Calvin

4:11

As we regard the love that has been so freely given to us, we ought to follow that example in giving freely of ourselves. Where this is done only for our own advantage, or in response to the goodness of friends, it remains self-love and no more. (Eph 5:2 - as Christ walked in love, so should we.)

4:12-4:13

Since no man can see God, and find therein his assurance, we are given to have faith and love as evidence to ourselves that He has called us as His children, and taken up His dwelling place in us. We cannot see Him, but in the love we show, we can see the evidence of His presence. God is love. If He abides in us we cannot but express the love that is His essence, thereby showing Him to be in us. Where love does not show, God is not. His love does not become perfect because it is in us. Rather its expression in us is perfected because He is there; His Spirit expressing Himself through us.

4:14

What could be seen of God was made visible to us in Christ. By faith, we accept the full truth of what was seen. Thus faith and love join to make visible to us by effect what we could not see directly. The sight which John refers to is not the mere having seen the man Jesus, but the comprehension of faith that recognizes in Jesus Christ the Savior, the Son of God.

4:15

By Christ we are united to God, and we cannot connect with Christ except God be in us. This twofold connectedness is the root of faith, without which confession of belief is empty hypocrisy. The confession of Jesus Christ involves the full acceptance and understanding of all He is - man, God, redeemer, friend, savior... "Faith in Christ makes God to dwell in men, and we are partakers of this grace; but as God is love, no one dwells in Him except he loves his brethren. Then love ought to reign in us, since God unites Himself to us."

4:16

Without faith, we cannot believe. God's love is found by us in Christ, who cannot be known with surety until we know ourselves to be adopted children by the grace of God. For this purpose is Christ ever manifest before us, that He may through Christ adopt us. Love and faith are connected powers in our life. The one cannot be without the other.

 

 

Matthew Henry

4:11-4:13

God's love for us ought to be an overwhelming argument for us to love those whom He so loves. (Mt 5:45 - God provides sun and rain to both the good and the bad, being indiscriminate in His love.) We should be likewise indiscriminate in loving all mankind. As God has shown a different love to His church, we too should have a greater love toward our brothers in Christ. Nobody has seen God, such a thing as His appearing has not compelled us to love properly. That He dwells in us, then is not obvious to the observer as He shows Himself. It remains for us to display the same type of love He has shown to evidence to ourselves and others that He is here. His actions on behalf of His children give us cause to love Him. As faith finds its perfection in works, so love finds its perfection in its operation. Thus, God's love is spoken of as perfected when it operates to make us after His own image - lovers after His own love. That this is the case - God dwelling in us - we are assured of by the Holy Spirit's own testimony to us. That the spirit we hear is He, is known by His attributes. (2Ti 1:7 - He is the spirit of power, zeal for God, love to God, and understanding of God, His religion, and His kingdom.)

4:14-4:16

This love we have is built on the foundations of faith. Faith in knowing Jesus to be the Son of God, and the Savior of the world. As the Son of God, He is God. As Savior, His office is to save us by His death, example, and intercession on our behalf. In being sent, His will and the will of the Father were joined in one accord. As eye-witnesses to the life, transfiguration, death, resurrection, and heavenly ascent of Christ; the apostle's assurance of His Godhood is unshakeable [and ought to provide a testimony equally unshakeable to us.] Such testimony as this could not be held within, but must be expressed. Those who confess Jesus to be the Son of God - as it is to be understood here - don't merely speak the words. Rather their hearts pump forth their confession, and their life acts also to profess their belief. (1Co 12:3 - The Holy Spirit will never cause one to curse Jesus, nor will the spirit of antichrist provoke one to heartfelt declaration of His Lordship.) By Christ's work on our behalf we have come to know God's love - the reality of it. All that our faith expresses is founded upon our realizing this love. (2Co 5:19 - in sending Christ as our Savior, God moved to reconcile us to Himself.) God's love is so boundless, so incomprehensible, that it considered and sent His Son to die for us as an expression of His great love for us. In Jesus' death on our behalf, God demonstrated and displayed His love not only to us, but to the heavens and to hell. It was and remains an undeniable act of limitless love. This love is indeed the foundation of the world, the heavens, and hell. The latter in that God's love must include Himself - His glory, His law, His government - being limitless, and so, must incorporate punishment of those who will not accept His offered redemption. Why? Because they despised the love he showed in His Son, they refused His proposals when He offered His love, and they did their utmost to make themselves unfit to be objects of delight to Him. Who loves has deep communion with the God of love, His image is impressed upon their spirit, to sanctify and seal them as God's own.

 

 

Adam Clarke

4:11

Whereas God had no reason to love us, we ought to love others with the same freedom. Where we love for God's sake, no failure on the part of the one loved will cause us to love them less.

4:12

We cannot see God (Jn 1:18 - no man has ever done so,) but where His love has been present and perfected in us, we can feel Him in our expressions of that love.

4:13

4:14

John bears witness with the fullest conviction - born of seeing Christ first-hand in the flesh - to the fact that the Father sent His Son as Savior of the world.

4:15

Confession of Jesus as the Son of God includes a true belief in all that Christ is, and as such includes a heart possessing His pardoning mercy, indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

 

 

Barnes

4:11

Whom God, who is exalted far above, has loved, we who are on their level ought also to love. Only by such love can we show His Spirit to be in us. Love seeks the happiness of all. Where God loved with no real causal reason on our part, we have more reason to do so. Unless we do so love, we have no evidence of being His children.

4:12

"We cannot become acquainted with Him by sight, but we may by love." What we cannot see directly, we can understand by effect. (Jn 1:18 - no man has or can see God.) The exercise of love is the effect by which we know Him to be dwelling within us. (Jn 14:23-24 - Those who love Christ keep His word [proof of love], and are promised the indwelling presence of the Father.) The perfection of God's love in us indicates that as His love develops in us, giving us the means to love; it cannot be considered fully developed if it stops at loving God and doesn't continue on to loving each other. Such a stunted love is still defective and incomplete. Complete and perfect love must needs spread out to encompass "all who come within its range." (Job 1:1 - Job was blameless - as close to perfection as any in Scripture. Phil 3:12 - Paul never claimed to have attained to perfection, only to pursue it diligently. Heb 2:10 - God completed or perfected His Son for His role as Savior through suffering. Without that suffering, He could not completely understand us.)

4:13

That He is in us can also be known to us by the presence of the fruits (Gal 5:22-23 - love, joy, peace, etc, are all fruits and evidences of the Spirit. Jn 14:16-17 - The Spirit was sent at Jesus request, Jn 14:26 - to teach us truth and remind us of Christ's own teachings, Jn 15:26 - and to testify of Christ. Jn 16:7 - This He did for our advantage. Ro 8:16 - This same Holy Spirit testifies to us that we are indeed God's children.)

4:14

John had physically seen the manifest evidence of God's great love for mankind, the clearest demonstration of love ever to occur. (Jn 20:31 - his great hope is that those who hear his testimony might believe and thus have life.)

4:15

Heartfelt confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world will always serve to prove a man Christian. It cannot be considered sufficient to 'say the words.' (Ro 10:10 - belief resides in the heart. The mouth can only speak out what the heart knows.)

 

 

Wycliffe

4:11-4:12

We have a moral obligation to love one another because of God's love for us. Since God (who is love) cannot be seen, it is up to us to show Him by family resemblance in our love for others. If "His love" is God's love for us, it is perfected inasmuch as it accomplishes its full purpose in teaching us to love one another. If it is our love for God, it is perfected as mature in our love for our brethren.

4:13-4:15

God has given us evidence of His presence by way of the Holy Spirit within us. This is not a piece of the Trinity, but the acting of His gifts in us [?!?]. Confession of the Son of God implies both agreement with Him, and surrender and obedience to Him.

4:16

"Love becomes a force working in us."

 

 

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

4:11

It is understood that God's love towards us is the prime motivator of our love for each other, because we are His children and ought to carry a family resemblance.

4:12

Since we cannot see God, He provides our brothers in Christ to be the visible recipients of that love we have for Him. (1Pe 1:8 - we love God in spite of our not being able to see Him.) Since God is love, we cannot love except God give us love to show to our brethren. Our love of Him is perfected in maturity as we love those He has given us to love.

4:13

To assure us of His abiding in us - whom we cannot see, He has given us the presence of His Holy Spirit. Where the Spirit is, God is, for there is one God. Each believer receives of the Spirit what God sees fit to give (1Co 12:11 - The Holy Spirit distributes His gifts to the body as He sees fit. Gal 5:22 - Love is the primary fruit of the Spirit. Jn 3:34 - Jesus speaks God's words, for God has given Him the Spirit without measure.) In this last, the present commentary sees Jesus as the recipient of the Spirit, not its distributor. The wording isn't overly clear, but I can see the sense of it. The point being made is that only in Jesus is the Spirit measureless, we of His body receive only a portion.

4:14

In those eye-witnesses that Christ appointed, the inward testimony of the Spirit is confirmed by that outward evidence they witnessed; namely the life, glorification, death, and resurrection of Jesus. What they 'attentively beheld' they were sent with continuing effect to testify.

4:15

The confession is once for all that Jesus is the Son of God, and therefor the Savior of the world.

4:16

"We" now expands to include all believers in having faith and true knowledge of His love for them; that He abides with them.

 

 

New Thoughts

A "moral obligation!" And a display of God to all creation from heaven to hell and all in between. What an awesome calling on our lives! There's that verse about God having prepared these good works in advance for us to do. Here's the foremost of those works: to make God real to those around us who - like us - cannot see Him. To be the evidence of His existence. This is our purpose. This is awesome! Lord, make us able. Give us to allow Your Spirit to work Your will in us Help us to evidence Your presence by the fruits You produce in our lives. Help us to take our confidence from that confident testimony the apostles gave. Give to us that same unshakeable knowledge and faith. Provide to our souls the testimony of Your love showing through us, of a bold willingness to speak out of Your reality, of walking in the ways You teach. Lord, I fall so often I fear to shame Your name by admitting to being in Your keeping. Help me to overcome this. Keep me, Oh God, from stumbling in Your ways. Burn from me the anger, the frustration, the foulness that work to mar Your testimony in me. Purify my heart, Lord, that I may bear proud witness of the work You have accomplished. Change me, Lord, that those who know me must recognize Your hand in the difference. Make of this accursed temper a blessing, as it succumbs to Your ministrations.