(1 John 4:12-16)
18. Abiding in God (1 John 4:12-16)
No one has ever seen God. See, my friends: If we love one another,
God will abide in us and his love will be perfected in us. Begin to love and you'll be made perfect. Have you begun to love? Then God has begun to dwell in you. Love him who's begun to dwell in you, so that by dwelling more perfectly in you he'll make you perfect. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given to us of his own Spirit. Good! Thanks be to God! We know that he dwells in us. How do we know it? Because John has told us that he has given to us of his own Spirit. And how do you know that he's given to you of his own Spirit? Ask your hearts. If they're filled with love, then you have the Spirit of God. And how do we know that this is the sign that God's Spirit dwells in you? Ask the apostle Paul: "Because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us."
And we have seen and bear witness that the Father has sent his Son, the Saviour of the world. Don't be anxious, you who are sick. Do you give up hope when such a Physician has come? Your diseases were grave, your wounds incurable, your sickness desperate. Do you see only the greatness of your troubles and not the almighty power of the Doctor? You are desperate but he is almighty. His witnesses are those who were healed at the first and now proclaim the Doctor. But even they were healed more in hope than in reality, as the Apostle says: 'For in hope we are saved." So we've begun to be healed in faith, and our healing will be perfected when this corruptible nature shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal nature shall have put on immortality. That's hope, it isn't yet the reality. But those Who rejoice in hope will possess the reality too; no one without hope will be able to come to the reality.
ABIDINGINGOD / 85
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. Let me say it briefly: this confession must be in deeds, not words; made not by tongues but by lives. There are many people who profess their faith in words but deny it by their actions. And we have known and believed the love God has for us. And again, how have you known it? God is love. John told us this earlier; now he says it again. There's nothing greater he could say about love than to say that it is God. You may have been ready to think little of God's gift, but will you despise God? God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. There is a mutual indwelling of the One who holds and the one who is held. You dwell in God so that you're held by him; God dwells in you to hold you, to keep you from falling. Don't think of yourself as being God's house in the way that your house supports your body. If that house stops supporting you, you fall; but he doesn't fall if you stop supporting him. He's whole when you forsake him, and he's whole when you return to him. Your healing is not gain to him; it's you who are purified, recreated, straightened out. He's medicine for the ill, a straight rule for the crooked, a light for the darkened, a home for the homeless. Everything works to your advantage. Don't imagine that you're conferring some advantage on God when you come to him, even with a promise to belong to him. Will God lack servants if you refuse, if everyone refuses? God doesn't need servants! But his servants need him. That's why the psalmist says, "I have said to the Lord, you are my God"—he is the true Lord— "because you have no need of my goods." You are different: you need the goods other people provide for you, and they need what you provide for them. Therefore you're no true lord, because you need an inferior. That One is our true Lord who seeks nothing from us. And woe to us if we don't seek.him! There's nothing he seeks from us, but he sought us even when we weren't seeking him. One sheep strayed and he found it and brought it back on his shoulders rejoicing. Was the sheep necessary to the shepherd? Wasn't it the shepherd who was necessary to the sheep?
I get so much pleasure speaking about love that I don't want this letter of John's to end. There's nothing in Scripture that speaks of love more warmly, and nothing more delightful to preach to you or more wholesome for you to take in. But this is on the condition that you confirm God's gift in yourselves by your good lives. Don't be ungrateful for this great grace he's given you. God had an Only Son, but not wanting him to be alone, he adopted us so that he would have sisters and brothers to possess with him life everlasting.