{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"1JN","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"1 John","commonName":"1 John","introduction":"AUTHORSHIP.--POLYCARP, the disciple of John [Epistle to the Philippians, 7], quotes Jo1 4:3. EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 3.39] says of PAPIAS, a hearer of John, and a friend of POLYCARP, \"He used testimonies from the First Epistle of John.\" IRENÆUS, according to EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 5.8], often quoted this Epistle. So in his work Against Heresies [3.15; 5, 8] he quotes from John by name, Jo1 2:18, &c.; and in [3.16,7], he quotes Jo1 4:1-3; Jo1 5:1, and Jo2 1:7-8. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA [Miscellanies, 2.66, p. 464] refers to Jo1 5:16, as in John's larger Epistle. See other quotations [Miscellanies, 3.32,42; 4.102]. TERTULLIAN [Against Marcion, 5.16] refers to Jo1 4:1, &c.; [Against Praxeas, 15], to Jo1 1:1. See his other quotations [Against Praxeas, 28; Against the Gnostics, 12]. CYPRIAN [Epistles, 28 (24)], quotes as John's, Jo1 2:3-4; and [On the Lord's Prayer, 5] quotes Jo1 2:15-17; and [On Works and Alms, 3], Jo1 1:8; and [On the Advantage of Patience, 2] quotes Jo1 2:6. MURATORI'S Fragment on the Canon of Scripture states, \"There are two of John (the Gospel and Epistle?) esteemed Catholic,\" and quotes Jo1 1:3. The Peschito Syriac contains it. ORIGEN (in EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 6.25]) speaks of the First Epistle as genuine, and \"probably the second and third, though all do not recognize the latter two\"; on the Gospel of John, [Commentary on John, 13.2], he quotes Jo1 1:5. DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA, ORIGEN'S scholar, cites the words of this Epistle as those of the Evangelist John. EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 3.24], says, John's first Epistle and Gospel are acknowledged without question by those of the present day, as well as by the ancients. So also JEROME [On Illustrious Men]. The opposition of COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES, in the sixth century, and that of MARCION because our Epistle was inconsistent with his views, are of no weight against such irrefragable testimony.\n\nThe internal evidence is equally strong. Neither the Gospel, nor this Epistle, can be pronounced an imitation; yet both, in style and modes of thought, are evidently of the same mind. The individual notices are not so numerous or obvious as in Paul's writings, as was to be expected in a Catholic Epistle; but such as there are accord with John's position. He implies his apostleship, and perhaps alludes to his Gospel, and the affectionate tie which bound him as an aged pastor to his spiritual \"children\"; and in Jo1 2:18-19; Jo1 4:1-3, he alludes to the false teachers as known to his readers; and in Jo1 5:21 he warns them against the idols of the surrounding world. It is no objection against its authenticity that the doctrine of the Word, or divine second Person, existing from everlasting, and in due time made flesh, appears in it, as also in the Gospel, as opposed to the heresy of the DocetÃ&brvbr in the second century, who denied that our Lord is come in the flesh, and maintained He came only in outward semblance; for the same doctrine appears in Col 1:15-18; Ti1 3:16; Heb 1:1-3; and the germs of Docetism, though not fully developed till the second century, were in existence in the first. The Spirit, presciently through John, puts the Church beforehand on its guard against the coming heresy.\n\nTO WHOM ADDRESSED.--AUGUSTINE [The Question of the Gospels, 2.39], says this Epistle was written to the Parthians. BEDE, in a prologue to the seven Catholic Epistles, says that ATHANASIUS attests the same. By the Parthians may be meant the Christians living beyond the Euphrates in the Parthian territory, outside the Roman empire, \"the Church at Babylon elected together with (you),\" the churches in the Ephesian region, the quarter to which Peter addressed his Epistles (Pe1 5:12). As Peter addressed the flock which John subsequently tended (and in which Paul had formerly ministered), so John, Peter's close companion after the ascension, addresses the flock among whom Peter had been when he wrote. Thus \"the elect lady\" (Jo2 1:1) answers \"to the Church elected together\" (Pe1 5:13). See further confirmation of this view in Introduction to Second John. It is not necessarily an objection to this view that John never is known to have personally ministered in the Parthian territory. For neither did Peter personally minister to the churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, though he wrote his Epistles to them. Moreover, in John's prolonged life, we cannot dogmatically assert that he did not visit the Parthian Christians, after Peter had ceased to minister to them, on the mere ground of absence of extant testimony to that effect. This is as probable a view as ALFORD'S, that in the passage of AUGUSTINE, \"to the Parthians,\" is to be altered by conjectural emendation; and that the Epistle is addressed to the churches at and around Ephesus, on the ground of the fatherly tone of affectionate address in it, implying his personal ministry among his readers. But his position, as probably the only surviving apostle, accords very well with his addressing, in a Catholic Epistle, a cycle of churches which he may not have specially ministered to in person, with affectionate fatherly counsel, by virtue of his general apostolic superintendence of all the churches.\n\nTIME AND PLACE OF WRITING.--This Epistle seems to have been written subsequently to his Gospel as it assumes the reader's acquaintance with the Gospel facts and Christ's speeches, and also with the special aspect of the incarnate Word, as God manifest in the flesh (Ti1 3:16), set forth more fully in his Gospel. The tone of address, as a father addressing his \"little children\" (the continually recurring term, Jo1 2:1, Jo1 2:12-13, Jo1 2:18, Jo1 2:28; Jo1 3:7, Jo1 3:18; Jo1 4:4; Jo1 5:21), accords with the view that this Epistle was written in John's old age, perhaps about A.D. 90. In Jo1 2:18, \"it is the last time,\" probably does not refer to any particular event (as the destruction of Jerusalem, which was now many years past) but refers to the nearness of the Lord's coming as proved by the rise of Antichristian teachers, the mark of the last time. It was the Spirit's purpose to keep the Church always expecting Christ as ready to come at any moment. The whole Christian age is the last time in the sense that no other dispensation is to arise till Christ comes. Compare \"these last days,\" Heb 1:2. Ephesus may be conjectured to be the place whence it was written. The controversial allusion to the germs of Gnostic heresy accord with Asia Minor being the place, and the last part of the apostolic age the time, of writing this Epistle.\n\nCONTENTS.--The leading subject of the whole is, fellowship with the Father and the Son (Jo1 1:3). Two principal divisions may be noted: (1) 1Jo. 1:5-2:28: the theme of this portion is stated at the outset, \"God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all\"; consequently, in order to have fellowship with Him, we must walk in light (Jo1 1:7); connected with which in the confession and subsequent forgiveness of our sins through Christ's propitiation and advocacy, without which forgiveness there could be no light or fellowship with God: a farther step in thus walking in the light is, positively keeping God's commandments, the sum of which is love, as opposed to hatred, the acme of disobedience to God's word: negatively, he exhorts them according to their several stages of spiritual growth, children, fathers, young men, in consonance with their privileges as forgiven, knowing the Father, and having overcome the wicked one, not to love the world, which is incompatible with the indwelling of the love of the Father, and to be on their guard against the Antichristian teachers already in the world, who were not of the Church, but of the world, against whom the true defense is, that his believing readers who have the anointing of God, should continue to abide in the Son and in the Father. (2) The second division (1Jo. 2:29-5:5) discusses the theme with which it opens, He is righteous; consequently (as in the first division), \"every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him.\" Sonship in us involves our purifying ourselves as He is pure, even as we hope to see, and therefore to be made like our Lord when He shall appear; in this second, as in the first division, both a positive and a negative side are presented of \"doing righteousness as He is righteous,\" involving a contrast between the children of God and the children of the devil. Hatred marks the latter; love, the former: this love gives assurance of acceptance with God for ourselves and our prayers, accompanied as they are (Jo1 3:23) with obedience to His great commandment, to \"believe on Jesus, and love one another\"; the seal (Jo1 3:24) of His dwelling in us and assuring our hearts, is the Spirit which He hath given us. In contrast to this (as in the first division), he warns against false spirits, the notes of which are, denial of Christ, and adherence to the world. Sonship, or birth of God, is then more fully described: its essential feature is unslavish, free love to God, because God first loved us, and gave His Son to die for us, and consequent love to the brethren, grounded on their being sons of God also like ourselves, and so victory over the world; this victory being gained only by the man who believes in Jesus as the Son of God. (3) The conclusion establishes this last central truth, on which rests our fellowship with God, Christ's having come by the water of baptism, the blood of atonement, and the witnessing Spirit, which is truth. As in the opening he rested this cardinal truth on the apostles' witness of the eye, the ear, and the touch, so now at the close he rests it on God's witness, which is accepted by the believer, in contrast with the unbeliever, who makes God a liar. Then follows his closing statement of his reason for writing (Jo1 5:13; compare the corresponding Jo1 1:4, at the beginning), namely, that believers in Christ the Son of God may know that they have (now already) eternal life (the source of \"joy,\" Jo1 1:4; compare similarly his object in writing the Gospel, Joh 20:31), and so have confidence as to their prayers being answered (corresponding to Jo1 3:22 in the second part); for instance, their intercessions for a sinning brother (unless his sin be a sin unto death). He closes with a brief summing up of the instruction of the Epistle, the high dignity, sanctity, and safety from evil of the children of God in contrast to the sinful world, and a warning against idolatry, literal and spiritual: \"Keep yourselves from idols.\"\n\nThough the Epistle is not directly polemical, the occasion which suggested his writing was probably the rise of Antichristian teachers; and, because he knew the spiritual character of the several classes whom he addresses, children, youths, fathers, he feels it necessary to write to confirm them in the faith and joyful fellowship of the Father and Son, and to assure them of the reality of the things they believe, that so they may have the full privileges of believing.\n\nSTYLE.--His peculiarity is fondness for aphorism and repetition. His tendency to repeat his own phrase, arises partly from the affectionate, hortatory character of the Epistle; partly, also, from its Hebraistic forms abounding in parallel clauses, as distinguished from the Grecian and more logical style of Paul; also, from his childlike simplicity of spirit, which, full of his one grand theme, repeats, and dwells on it with fond delight and enthusiasm. Moreover as ALFORD well says, the appearance of uniformity is often produced by want of deep enough exegesis to discover the real differences in passages which seem to express the same. Contemplative, rather than argumentative, he dwells more on the general, than on the particular, on the inner, than on the outer, Christian life. Certain fundamental truths he recurs to again and again, at one time enlarging on, and applying them, at another time repeating them in their condensed simplicity. The thoughts do not march onward by successive steps, as in the logical style of Paul, but rather in circle drawn round one central thought which he reiterates, ever reverting to it, and viewing it, now under its positive, now under its negative, aspect. Many terms which in the Gospel are given as Christ's, in the Epistle appear as the favorite expressions of John, naturally adopted from the Lord. Thus the contrasted terms, \"flesh\" and \"spirit,\" \"light\" and \"darkness,\" \"life\" and \"death,\" \"abide in Him\": fellowship with the Father and Son, and with one another,\" is a favorite phrase also, not found in the Gospel, but in Acts and Paul's Epistles. In him appears the harmonious union of opposites, adapting him for his high functions in the kingdom of God, contemplative repose of character, and at the same time ardent zeal, combined with burning, all-absorbing love: less adapted for active outward work, such as Paul's, than for spiritual service. He handles Christian verities not as abstract dogmas, but as living realities, personally enjoyed in fellowship with God in Christ, and with the brethren. Simple, and at the same time profound, his writing is in consonance with his spirit, unrhetorical and undialectic, gentle, consolatory, and loving: the reflection of the Spirit of Him on whose breast he lay at the last supper, and whose beloved disciple he was. EWALD in ALFORD, speaking of the \"unruffled and heavenly repose\" which characterizes this Epistle, says, \"It appears to be the tone, not so much of a father talking with his beloved children, as of a glorified saint addressing mankind from a higher world. Never in any writing has the doctrine of heavenly love--a love working in stillness, ever unwearied, never exhausted--so thoroughly approved itself as in this Epistle.\"\n\nJOHN'S PLACE IN THE BUILDING UP OF THE CHURCH.--As Peter founded and Paul propagated, so John completed the spiritual building. As the Old Testament puts prominently forward the fear of God, so John, the last writer of the New Testament, gives prominence to the love of God. Yet, as the Old Testament is not all limited to presenting the fear of God, but sets forth also His love, so John, as a representative of the New Testament, while breathing so continually the spirit of love, gives also the plainest and most awful warnings against sin, in accordance with his original character as Boanerges, \"son of thunder.\" His mother was Salome, mother of the sons of Zebedee, probably sister to Jesus' mother (compare Joh 19:25, \"His mother's sister,\" with Mat 27:56; Mar 15:40), so that he was cousin to our Lord; to his mother, under God, he may have owed his first serious impressions. Expecting as she did the Messianic kingdom in glory, as appears from her petition (Mat 20:20-23), she doubtless tried to fill his young and ardent mind with the same hope. NEANDER distinguishes three leading tendencies in the development of the Christian doctrine, the Pauline, the Jacobean (between which the Petrine forms an intermediate link), and the Johannean. John, in common with James, was less disposed to the intellectual and dialectic cast of thought which distinguishes Paul. He had not, like the apostle of the Gentiles, been brought to faith and peace through severe conflict; but, like James, had reached his Christian individuality through a quiet development: James, however, had passed through a moulding in Judaism previously, which, under the Spirit, caused him to present Christian truth in connection with the law, in so far as the latter in its spirit, though not letter, is permanent, and not abolished, but established under the Gospel. But John, from the first, had drawn his whole spiritual development from the personal view of Christ, the model man, and from intercourse with Him. Hence, in his writings, everything turns on one simple contrast: divine life in communion with Christ; death in separation from Him, as appears from his characteristic phrases, \"life, light, truth; death, darkness, lie.\" \"As James and Peter mark the gradual transition from spiritualized Judaism to the independent development of Christianity, and as Paul represents the independent development of Christianity in opposition to the Jewish standpoint, so the contemplative element of John reconciles the two, and forms the closing point in the training of the apostolic Church\" [NEANDER]. \n\n\n\nNext: 1 John Chapter 1\n\n","order":62,"numberOfChapters":5,"sha256":"1819ff9a13b86a0b99c6b3804bdbf97fa1c6e0e0a47e19960082f5017b0b7ce3","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1JN/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1JN","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":5,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1JN/5.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1JN","chapter":5},"totalNumberOfVerses":100},"chapter":{"number":4,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["Hereby--\"Herein.\" \n\nknow . . . the Spirit of God--whether he be, or not, in those teachers professing to be moved by Him. \n\nEvery spirit--that is, Every teacher claiming inspiration by the HOLY SPIRIT. \n\nconfesseth--The truth is taken for granted as established. Man is required to confess it, that is, in his teaching to profess it openly. \n\nJesus Christ is come in the flesh--a twofold truth confessed, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He is come (the Greek perfect tense implies not a mere past historical fact, as the aorist would, but also the present continuance of the fact and its blessed effects) in the flesh (\"clothed with flesh\": not with a mere seeming humanity, as the DocetÃ&brvbr afterwards taught: He therefore was, previously, something far above flesh). His flesh implies His death for us, for only by assuming flesh could He die (for as God He could not), Heb 2:9-10, Heb 2:14, Heb 2:16; and His death implies His LOVE for us (Joh 15:13). To deny the reality of His flesh is to deny His love, and so cast away the root which produces all true love on the believer's part (Jo1 4:9-11, Jo1 4:19). Rome, by the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, denies Christ's proper humanity.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh--IRENÆUS [3.8], LUCIFER, ORIGEN, on Mat 25:14, and Vulgate read, \"Every spirit which destroys (sets aside, or does away with) Jesus (Christ).\" CYPRIAN and POLYCARP support English Version text. The oldest extant manuscripts, which are, however, centuries after POLYCARP, read, \"Every spirit that confesseth not (that is, refuses to confess) Jesus\" (in His person, and all His offices and divinity), omitting \"is come in the flesh.\" \n\nye have heard--from your Christian teachers. \n\nalready is it in the world--in the person of the false prophets (Jo1 4:1).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["Ye--emphatical: YE who confess Jesus: in contrast to \"them,\" the false teachers. \n\novercome them-- (Jo1 5:4-5); instead of being \"overcome and brought into (spiritual) bondage\" by them (Pe2 2:19). Joh 10:8, Joh 10:5, \"the sheep did not hear them\": \"a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.\" \n\nhe that is in you--God, of whom ye are. \n\nhe that is in the word--the spirit of Antichrist, the devil, \"the prince of this world.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["of the world--They derive their spirit and teaching from the world, \"unregenerate human nature, ruled over and possessed by Satan, the prince of this world\" [ALFORD]. \n\nspeak they of the word--They draw the matter of their conversation from the life, opinions, and feelings of the world. \n\nthe world heareth them-- (Joh 15:18-19). The world loves its own.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["We--true teachers of Christ: in contrast to them. \n\nare of God--and therefore speak of God: in contrast to \"speak they of the world,\" Jo1 4:5. \n\nknoweth God--as his Father, being a child \"of God\" (Jo1 2:13-14). \n\nheareth us--Compare Joh 18:37, \"Every one that is of the truth, heareth My voice.\" \n\nHereby-- (Jo1 4:2-6); by their confessing, or not confessing, Jesus; by the kind of reception given them respectively by those who know God, and by those who are of the world and not of God. \n\nspirit of truth--the Spirit which comes from God and teaches truth. \n\nspirit of error--the spirit which comes from Satan and seduces into error.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["Resumption of the main theme (Jo1 2:29). Love, the sum of righteousness, is the test of our being born of God. Love flows from a sense of God's love to us: compare Jo1 4:9 with Jo1 3:16, which Jo1 4:9 resumes; and Jo1 4:13 with Jo1 3:24, which similarly Jo1 4:13 resumes. At the same time, Jo1 4:7-21 is connected with the immediately preceding context, Jo1 4:2 setting forth Christ's incarnation, the great proof of God's love (Jo1 4:10). \n\nBeloved--an address appropriate to his subject, \"love.\" \n\nlove--All love is from God as its fountain: especially that embodiment of love, God manifest in the flesh. The Father also is love (Jo1 4:8). The Holy Ghost sheds love as its first fruit abroad in the heart. \n\nknoweth God--spiritually, experimentally, and habitually.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["knoweth not--Greek aorist: not only knoweth not now, but never knew, has not once for all known God. \n\nGod is love--There is no Greek article to love, but to God; therefore we cannot translate, Love is God. God is fundamentally and essentially LOVE: not merely is loving, for then John's argument would not stand; for the conclusion from the premises then would be this, This man is not loving: God is loving; therefore he knoweth not God IN SO FAR AS GOD IS LOVING; still he might know Him in His other attributes. But when we take love as God's essence, the argument is sound: This man doth not love, and therefore knows not love: God is essentially love, therefore he knows not God.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["toward us--Greek, \"in our case.\" \n\nsent--Greek, \"hath sent.\" \n\ninto the world--a proof against Socinians, that the Son existed before He was \"sent into the world.\" Otherwise, too, He could not have been our life (Jo1 4:9), our \"propitiation\" (Jo1 4:10), or our \"Saviour\" (Jo1 4:14). It is the grand proof of God's love, His having sent \"His only-begotten Son, that we might live through Him,\" who is the Life, and who has redeemed our forfeited life; and it is also the grand motive to our mutual love.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["Herein is love--love in the abstract: love, in its highest ideal, is herein. The love was all on God's side, none on ours. \n\nnot that we loved God--though so altogether worthy of love. \n\nhe loved us--though so altogether unworthy of love. The Greek aorist expresses, Not that we did any act of love at any time to God, but that He did the act of love to us in sending Christ.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["God's love to us is the grand motive for our love to one another (Jo1 3:16). \n\nif--as we all admit as a fact. \n\nwe . . . also--as being 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, the children (by regeneration) of the same God, the representatives of the unseen God.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["God, whom no man hath seen at any time, hath appointed His children as the visible recipients of our outward kindness which flows from love to Himself, \"whom not having seen, we love,\" compare Notes, Jo1 4:11, Jo1 4:19-20. Thus Jo1 4:12 explains why, instead (in Jo1 4:11) of saying, \"If God so loved us, we ought also to love God,\" he said, \"We ought also to love one another.\" \n\nIf we love one another, God dwelleth in us--for God is love; and it must have been from Him dwelling in us that we drew the real love we bear to the brethren (Jo1 4:8, Jo1 4:16). John discusses this in Jo1 4:13-16. \n\nhis love--rather, \"the love of Him,\" that is, \"to Him\" (Jo1 2:5), evinced by our love to His representatives, our brethren. \n\nis perfected in us--John discusses this in Jo1 4:17-19. Compare Jo1 2:5, \"is perfected,\" that is, attains its proper maturity.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["Hereby--\"Herein.\" The token vouchsafed to us of God's dwelling (Greek, \"abide\") in us, though we see Him not, is this, that He hath given us \"of His Spirit\" (Jo1 3:24). Where the Spirit of God is, there God is. ONE Spirit dwells in the Church: each believer receives a measure \"of\" that Spirit in the proportion God thinks fit. Love is His first-fruit (Gal 5:22). In Jesus alone the Spirit dwelt without measure (Joh 3:34).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["And we--primarily, we apostles, Christ's appointed eye-witnesses to testify to the facts concerning Him. The internal evidence of the indwelling Spirit (Jo1 4:13) is corroborated by the external evidence of the eye-witnesses to the fact of the Father having \"sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world.\" \n\nseen--Greek, \"contemplated,\" \"attentively beheld\" (see on Jo1 1:1). \n\nsent--Greek, \"hath sent\": not an entirely past fact (aorist), but one of which the effects continue (perfect tense).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["shall confess--once for all: so the Greek aorist means. \n\nthat Jesus is the Son of God--and therefore \"the Saviour of the world\" (Jo1 4:14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["And we--John and his readers (not as Jo1 4:14, the apostles only). \n\nknown and believed--True faith, according to John, is a faith of knowledge and experience: true knowledge is a knowledge of faith [LUECKE]. \n\nto us--Greek, \"in our case\" (see on Jo1 4:9). \n\ndwelleth--Greek, \"abideth.\" Compare with this verse, Jo1 4:7.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["(Compare Jo1 3:19-21.) \n\nour love--rather as the Greek, \"LOVE (in the abstract, the principle of love [ALFORD]) is made perfect (in its relations) with us.\" Love dwelling in us advances to its consummation \"with us\" that is, as it is concerned with us: so Greek. Luk 1:58, \"showed mercy upon (literally, 'with') her\": Jo2 1:2, the truth \"shall be with us for ever.\" \n\nboldness--\"confidence\": the same Greek as Jo1 3:21, to which this passage is parallel. The opposite of \"fear,\" Jo1 4:18. Herein is our love perfected, namely, in God dwelling in us, and our dwelling in God (Jo1 4:16), involving as its result \"that we can have confidence (or boldness) in the day of judgment\" (so terrible to all other men, Act 24:25; Rom 2:16). \n\nbecause, &c.--The ground of our \"confidence\" is, \"because even as He (Christ) is, we also are in this world\" (and He will not, in that day, condemn those who are like Himself), that is, we are righteous as He is righteous, especially in respect to that which is the sum of righteousness, love (Jo1 3:14). Christ IS righteous, and love itself, in heaven: so are we, His members, who are still \"in this world.\" Our oneness with Him even now in His exalted position above (Eph 2:6), so that all that belongs to Him of righteousness, &c., belongs to us also by perfect imputation and progressive impartation, is the ground of our love being perfected so that we can have confidence in the day of judgment. We are in, not of, this world.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["Fear has no place in love. Bold confidence (Jo1 4:17), based on love, cannot coexist with fear. Love, which, when perfected, gives bold confidence, casts out fear (compare Heb 2:14-15). The design of Christ's propitiatory death was to deliver from this bondage of fear. \n\nbut--\"nay\" [ALFORD]. \n\nfear hath torment--Greek, \"punishment.\" Fear is always revolving in the mind the punishment deserved [ESTIUS]. Fear, by anticipating punishment (through consciousness of deserving it), has it even now, that is, the foretaste of it. Perfect love is incompatible with such a self-punishing fear. Godly fear of offending God is quite distinct from slavish fear of consciously deserved punishment. The latter fear is natural to us all until love casts it out. \"Men's states vary: one is without fear and love; another, with fear without love; another, with fear and love; another, without fear with love\" [BENGEL].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["him--omitted in the oldest manuscripts. Translate, We (emphatical: WE on our part) love (in general: love alike Him, and the brethren, and our fellow men), because He (emphatical: answering to \"we\"; because it was He who) first loved us in sending His Son (Greek aorist of a definite act at a point of time). He was the first to love us: this thought ought to create in us love casting out fear (Jo1 4:18).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["loveth not . . . brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen--It is easier for us, influenced as we are here by sense, to direct love towards one within the range of our senses than towards One unseen, appreciable only by faith. \"Nature is prior to grace; and we by nature love things seen, before we love things unseen\" [ESTIUS]. The eyes are our leaders in love. \"Seeing is an incentive to love\" [Å“CUMENIUS]. If we do not love the brethren, the visible representatives of God, how can we love God, the invisible One, whose children they are? The true ideal of man, lost in Adam, is realized in Christ, in whom God is revealed as He is, and man as he ought to be. Thus, by faith in Christ, we learn to love both the true God, and the true man, and so to love the brethren as bearing His image. \n\nhath seen--and continually sees.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["Besides the argument (Jo1 4:20) from the common feeling of men, he here adds a stronger one from God's express commandment (Mat 22:39). He who loves, will do what the object of his love wishes. \n\nhe who loveth God--he who wishes to be regarded by God as loving Him.\n\n\n\n\nNext: 1 John Chapter 5\n\n"]}],"introduction":"TESTS OF FALSE PROPHETS. LOVE, THE TEST OF BIRTH FROM GOD, AND THE NECESSARY FRUIT OF KNOWING HIS GREAT LOVE IN CHRIST TO US. (1Jo. 4:1-21)\n\nBeloved--the affectionate address wherewith he calls their attention, as to an important subject. \n\nevery spirit--which presents itself in the person of a prophet. The Spirit of truth, and the spirit of error, speak by men's spirits as their organs. There is but one Spirit of truth, and one spirit of Antichrist. \n\ntry--by the tests (Jo1 4:2-3). All believers are to do so: not merely ecclesiastics. Even an angel's message should be tested by the word of God: much more men's teachings, however holy the teachers may seem. \n\nbecause, &c.--the reason why we must \"try,\" or test the spirits. \n\nmany false prophets--not \"prophets\" in the sense \"foretellers,\" but organs of the spirit that inspires them, teaching accordingly either truth or error: \"many Antichrists.\" \n\nare gone out--as if from God. \n\ninto the world--said alike of good and bad prophets (Jo2 1:7). The world is easily seduced (Jo1 4:4-5).\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1JN/4.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1JN","chapter":4},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1JN/5.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1JN","chapter":5},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/1JN/3.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"1JN","chapter":3},"numberOfVerses":20}