Chapter Four

Distinguishing marks of the Spirit from God and the spirit of antichrist (1–6). God’s love and love for God (7–10). Love for others (11–12). The obligation of Christians to love God and the brothers and sisters and to confess that Jesus is the Son of God (13–16). The perfection of Christian love in confidence on the day of judgment (17–18). The inseparable connection between love for God and love for others (19–21).

1 John 4:1. Beloved! do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have appeared in the world. Having mentioned (1 John 3:24) the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit, present in Christians, the Apostle now considers it necessary to warn his readers of possible danger from those who abuse these gifts. In the early Church there was an abundance of spiritual gifts, bestowed by the Holy Spirit for the benefit of the Church (1 Cor 7:7-11): teaching, prophecy, miraculous healings, speaking in tongues and others were manifestations of the Divine Spirit in believers. But alongside true inspiration from the Holy Spirit, with true teachers and miracle-workers, there appeared false inspiration from the spirit of darkness—the devil, false teachers animated by an anti-Christian spirit, who could easily seduce and lead astray the unstable members of the Christian community. Therefore, from such “spirits” or “false prophets” the Apostle John warns Christians—“adds a sign for distinguishing true brothers and others so that we, keeping this distinction in mind, in view of the commandment about love might not enter into close relations with false brothers, false apostles and false prophets and thereby not cause ourselves great harm. For if we have communion with them as equals, we will, first, harm ourselves, without hesitation sharing the teaching of faith with the impious and casting what is holy before dogs; then we will harm those entrusted to us. For our love for false brothers, false prophets and false apostles will dispose many to accept them as teachers and without caution believe their teaching, whereby they will fall into deception on account of our intercourse with them” (Theophylact).

1 John 4:2. By this you recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; 1 John 4:3. and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not from God, but this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and now is already in the world. The decisive sign of a true Christian prophet or teacher, the Apostle sets forth as the confession by him of the appearing of God in the flesh in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ: this is the fundamental dogma of Christianity, expressed in the prologue of John’s Gospel in the words: “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). On the contrary, the one who rejects this fundamental truth of the Incarnation thereby shows that he is not from God, but from the devil and antichrist: such were, for example, the Docetists mentioned by Irenaeus of Lyons, and probably also other similar false teachers of the same anti-Christian spirit. The antichrist in the strict and narrow sense has not yet come, but the spirit of antichrist is already working in many false teachers. “The Apostle states that antichrist is already in the world, namely, not personally, but in the persons of false prophets, false apostles and heretics, who precede and prepare his coming” (Theophylact). It is difficult to determine more precisely and closely what false teaching is being condemned, but in any case it is not the Gnostic heretical teachings of the second century, but false teachings of the first century that had not yet developed into a system.

1 John 4:4. Children! you are from God, and you have overcome them; because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 1 John 4:5. They are from the world; therefore they speak in a worldly way, and the world listens to them. 1 John 4:6. We are from God; the one who knows God listens to us; the one who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of deception. As encouragement and strengthening of the believers, the Apostle proclaims to them that the victory of the true Gospel teaching over false teaching is assured (compare below 1 John 5:4), since the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ dwelling in the faithful is immeasurably greater than the spirit of the will that operates in the world hostile to God in general, and especially in false teachers. This apostolic encouragement to believers fully corresponds to the saying of the Lord himself to the disciples in his farewell discourse: “take courage, for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and, like this promise of the Lord, it was powerful in bringing complete encouragement to the hearts of Christians. But the pastoral love and care of the Apostle is turned to the other side of the matter. The Apostle “gives them yet another sign for knowing false prophets, in the fact that it grieved many of the simple from among the faithful themselves. Some of them naturally could grieve, seeing that many receive those enthusiastically while they despise them. The Apostle says: do not grieve if many despise you but receive them, for like seeks like. They are from the world and speak of worldly things—that is, they teach fleshly desires, and so they have listeners like themselves—that is, the dissolute listen to the dissolute. And we, being from God and having departed from worldly lusts, become unpleasant to them. But the one who listens to us is the one who lives temperately and therefore knows God and is ready to listen to us” (Theophylact). In the last words of verse 6 the Apostle, summing up all that has been said about the discernment of spirits, “as if affixes a seal to what has been said” (Theophylact).

1 John 4:7. Beloved! let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. 1 John 4:8. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:9. The love of God toward us was revealed in this, that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, so that we might receive life through Him. 1 John 4:10. In this is love, that not we loved God, but He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Having unfolded the teaching about true confession of faith in the incarnate Son of God and indicated the source of this confession in God (1 John 4:2) in opposition to the false teaching of false prophets and antichrists, the Apostle now shows that the second half of God’s “commandment” (1 John 2:23)—love for others, the ability to love them—also comes from God. In clarifying the concept of love, the Apostle places it in connection with knowledge: just as the knowledge of something presupposes a certain kinship of the knower with the known, and the higher our disposition and interest in the object of knowledge, which is why the ancients said that the like is known by the like—so a similar phenomenon takes place in religious life and in religious knowledge. Here, wherever true love exists, it forms something that came to people from God; the one who loves—God has revealed himself to him, consequently, he knows God; reborn from God (1 John 2:29) and being a child of God (1 John 3:1); the lover knows God not only by faith but by immediate inner feeling. On the contrary, the one who does not love his neighbor, much more the one who is hostile to him (1 John 3:15), as a soulish person who does not understand what comes from the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:14), is inevitably estranged from a right knowledge of God—because “God is love” (verse 8). This is, without doubt, the most complete and the deepest definition of the moral nature of God, and theology has never been able to create a definition higher or more in accord with the Christian understanding of God’s moral being than this definition of the Apostle of love. Saint Gregory the Theologian says: “If anyone asked us: what do we honor and to what do we bow? The answer is ready: we honor love. For, according to the saying of the Holy Spirit, God is our love, and this name is more pleasing to God than any other name.” But in proclaiming the teaching about God as love, the Apostle deals not with an abstract doctrine but with an actual event of greatest world-historical importance: with the immeasurable in significance event of God’s sending his only Son into the world and the priceless goods of eternal life brought by him to earth (verse 9). In this precisely was revealed the unfathomable Love of God toward the world and humanity (verse 9; compare 1 John 3:16), and the special greatness of this love is seen in the fact that it was given to sinful people without any merit on their part, on the contrary, in the presence of grave and manifold guilt on their part before God (verse 10; see Rom 5:8). Thus the source of love lies not in humanity but in God. “Just as he is called good because by his goodness he created the spiritual and physical world, so out of love for us having sent his only Son into the world, he showed through this that he is also love” (Theophylact).

1 John 4:11. Beloved! if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. 1 John 4:12. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. If in this way love by its very nature comes from God and consequently our love is a flame from God’s divine flame; if through God’s love out of enemies we have become children of God, then to love our neighbors, even our enemies (compare Matt 18:33)—is our holiest duty (verse 11). Moreover, if love by its very nature is from God, then our love for others takes the place of our lack of direct vision of God. God is entirely inaccessible to sensory vision, and no one has ever seen God (verse 12, compare John 1:18) in his being (see 1 Tim 6:16); only in the future life will the righteous “see him as he is” (1 John 3:2; Matt 5:8). But if love for God is our foremost duty, then the possible communion we have with him is most completely reflected in our love for others: love for the brothers and sisters shows that God dwells in us, and the love of God in all its fullness and perfection has its dwelling in us (verse 12).

1 John 4:13. That we abide in Him and He in us we know from the fact that He has given us from His Spirit. 1 John 4:14. And we have seen and testify that the Father sent the Son as Savior of the world. The blessed closest communion of Christians with God, constituting the purpose of human life, is an actual fact verified by immediate Christian consciousness: the Christian is inwardly convinced of the reality of possessing him the gifts of the Holy Spirit (verse 13). But the root of both this blessed communion of ours with God and our love for others lies in the event of God sending his Son for the salvation of the world (verse 14, see verse 9), which the Apostle himself and other eyewitnesses of the incarnate Word testify to (compare 1 John 1:1). Theophylact gives such a paraphrase and such an interpretation of the Apostle’s words in verses 11–14: “Speaking of love for the brothers and sisters, the Apostle offered God as an example of love, who out of love for us gave his only Son to death. Another, having heard this, could ask: on what basis do you speak of invisible things? In answer to such a question he says: I myself say the same thing—that no one has ever seen God—but from love for one another we know that God is in us. And he says this rightly, because many invisible objects we know from their actions. For example, the soul no one has seen, but from actions and movements we are convinced that it is in us and acts. So also we know God’s love for us through a certain movement and action... And this divine man aptly proves from the action that God is in us. What is this action? Pure love toward our neighbors. It is the sign of our remaining in him and of his in us, and further because he gave us of his Spirit. For the pure begets the pure and spotless. And since through pure love we have communion with him, then we ourselves, having seen him in the flesh, know and testify that the Father sent him, the Savior of the world. So we ourselves have seen, and from the only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18), we have heard, and from the action—the mutual love—we know that God is in us and gave us his Spirit, and we have communion with him.”

1 John 4:15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 1 John 4:16. And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has toward us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. The inseparable connection between confession of faith in Christ and love for others, which the Apostle has already spoken of earlier (1 John 3:23), is now affirmed with special force, since our communion itself with God is placed in causal dependence on the confession of the Deity of Jesus Christ and his saving work (verse 15), and of course the accompanying deeds of love necessary for faith are presupposed (compare 1 John 4:12). Verse 16 sums up the content of the previous verses since 1 John 4:7-8, and the fundamental position of the Apostle’s whole discourse is repeated: “God is love” (compare 1 John 4:8). In summing up what has been said about the nature and source of Christian love, the Apostle at the same time gives a point of support here for the further unfolding of the true essence of love.

1 John 4:17. Love reaches perfection in us in this, that we have boldness in the day of judgment, because we conduct ourselves in this world as He does. 1 John 4:18. In love there is no fear; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. The one who fears is not perfected in love. The Apostle now clarifies the question: in what consists the highest degree of perfection of love uniting believers with God, and he resolves this question in the sense that the decisive sign of the perfection of love is the readiness of believers and lovers to appear fearlessly on the day of judgment before the awesome judgment seat of Christ—perfect love has “confidence” (1 John 2:28), that is, assurance and courage to be justified at the trial of Christ. For this to happen, however, “we” are required to “conduct ourselves in this world as he” (verse 17) did. “As he was without blemish in the world” and pure... so we shall be in God, and God in us. If he is the teacher and giver of our purity, then we should bear him in the world purely and without blemish... If we live thus, we will have confidence before him and will be free from all fear” (Theophylact). If the distinguishing sign of perfect love consists of “confidence,” then the feeling opposite to confidence—fear—should have no place not only in love itself but also in the sphere in which it operates: “there is no fear in love, but complete love casts out fear”—namely, slavish fear aroused by expectation of punishment and therefore containing torment; and “the one who fears is not mature in love” (verse 18). Based on the words of David: “fear the Lord, all his saints” (Ps 33:10), some will ask: how now can John say that complete love casts out fear? Can the saints of God be so imperfect in love that they are commanded to fear? We answer. There are two kinds of fear. One—initial, to which torment is mixed. A person who has done evil deeds approaches God with fear, and approaches in order not to be punished. This is the initial fear. The other fear is perfect. This fear is free from such fearfulness, which is why it is called pure and remaining forever (Ps 18:10). What then is this fear and why is it perfect? Because the one having it is completely carried away by love and in every way strives for nothing to be lacking that one intensely loving should do for the beloved” (Theophylact).

1 John 4:19. Let us love Him, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:20. Whoever says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, is a liar: for how can the one love God, whom he does not see, if he does not love his brother, whom he sees? 1 John 4:21. And we have this commandment from Him, that the one who loves God should also love his brother. Having removed the imperfection of love in the form of fear (1 John 4:18), the Apostle proceeds to the conclusion of his discourse about love for God and others in the mutual relations of these two aspects of love, with the indication of the necessity of basing love for others on love for God. The first object of a Christian’s love should be God (verse 19), he who through his love revealed before we knew him, and even when we were hostile to him (1 John 4:9-10), kindled in our soul the flame of true love. But the love of God, if it truly exists, must be reflected in human actions, and chiefly—in his love for others; the lack, and much more the complete absence, of love for others indicates necessarily and the lack of love for God, of love that is only imaginary—so that by love for others may be measured our love for God (verse 20). “Love obviously arises through interaction with one another; interaction presupposes that a person sees his brother and through interaction with him becomes even more attached to him by love, for vision very much draws toward love. If that is so, then whoever makes light of what draws much more toward love does not love the brother whom he saw, how can he be recognized as truthful when he says he loves God whom he did not see, who is neither in interaction with him nor perceived by any sense” (Theophylact). The Apostle concludes his discourse by pointing out that the close, inseparable connection of love for others with love for God constitutes a direct, positive commandment of God (the commandment of God), verse 21.