1 John 4:13-16

1 John 4:13-16. Remembering that this whole section has to do with faith in Jesus as the root of brotherly love, we need not be surprised that the apostle goes back to the introductory words of it. Those words, however, are amplified, as usual: the gift of the Spirit is the seal and assurance that we abide in him and he in us: our being in Him and His being in us are, so to speak, convertible terms: the Holy Ghost being the common term, common to Him and us. God the invisible is seen and known only by the Spirit's indwelling. But He abides in us as the seal of a great truth confessed. Hence the apostle, before proceeding, pays his homage again to that truth, his own and his fellow-apostle's: And we have beheld in His Son the Invisible God ‘whom no man hath beheld at any time,' and bear witness that the Father hath sent the Son, the Saviour of the world: the apostolic beholding is followed by their special witness; and this, again, by the confession of the whole Church. Here St. John returns back to the Father and the Son of the earlier Chapter s, and adds what occurs only here as a confession of faith that Jesus is the Saviour of the world: as in chap. 1 John 2:3, so here it is remarkable as introduced in the midst of a special reference to the benefit of believers.

Whosoever has confessed that Jesus is the Son of God this shows that the leading theme of 1 John 4:2 is still in the mind of the apostle,

God abideth in him, and he in God: the indwelling is individual as well as mutual, and answers to the ‘no man hath seen' and every man who ‘keepeth His commandments abideth in Him and He in him' (chap. 1 John 3:24); the commandments were faith in Jesus or confession of Him and love: the former is in this verse connected with the abiding, in the next verse the latter. But, instead of proceeding immediately to the love of our obedience, St. John once more as if never weary of it pays his tribute to the love of redemption.

And we have known and believed: this of all believers, answering to ‘And we have beheld and bear witness' of the apostles. At the basis of the apostolical announcement are beholding and bearing testimony: at the basis of the Church's confession for the apostle joins the Church in confessing what he had witnessed to the Church are knowing and believing, which in its proper order is, according to John 6:69, believing and knowing: abiding faith confirmed in abiding experience. Once more God is love: the sublimity of this repetition is inexpressible; and the clause that follows is answerable. In the former case, believers received ‘out of' His fulness love; now the believer that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. The triple repetition of ‘abideth' speaks for itself: the love which God hath in as must have its full meaning; and the sentence as it stands carries the privilege of fellowship with God to its highest point; there is nothing beyond it, scarcely anything equal to it, in all revelation. It leads at once to the word perfection.