine are from the throbbing of a mother’s heart.

Not only should we continue to believe, encourages Goodwin, that the truth “God is love” is too genuine to be overthrown by any one of these unproven philosophies. We must keep our faith that rests upon grounds deeper, more theological, and more systematic than any denials or objections that oppose it. Believe that there is something in the human heart, in the universal nature of mankind, to which it appeals and to which it cannot petition in vain. In the Final Covenant, the proposition “God is love” is not an abstract theorem to be proven by the help of sayings and guesses, but it is the condensation in these three words of the life of Jesus the Anointed One, our Lord.

When we see that weary, wandering Son of man “going about doing good,”[8] when we see Him feeding the hungry, healing the sick, listen to Him preaching the Gospel to the poor, and still more when we see Him nailed to the cross of shame, then we must bow our heads in humble adoration, and say, “In very deed and truth, God is love.”[9] This demonstration of the agápe-love of God has changed the face of the world: many of its most crying evils have ceased; a bright principle of light and love, which was all but unknown in previous ages, has shown upon the earth; people have gone about doing good, so as they never did before: Christian sponsored hospitals and orphanages are common: we have seen so great a Light in Jesus the Anointed One that no other light can dazzle us. In the warmth and brightness of this Son of our souls, we are directly or indirectly persuaded that all love comes from Him.[10]

Charles Ellicott (1819-1904) views the religion of the Final Covenant as different from all others in this: it affects and appeals to, and governs the heart. Other systems have laid hold upon other powers of our nature. Still, the Gospel is distinctive in constraining the affections, seizing the motive and controlling forces of the soul, and bringing them into subjection to its loving claims. Indeed, it is true that the Divine revelation is not neglectful of any part of our being.[11]

Although the Gospel appeals to our sense of reasoning enlightened by its truth, it often uses our imagination. These truths can sometimes spark lively images of good, blessings, and curses on the righteous and evil on the unrighteous. They also stimulate the sentiment of fear on the one hand and hope on the other. And not too seldom, they bring up visions of death, heaven, and hell. But this is done as a means to an end. Namely, it moves the heart, draws the souls away from things of unfounded concern into the fellowship of God. This will produce a holy longing for the continued union with God’s divine nature, which desires to dwell in us.

William Kelly (1822-1888) states that if what the Apostle John says here in verse seven is a Holy Spirit-inspired promise, it is a sure and vital thing to say; there is no excuse for failure in love. But we must remember that love is not merely being kind to a fellow-saint; it is also faithfulness to God. And sometimes, the faithfulness of love is resented instead of being received. In such a case, the person who is upset by having their unloving attitude pointed out and who regards the other person’s faithfulness as not showing real love also needs to be cautious. If that resentment overcomes them – and it sometimes does – the issue may prove that there never was the divine gift of eternal life in their soul. We often find that departure from love, even in a small way, if yielded to, is an extremely grave sign. It may be a symptom of what may be called the “moral leprosy of mankind.” For, as we are taught here, there is nothing really of God, nothing truly sound, in the person who does not love.[12]

James Nisbet (1823-1874) tells us that in his day, on the east wall of the Church of the Ascension, Bayswater Road, London (not too far from Hyde Park), artist Frederic Shields (1833-1911), was decorating the old mortuary chapel in St. George’s Fields cemetery. He painted a wonderful series of pictures of our Lord’s life. He painted a panel embodying his conception of what love means. Love is a beautiful female figure, with a face strong and tender, a face that bears witness to endured suffering.

On Love’s lap is a European child; by Love’s side stands a little African child, one little foot still fettered, the other freed by Love. At Love’s feet, a little Chinese and a little Indian child are playing together. Both the little hands of the white babe on Love’s lap are outstretched to draw the little black boy’s face and impress upon it a kiss. The embodiment of love knows no distinction of race or language, or color to the artist. He interprets our text’s “one another” with a worldwide meaning.[13] But in today’s world, this would be seen as typecasting and racist. But it was for this same world our Lord died to free them from such thinking. This mortuary was deconsecrated and sold by the Church Commissions in the 1970s, and The Utopian Housing Association replaced it with low-cost social housing.

Brooke F. Westcott (1825-1901) states that the idea of “knowledge” that the Apostle John introduces here in connection with the action of the Spirit of Truth is a fuller unfolding of the mystery of the Anointed One’s Person. Those who love, derive their spiritual being from God and, therefore, are in harmony with Him and know Him, that is, recognize every revelation that reveals more of Him. But as John makes clear, none of this is possible without love.[14]

Rev. John Allen Wood (1828-1916), one of the organizers of the first Methodist Holiness Camp Meeting in America, was held in Vineland, New Jersey, in 1867. He says that verse seven begins a section of the Epistle that contains one of those profound truths which are so often expressible in words but are inexhaustible in meaning, “God is love.” It is our solid foundation, and, therefore, we are expected to build our house on this solid rock. From this high Rock, we can see the world. God wants that to be our view because His mission is world-embracing.

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[1] Jelf, William E., Commentary on the First Epistle of St. John, op. cit., p. 60

[2] 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

[3] 1 Peter 1:22

[4] Stock, John: Exposition of the First Epistle of John, op. cit., p. 338

[5] 1 John 1:5; 2:3

[6] Ebrard, Johannes: Biblical Commentary on the Epistles of St. john, op. cit., p. 287

[7] Time Magazine cover, April 8, 1966 read: “Is God Dead?”

[8] Acts of the Apostles 10:38

[9] 1 John 3:18

[10] Goodwin, Harvey, Biblical Illustrator, First Epistle of John, op. cit., Vol. pp. 29-30

[11] Charles. Ellicott’s Bible Commentary for English Readers, pp. 16235-16236

[12] Kelly, William: Exposition of the Epistles of John the Apostle, op. cit., Logos loc. cit.

[13] Nisbet, James: The Church Pulpit Commentary, op. cit., Vol. 12, p. 294

[14] Westcott, Brooke F., The Epistles of St. John, op. cit., p. 148