1 John 4:11

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. God's love to us the grand motive for love to one another (). IF - as we all admit. WE OUGHT ALSO - as born of God, and therefore resembling our Father, who is love. In proportion as we appreciate God's love to us, we love Him and also the brethren, children (by regeneration) of the same Father, representatives of the unseen God....

11_Beloved _Now the Almighty accommodates to his own purpose what he has just taught us respecting the love of God; for he exhorts us by God’s example to brotherly love; as also Paul sets before us Christ, who offered himself to the Father a sacrifice of pleasant fragrance, that every one of us might labor to benefit his neighbors. (Ephesians 5:2.) And John reminds us, that our love ought not to be mercenary, when he bids us to love our neighbors as God has loved us; for we ought to remember this, that we have been loved freely. And doubtless when we regard our own advantage, or return good offices to friends, it is self-love, and not love to others....

7-13 The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love. He that does not love the image of God in his people, has no saving knowledge of God. For it is God's nature to be kind, and to give happiness. The law of God is love; and all would have been perfectly happy, had all obeyed it. The provision of the gospel, for the forgiveness of sin, and the salvation of sinners, consistently with God's glory and justice, shows that God is love. Mystery and darkness rest upon many things yet. God has so shown himself to be love, that we cannot come short of eternal happiness, unless through unbelief and impenitence, although strict justice would condemn us to hopeless misery, because we break our Creator's laws. None of our words or thoughts can do justice to the free, astonishing love of a holy God towards sinners, who could not profit or harm him, whom he might justly crush in a moment, and whose deserving...

Verse 11. _IF GOD SO LOVED US_] Without any reason or consideration on our part, and without any _desert_ in us; _we ought_ _also_, in like manner, _to love one another_, and not suspend our love to a fellow-creature, either on his _moral worth_ or his _love_ _to us_. We should love one another for _God's sake_; and then, no unkind carriage of a brother would induce us to withdraw our love from him; for if it have GOD for its _motive_ and _model_, it will _never fail_....

BELOVED, IF GOD SO LOVED US, WE OUGHT ALSO TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER - * Because he is so much exalted above us, and if he has loved those who were so inferior and so unworthy, we ought to love those who are on a level with us; (2)Because it is only in this way that we can show that we have his Spirit; and, (3)Because it is the nature of love to seek the happiness of all. There are much stronger reasons why we should love one another than there were why God should love us; and unless we do this, we can have no evidence that we are his children....

EXPOSITION 1 JOHN 4:1 - 1 JOHN 5:12 (2) _The source of son-ship. _Possession of the Spirit. 1 JOHN 4:1 Confession of the Incarnation is the assurance that the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of truth, is working in us, and not the spirit of error. The passage seems clearly to teach that there are two rival influences contending for power over the spirits of men. We must test men's spirits to see whether they are organs of the Spirit of truth or of the spirit of error. 1 JOHN 4:1 BELOVED (as in...

BELOVED, IF GOD SO LOVED US,.... As to send his Son to be a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, and to obtain eternal life for us through his sufferings and death: the apostle uses the same language his Lord and master did, John 3:16; WE OUGHT ALSO TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER; for those who are the objects of God's love ought to be the objects of ours; and if God has loved our fellow Christians and brethren to such a degree, as to send his Son to die for them, we ought to love them too; and if we are interested in the same love, the obligation is still the greater; and if God loved them with so great a love, when they did not love him, but were enemies to him, then surely we ought to love them now they are become the friends of God, and ours also; as God loved them freely, and when unlovely, and us likewise in the same manner, and under the same circumstances, then we ought to love, an

1 John 4:1. _Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world._ If John had need to say that in the early morning of Christianity, I am sure we ought to say it with greater emphasis today. It is certainly true in these days that «many false prophets are gone out into the world,» therefore we also must «try the spirits whether they are of God.» 1 John 4:2. _Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:_ If the doctrine of the incarnation of God in Christ is denied, as it was by the first heretics, we may conclude that the Spirit of God is not in such teaching. Any doctrine which dishonours Christ,-whether in his person, or his

V. HEREBY WE KNOW Chapter S 3:19-5:13 _ 1. Hereby we know that we are of the truth (1 John 3:19)_ 2. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God (1 John 4:1) 3. Hereby know we the Spirit of truth and of error (1 John 4:5) 4. The Love manifested toward us (1 John 4:7) 5. The final tests as to the possession of eternal life (1 John 4:20; 1 John 5:1) 1 John 3:19 .

John returns to the theme of 1 John 3:14 ff., be cause if the Church is the home of truth, still more is it the home of love. The evidence for our Divine sonship is that the love manifested by God in sending His Son for our redemption a fact to which the Church bears witness issues in love on our part to God and to our brethren; love, when mature, casts out fear. Moreover the proof that we love the unseen God is that we love our brother, as Christ commanded us. 1 JOHN 4:7. LOVE IS OF GOD: _ i.e._ is so peculiarly His product, answering to the deepest thing in His nature, that the lack of love proves that we have no real knowledge of God or kinship to Him. 1 John 4:9. that we might live through Him: cf....