At no point is the contrast between one of John’s tests and its opposite more important for contemporary men and women than the contrast between love and hate. This is so simply because the meaning of love has become so debased in modern culture that practically anyone will claim to have love according to his own definition.
Just as jealousy and hatred in a life indicate that the person involved is of the world and not of the family of God, so also do love and self-sacrifice indicate that such a one has passed out of the world and into God’s family. John therefore turns to an analysis of Christian love, elaborating his statements over against the background of the world’s hatred and murderous designs. In this section he restates and elaborates upon the social test itself, digs deeper into love’s essential nature, and finally suggests two ways in which Christians may show love practically.
Here the continuing contrast between Cain the murderer and Christ the Savior is seen in sharpest focus. Life is the most precious possession anyone has. Cain showed his hate by killing righteous Abel. Jesus revealed His love by sacrificing His own life for those foul creatures of sin He chose to make His brethren.
A second area in which self-sacrifice must be practiced is in the Christian home, particularly in love between a husband and wife. Today’s culture glorifies self-satisfaction. It teaches that if one is not personally and fully gratified in marriage, one has a right to break it off, whatever the cost to the other spouse or to the children. But this is not God’s teaching. God teaches that we must die to self in order that the other person might be fulfilled, for it is only as that happens that we will find the fullness of God’s blessing and personal satisfaction.
To this point much of John’s letter has been given over to developing the three tests by which a person who has become a child of God may know that he truly is a child of God. They are: the moral test, which is righteousness; the social test, which is love; and the doctrinal test, which is the test of truth or of belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as God incarnate. The tests have been developed one by one, but it has been obvious even as John talks about them that they belong together and that each is important.
John begins with a passionate exhortation to his readers to “love one another,” a phrase which is repeated three times in verses 7, 11, and 12. This is his great concern, and the reasons for that concern are given in connection with this threefold repetition. The first reason is that love is of God’s own nature; therefore, Christians are to “love one another.” The second reason concerns God’s gift in Christ; therefore, Christians are to “love one another.” The third reason is God’s present activity in and through His people; for this reason, too, Christians are to “love one another.”
The fact that the Trinity is involved in these statements leads naturally to the second of John’s reasons why Christians must love other Christians. The second reason is God’s gift of Jesus Christ His Son for our salvation.
Yesterday, we concluded by speaking of the first two factors that enable us to measure God’s great love for us in Christ. The final factor is that God gave His Son to die for sinners. As John says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (v. 10).
There are three reasons why Christians are to love one another: first, because God is love and we are of God; second, because God loved us in Christ and so revealed His love to us; and third, because God is at work in us by His Spirit to bring that love to completion.
In the last verse of the preceding section John has concluded that if we love one another, two things may be said to follow: first, that God abides in us, and second, that God’s love is perfected in us. These two conclusions give the outline for the next two sections of this chapter. In the first section (vv. 13-16) God’s indwelling of the Christian is discussed in greater detail; in the second (vv. 17-21) the perfection of love is analyzed.
The confession of Christ is mentioned as the first evidence of the Spirit’s activity because it is at the point of confession that the Christian life may properly be said to begin. “And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (vv. 14-15). Once again, as in numerous spots throughout the letter, John phrases his confession of Christ in words which would be especially challenging to those faced with the Gnostic heresies. He emphasizes that God the Father sent the eternal Son to be the Savior and that the historical Jesus is that eternal Son.
In verses 13-16 John has developed the first of two ideas introduced for the first time in verse 12, the indwelling of the Christian by God. Now he returns to the second of those two ideas, the perfection of love, and explains what he means practically.
The sinner must begin by fearing the God against whom he has sinned; but, having believed in Christ who has atoned for sin, he may put away fear and grow in confidence before Him.
The second area in which love finds perfection is in reference to our love for the brethren; for it is there, according to John, that real love is to be seen and measured.
At the end of the preceding chapter John has spoken quite sharply about the need to love, saying, “If a man says, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?” But it is entirely possible that a person might try to escape this demand by asking, “And who is my brother? Just whom precisely am I to love?”
In John’s understanding, the potential child of God is first made alive by God, as a result of which he comes to believe on Christ, pursue righteousness, and love the brethren.
When a birth takes place the individual involved is not born into isolation, nor is he a totally unique individual in the sense that his characteristics and attributes have no connection with those who have gone before. For one thing, he is born into a family and into family relations. For another, he possesses at least some of the characteristics of the one who has engendered him. Spiritually, this means that the child of God exhibits those characteristics about which the letter has been teaching.
The second thing that John is probably thinking of is suggested by this passage. Here he is writing of the new life which Christians have from God and of the resulting love which they bear to Him. Without this life and love the commands of God, even in the form in which Christ gave them, could be burdensome. But now, the life of God within makes obedience to the commands possible, and the love which the Christian has for God and for other Christians makes this obedience desirable.
The third of John’s tests is expressed in these verses as belief. Indeed, it is with this concept that the section both begins and ends (vv. 1, 5); between belief that “Jesus is the Christ” and belief that “Jesus is the Son of God” is found John’s discussion of both love and obedience. The implication is that, just as it is impossible to have love without obedience or obedience without love, so also is it impossible to have either love or obedience without belief in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.
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