भाष्य सध्या फक्त इंग्रजीत उपलब्ध आहे. मराठी भाषांतर प्रगतीपथावर आहे.
1 John 4 — God Is Love
The apostle of love writes the chapter every believer eventually returns to. Test the spirits — not every voice claiming the name of God is from Him. But where you find love, you find the very nature of God Himself. God is love, and the proof is the cross.
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
— 1 John 4:10
- v.1-6 Test the spirits — confess Jesus come in the flesh
- v.7-12 Love one another — God is love
- v.13-16 We have known and believed
- v.17-19 Perfect love casteth out fear
- v.20-21 You cannot love God whom you have not seen and hate your brother whom you have
The test is incarnational. Any spirit that denies the true humanity of Christ, or the deity, is not from God.
The denial John combated was an early Gnosticism that held flesh to be inherently evil — and therefore Christ could not have truly become flesh. John's answer is blunt: He did. Anyone who denies it is not from God.
Love is not generated by human effort. It is sourced in God. Those who love do so because they have been born of Him.
"Knoweth God" — to know God is to love. The two cannot be separated. A loveless theology is not knowledge of God, no matter how technically correct.
"God is love" — three of the most quoted words in Scripture. But notice the context. This is not sentimental. It defines love and identifies its source.
Reverse it carefully — "love is God" is false. Many false religions stop there. God is love is true; love is God is idolatry.
The verse begins with a warning: he that loveth not has no knowledge of God. The two stand or fall together.
The definition of love. Not human reaching toward God, but God reaching toward humans.
"Propitiation" — Greek hilasmos, the satisfaction of righteous wrath. Christ's death did not merely demonstrate love; it accomplished a legal and moral transaction. The wrath of God against sin was satisfied in the substitute.
Strip propitiation from the gospel and "God is love" becomes sentiment. Keep it, and you have the deepest love story in the universe.
"Known and believed" — two verbs. Knowledge of God's love must be received as personal trust, not just theological information.
Mutual indwelling — the believer dwells in God, and God in the believer. This is John's great theme (John 15; 1 John 3:24; 4:13).
Two opposing forces in the soul. Where love grows, fear shrinks. Where fear dominates, love is suspect.
"Fear hath torment" — fear is its own punishment. The fearful are already paying interest on a debt that may never come due.
This is not the fear of the Lord (which is wisdom, Proverbs 9:10) — that fear and love are not opposed. This is the dread of judgment, removed by the assurance of God's love.
Eight words containing the whole order of salvation. Our love is response, never initiative. God's love is the original.
Reverse this and Christianity becomes performance. Keep it and Christianity becomes worship.
John's test is brutal. Hatred of the visible brother proves the absence of love for the invisible God.
A man cannot love God and hate God's image-bearers. The two cancel. Love for God is impossible without love for those He made.
When you doubt God's love, do not go to your feelings. Go to the cross. 1 John 4:10 will outlast any season of feeling because it points to a finished act in history. He has already loved you. The cross is the receipt.
Christ is the propitiation of v.10 — the one in whom God's love and God's justice meet. The cross is not God's love overriding His holiness; it is His love satisfying His holiness on our behalf. To say "God is love" and not point to Calvary is to say words without meaning. The cross is where the sentence is defined.
"Beloved" — the apostle's favorite term of address. He writes from love, even when issuing warnings.
"Believe not every spirit" — discernment is required even within Christian circles. Spiritual experiences and spiritual teachers must be tested.
"Try the spirits" — there is a test, given in v.2-3. It is doctrinal: what do they confess about Jesus?