CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER 4
6. THE TWO SPIRITS (4:1-6)
4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
In the apostolic churches, as in ancient Israel, communications were made from time to time by “prophets,” men and women who spoke as the mouthpieces of a power beyond themselves. Every prophet claimed to be a spokesman of God, to be inspired by the Spirit of truth, but in Old and New Testament times alike it was necessary to test these claims. In Elijah’s day we meet prophets of Baal and prophets of Asherah, spokesmen of Canaanite divinities (1 Kings 18:19), as well as those who, like Elijah himself, were prophets of the God of Israel (1 Kings 18:4, 13, 22). To distinguish between the former and the latter was no difficult task. It was different when contradictory utterances were made by men claiming to be prophets of the God of Israel. How could it be known for sure that Micaiah the son of Imlah was speaking the truth when he foretold catastrophe at Ramoth-gilead, as against Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah and his companions who so confidently predicted victory? True, the fact that the latter all told King Ahab so unanimously what he wanted to hear was suspicious in itself, and Micaiah had no doubt of the authenticity of his message of doom, having heard it pronounced in the heavenly council.172 But his ultimate appeal could only be to the event. “If you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by me” (1 Kings 22:28).
Jeremiah in his day stood almost alone as a messenger of doom, opposed by others who prophesied smooth things to the king and people in Jerusalem. How was it to be known whether he or they were right? “In truth the Lord sent me to you to speak all these words in your ears,” said Jeremiah (Jeremiah 26:15), but if his hearers refused to accept his assurance, he could only appeal to the outcome: “As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet” (Jeremiah 28:9). And in the event, Jeremiah was all too terribly proved to be the true prophet, and the others to be false prophets.
In Deuteronomy two tests are laid down to determine whether a prophet is truly a spokesman of God or not: (i) “if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him” (Deuteronomy 18:22); (ii) even if the word which the prophet speaks comes true, yet if he tries to lead his hearers astray to serve other gods, he is a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13:1-5).
The presence of true prophets in the church of New Testament days stimulated the activity of others who claimed to be prophets but whose claims were unfounded—or, if they did speak by inspiration, showed by the content of their utterances that the spirit that spoke through them was not the Spirit of God. In either case they were false prophets—men who falsely claimed to speak by inspiration or men who were inspired by a spirit of falsehood. To test the prophets then was in effect to test the spirits by whose impulsion they spoke. John indeed envisages but two spirits—the Spirit of God and the spirit of Antichrist. In this he shows a striking affinity with a passage in the Qumran literature which declares that God “has appointed for man two spirits in which to walk until the time of His visitation: the spirits of truth and falsehood.”173
4:2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: 4:3 and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus* is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already.
* Some ancient authorities read annulleth Jesus.
A few decades earlier Paul, writing to the Corinthian Christians on the subject of prophetic utterances, laid down a simple criterion by which true and false utterances might be distinguished. It was this: what testimony did any such utterance bear to Christ? “No one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). John adopts essentially the same criterion, but rewords it with special reference to the Docetic denial of the Incarnation that was current when he wrote. Test the prophets. Ask them if Jesus Christ has come in flesh or not. If they say Yes, then they are to be recognized as speaking by the Spirit of God; if not, then it is not the Spirit of God but the spirit of Antichrist that speaks through them. The words “every spirit which confesseth not Jesus” could have a wider application than to a denial of His incarnation, although it is evidently this that John has primarily in mind.
The variant reading “annulleth Jesus”174 may imply the severance of Jesus of Nazareth from the Christ or the Son of God, after the manner of Cerinthus (so R. A. Knox: “no spirit which would disunite Jesus comes from God”), or it may denote a positive abjuration of His authority, like “Jesus be cursed!” in 1 Corinthians 12:3. So O. A. Piper argues: “The phrase lyei ton Iēsoun, as its contrast with 1 John 4:2 and the parallel in 1 Corinthians 12:3 (anathema Iēsous) show, signifies a curse, whereby it is believed that Jesus will be deprived of his supernatural power.”175 Such a denial has already (1 John 2:18, 22) been branded as a sure sign of Antichrist. The spirit of the great Antichrist of the end time is already present and operative through these “many antichrists” who refuse to acknowledge Jesus. No matter how charming, how plausible, how eloquent the prophets in question may be, the test of their witness to Christ and His truth is the test by which they must be judged.
4:4 Ye are of God, my little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
John’s readers were not more learned, more skilled in philosophical debate, than the false teachers, yet by refusing to be persuaded by the false teachers they had overcome them. This they were able to do because of the indwelling Holy Spirit, whose anointing had imparted to them the true knowledge—a “built-in spiritual instinct,” as it was called in the , enabling them to hold fast to truth and reject error. If “he that is in you” is the Holy Spirit, “he that is in the world” is the spirit of falsehood, called “the spirit of antichrist” in verse 3 and “the spirit of error” in verse 6.176
4:5 They are of the world: therefore speak they as of the world, and the world heareth them. 4:6 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he who is not of God heareth us not. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
But why should the leaders of the other party, with their followers, be said to be “of the world?” Because the philosophy to which they endeavor to accommodate the gospel, depriving it of what makes it the gospel in the process, is current secular philosophy, the prevalent climate of opinion. We have already seen that there is no form of “worldliness” so inimical to Christianity as this kind of “restatement.” Such a restatement is congenial to “the world” because it is in line with contemporary fashion. Nevertheless it is doomed to pass away because with a change in fashion it loses its appeal, which the gospel never does. The gospel, like its faithful preachers, is “of God,” and the people of God recognize it as such through the inward witness of the Spirit in their hearts (cf. 5:7-11). They are thus in no danger of confusing “the Spirit of truth” with “the spirit of error,” the spirit that leads men astray (cf. 2:26).
7. WALKING IN LOVE (4:7-21)
(a) In praise of love (4:7-12)
Like Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, John in this section has his hymn in praise of heavenly love.
4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
The love of which John, like Paul, speaks is self-giving love, not acquisitive love. It is sometimes suggested that the verb agapaō and the noun agapē, which are used here as so commonly in the New Testament, bear the former sense intrinsically as against erōs, which denotes possessive love. This is the implication of the title of Anders Nygren’s great work Agape and Eros.177 But it is not a question of the intrinsic sense of the words used (in the Septuagint of 2 Samuel 13:1-15 both agapē and agapaō are used of Amnon’s passion for Tamar) but of the sense placed on them by speakers or writers.
The love which the New Testament enjoins involves a consuming passion for the well-being of others, and this love has its wellspring in God. Since “love is of God,” says John, “let us love one another;” the children of God must reproduce their Father’s nature. Those who show such love to one another give proof in doing so that they are God’s children and that it is they (not those who say so much about the true gnōsis or knowledge of God without regard for the love of God) who really know Him. Those, on the other hand, from whose lives such love is absent give proof by that fact that they have never begun to know God, however confident their claims may be. To know the God of love means to manifest His love. “God is love” is as compressed a statement of the gospel as is well imaginable, yet it is no more a reversible statement than is its counterpart in 1 John 1:5, “God is light.” “Love is of God;” love is divine; but one can no more say that “love is God” than one could say that “light is God.” “God is love” is an affirmation about God, and while it is a compressed statement of the gospel, it is so in the sense which is spelled out in the following sentence: “that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” It is this act of God that gives meaning to His love. Indeed, it is this act that gives meaning to love absolutely, in the sense which it bears in the Johannine writings and in the New Testament generally.
The gospel gives no countenance to the facile and optimistic assertion that God is love as though, in the light of all the facts of life, this were the easiest of all things to believe. Bishop Gore, who is reported to have called it the hardest of all things to believe (“believe that, and you can believe everything else”), speaks of many
who certainly have “the will to believe,” but who find the belief that God is love very difficult. The days seem to them far off when it was possible with any plausibility to contrast the “simple doctrine” that God is love with the “elaborate and difficult dogmas” of the Church. For they feel that it is only the dogmas that Jesus Christ is God, and His mind God’s mind, and that God, the God of nature, really vindicated Him by raising Him from the dead, that do in fact sustain their tottering faith and hope in God.178
The Christian affirmation that God is love is not sustained by ignoring the cross, in all its stark obscenity, but by setting it in the forefront of the situation.
4:9 Herein was the love of God manifested in us,* that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
* Or, in our case.
John has already pointed to Christ’s laying down His life for His people as the perfect manifestation of love (3:16). He returns to the sacrifice of Christ again, and presents it from the Father’s point of view, in words similar to those of the Gospel (John 3:16). The supreme act of God’s love was His sending “his only begotten Son into the world.” As in the Gospel, the adjective “only begotten” (monogenēs) is used in a sense which combines the ideas of “only-begotten” and “well-loved” (like Hebrew yachid in Genesis 22:2, which is rendered agapētos, “beloved,” in the Septuagint, but monogenēs in Josephus, Aquila and Hebrews 11:17).179 The purpose of His thus sending His Son is our blessing—“that we should receive life through him,” for thus the ingressive force of the aorist zēsōmen may be expressed. Here the initiative lies entirely with God. Before there was any possibility of our exercising such love, He first manifested it when He “loved us and sent his Son as a propitiation for our sins.” These last words are repeated from 2:2, wherein the meaning of “propitiation” (hilasmos) has been discussed.180
4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another, 4:12 No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us:
God’s love for us, then, supplies the motive power for His people’s love for one another. The adverb “so” (Greek houtōs) has the emphatic force here that it has at the beginning of John 3:16. “We also ought to love one another,” because we are His children. If the children of God must be holy because He is holy (Leviticus 11:44 f.; 1 Peter 1:15 f.) and merciful because He is merciful (Luke 6:36), so they must be loving because He is loving—not with the “must” of external compulsion but with the “must” of inward constraint. God’s love is poured into their hearts by the Holy Spirit whom they have received (Romans 5:5). They are, in fact, the witnesses on earth to God’s love. “No one has ever beheld God,” but He may be seen in His children when they love one another.
John has already made this statement (except for the variant “seen,” heōraken, instead of “beheld,” tetheatai) in the prologue to his Gospel, but there the invisible God has been made known on earth by His Son (John 1:18). Now that the Son has returned to the Father, God is made known on earth by those who through faith in His Son have become His children—if they love one another. The love of God displayed in His people is the strongest apologetic that God has in the world. When His love is planted in their hearts, and He Himself thus dwells within them, His love is “perfected” in the complementary response which it finds in them, towards Him and towards their fellows. It is in this way that they are not only holy and merciful as He is holy and merciful, but, as enjoined by their Lord in the Matthaean version of the Sermon on the Mount, “perfect” as their “heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), and all through that perfection of love poured out for them in the sacrifice of the cross. “The only kind of personal union… with which we are acquainted,” says C. H. Dodd, “is love.” John, he continues,
makes use of the strongest expressions for union with God that contemporary religious language provided, in order to assure his readers that he does seriously mean what he says: that through faith in Christ we may enter into a personal community of life with the eternal God, which has the character of agapē, which is essentially supernatural and not of this world, and yet plants its feet firmly in this world, not only because real agapē cannot but express itself in practical conduct, but also because the crucial act of agapē was actually performed in history, on an April day about AD 30, at a supper-table in Jerusalem, in a garden across the Kidron valley, in the headquarters of Pontius Pilate, and on a Roman cross at Golgotha. So concrete, so actual, is the nature of the divine agapē; yet none the less for that, by entering into the relation of agapē thus opened up for men, we may dwell in God and He in us.181
(b) Perfect love and sound doctrine (4:13-21)
4:13 hereby know we that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit, 4:14 And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father hath sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Not only is God’s love poured into His children’s hearts through the Holy Spirit, but an appreciation of God’s truth has been imparted to them by the same Spirit. The Spirit of love is the Spirit of truth. The Spirit persuades and enables us to believe in Jesus as the Son of God; He communicates to us the new life which is ours as members of God’s regenerate family; it is through Him that we remain in union with the ever-living Christ and He with us; it is through His inward witness that we receive the power to bear our witness in turn. Thus our Lord’s promise in the upper room is fulfilled: “when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:26, 27).
While these words were primarily applicable to His companions in His earthly ministry, they have become applicable to later generations of disciples also who have heard the testimony of the eyewitnesses and having thus had fellowship with them have fellowship also with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3). The substance of the witness of the Spirit and of those whom He indwells is this: “the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.” Here is another summary of the gospel, expressed this time not in the form of a permanently valid proposition, like “God is love,” but in the form of a historical statement in the light of which the validity of the proposition is seen. The designation “the Savior of the world” is peculiar to the Johannine writings in the New Testament. In addition to its single occurrence in the First Epistle, it occurs once in the Gospel (John 4:42), on the lips (significantly enough) of Samaritans, who had no interest in promises which were attached to the tribe of Judah but great interest in promises which spoke of a worldwide salvation. As earlier, where he speaks of Christ as “the propitiation…for all the world” (1 John 2:2), so here John ascribes the widest scope to the saving purpose of God. The pronoun “we” in “we have beheld” is emphatic;182 John may be thinking in the first instance of himself and his original associates, who delivered to others the testimony of what they had “beheld” (cf. 1 John 1:1) so that others in turn might bear the same testimony, but in the light of verse 16—where the similarly emphatic “we” can scarcely have this force—he more probably thinks of himself and his readers, by contrast with those who had left the fellowship, thus renouncing the bond of love and the witness of the Spirit. This appears to be confirmed by the words which immediately follow.
4:15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God.
John has just said that if we love one another, God abides in us (verse 12). Now he says that God abides in us if we “confess that Jesus is the Son of God.” He seems to be conscious of no tension at all between Christian love and Christian truth. The love of God was manifested in the giving up of His Son. If Jesus is not the Son of God and if His death does not atone for the sins of men, then there is no Christian message, and Christian love and truth fall together, as they stand together if that message is true. If none can acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God apart from the enlightenment and empowering of the Spirit, it is equally true that the mutual coinherence of God and His children is the Spirit’s work, as is also the outflowing of the love of God through them to others. Mutual indwelling, perfect love and confession of the truth are bound up in one another. God has joined them together and they may not be put asunder.
4:16 And we know and have believed the love which God hath in us.* God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.
* Or, in our case.
What is here being said about love is no matter of mere theory; it is something which is proved in experience and faith. In speaking of “the love which God has in us”183 John may mean more than His love for us. That is included, indeed, but the love which God has for His children is poured into their hearts by His Spirit and flows out to others. The love which dwells in the community of God’s children and which they show one to another is His love imparted to them. More than that, the God of love imparts Himself to His people, and so dwelling within them that they, in their turn, dwell in His love and dwell in Him (cf. verse 12).
4:17 Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world, 4:18 There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that feareth is not made perfect in love.
The perfection of love, John has already said (verse 12), is realized when God dwells in His children and they love another. This perfection of love, he adds here, is specially manifested in the confidence with which they will face the day of judgment.184 This is the advent day of 2:28, where those who dwell in God are assured that they will have no need to shrink from His presence with shame on that great day. Christian confidence and Christian love go together; they find their antithesis in shame and fear. A sense of awe in face of the majesty and righteousness of God is proper. Anything in the nature of unnerving fear at the coming of Him whose name is love denies the love “which God has in us.” Here we have the last occurrence of the phrase kathōs ekeinos, “as He,” in reference to the risen Christ: “as he is, so even are we in this world.” It was this revelation that replaced fear by confidence in John Bunyan’s heart when the words of Romans 3:24, “justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” were expounded to him thus as though by a voice from heaven:
Sinner, thou thinkest that because of thy sins and infirmities I cannot save thy soul, but behold my Son is by me, and upon him I look, and not on thee, and will deal with thee according as I am pleased with him.185
The day of judgment need have no terror for anyone who has appropriated the assurance of John 5:24: “he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Nor can it have terror for anyone who knows himself united in faith and love to the Son of Man to whom all judgment has been entrusted by the Father (John 5:22, 27). All such terror is banished by the “perfect love” in which the members of God’s family live. “Fear has to do with punishment” (RSV),186 but “punishment” (kolasis) is the portion of those who through disobedience are “condemned already,” not of those who, believing in the Son of God, are “not condemned” (John 3:18). A believer who contemplates the judgment day with trepidation, says John, is one in whom divine love has not yet reached its full maturity, and one therefore who himself has not yet reached full spiritual maturity. Charles Wesley was right when he defined entire sanctification in terms of
A heart in every thought renewed
And full of love divine.
4:19 We love, because he first loved us. 4:20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.* 4:21 And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.
* Many ancient authorities read how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
The King James Version, following the Received Text, reads “we love him” in verse 19, but the textual evidence makes it clear that “him” is a later addition by scribes or editors who felt that an explicit object was necessary. (A few other scribes or editors from the same motive added “God” as the object.) But in the context “we love” is the more suitable reading as it is the better attested one. We love God, it is true, but in loving Him we inevitably love His children. In taking the initiative in loving us, He not only showed us how to love one another (cf. 3:11), but He imparted the desire and the power to follow this example of His. Our Lord made it plain that the two great Old Testament commandments of love to God and love to one’s neighbor are two sides of one coin (Mark 12:29-31; cf. Luke 10:27 f.), and when He said to His disciples in the upper room, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15), He laid down as His new and chief commandment that they should love one another as He loved them, so that everyone would know that they were truly His disciples (John 13:34 f.).
Similarly in this letter John has already emphasized that brotherly love characterizes the children of God. To hate one’s brother is to proclaim one’s kinship with Cain (3:10-18). Here the same lesson is emphasized afresh, and once more the test of love is applied. Where God’s love or our love for God is mentioned, John makes no distinction between the Father and the Son. Alike in loving men and in being loved by them in return, the Son and the Father are one (cf. John 10:30). Peter speaks of Christ as the One “whom, not having seen,” His people love (1 Peter 1:8). John agrees, but adds that love for the unseen One will be attested by love for His people whom we do see. Much verbal expression of devotion for the person of Christ can coexist with remarkably un-Christian attitudes towards the people of Christ, and John’s comment on this inconsistency is sharp and undisguised. In this he is at one with his Master, who declared that in the judgment behavior towards His brethren will be counted as behavior towards Himself (Matthew 25:31-46). Those whose lives are marked by lack of love in this regard may well have a sense of trepidation as they look forward to the day of review.
172 Cf. Jeremiah 23:18, 22, where the false prophets of Jeremiah’s day have no authentic message to deliver because none of them “has stood in the council of the Lord.” If they had, says God, “then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way.”
173 Rule of the Community 3.18 f. These two spirits are otherwise called the Prince of Light and the Angel of Darkness (see commentary on ).
174 This variant appears in the margin of the important codex 1739, was known to Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and is attested by the Latin version.
175 “1 John and the Didache of the Primitive Church,” JBL 66 (1947), pp. 443 f.
176 Cf. Ephesians 2:2: “the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”
177 Translated from Swedish (London, 1932-39).
178 C. Gore, Belief in God (Penguin edition, 1939), p. 150.
179 W. Bauer, W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the NT…(Cambridge, 1957), mention the further possible meaning “begotten of the Only One” (s.v. µονογενης).
180 See p. .
181 C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 199 f.
182 Greek hēmeis, as in 3:14, 16; 4:6, 10, 11, 16, 17, 19 (inclusive), and 1:4 (exclusive).
183 Greek en hēmin, as in verse 9. Cf. the use of en in Acts 4:2; Galatians 1:16.
184 The RSV rendering “confidence for the day of judgment” is scarcely adequate. The confidence is maintained when the day of judgment arrives – “confidence on the day of judgement” (NEB).
185 Grace Abounding, §§ 257, 258.
186 Cf. NEB: “fear brings with it the pains of judgement.” A verbal parallel to this clause is provided by Philo where, speaking of the effects of shame and fear in one who has broken the eighth commandment, he says, “Fear is a sign that he considers himself worthy of punishment (kolasis), because it is punishments (kolaseis) that (in prospect) instil fear” (Special Laws iv. 6).