1 John

1 John 4:17-21 | Bold Sons & Fearful Slaves

by Ben Zornes · Feb 16, 2023

17 In this is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgement; because as He is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love. 19 We love Him, because He first loved us. 20 If a man say, “I love God”, but hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? 21 And this is the commandment which we have from Him: he who loves God must also love his brother.
1 John 4:17-21

God dwelling with us, by the Spirit, and we dwelling in Him by the gracious love of Christ (v16) brings us to our designed end. This perfect love is a perfecting love. His perfect love works upon us to bring about in us the perfecting of our likeness to Christ. This chapter opened by describing the true test of union with God: belief & confession that Jesus is come in the flesh (4:2). John has shown that this faith brings us up into the great and wondrous love of God. This love grants us the boldness of sons (Cf. Heb. 10:19).

This boldness is set in the context of looming judgement. As an aside, I take this as a hint that this epistle was written before Jerusalem fell. Take that for what it is, free of charge. That said, notice that this boldness in the face of disastrous judgement is coupled with our union with Christ. He is victorious on high, and we are victors here below in Him.

And so, this love which flows from being bound fast to Christ casts out fear. The greek word for “cast out” is a vivid one. It carries the idea of throwing out dung/trash. A more folksy rendering might be ”Perfect love trashes fear.” The love which God has shown us in Christ brings us to treat our fear like rubbish to be tossed who cares where. Fear has torment. The idea here is the torment inflicted as punishment on slaves. One expositor put it wonderfully, “The portion of slaves is punishment (κόλασιν) and their spirit fear; the portion of sons is chastisement (παιδεία) and their spirit boldness (παρρησίαν).”^⁠1 Carrying a slavish fear reveals a deficiency in understanding the love which God has shown in Christ.

And so, to once more assure timid hearts, John gives one of the most savory lines in all the Bible. God’s love has come to us, before we ever loved Him or others. This is love which we did not earn by being loving or lovely ourselves. Love, rich and free.

Which leads to a warning and a practical application. The warning is in a familiar Johanine if/then. You can’t say you love God, and hate your brother. Pretending to be able to do so makes you a liar (Cf. 1 Jn. 1:6). John then kneecaps any gnostic notions of love. Love is personal. It isn’t just some grand, platonic idea. It is something between persons. We see this in the trinity (which John is about to describe in chapter 5), and if we love this God who loves us, our love will be embodied and relational, not imaginary and ethereal.

The practical application sews up a theme introduced back in chapter 2:7-11. The commandment which Christ gives His disciples is that if they love God, the must love their brother. This isn’t an option or a matter of preference. This whole argument (from 3:1) up to this passage has been helping us to see that God has lavished gracious love upon us, and this love brings us up into God’s life, and converts us into His likeness. This then can be seen in how we love one another. In the following chapter John will lay out as close to a systematic theology as we might find in Scripture (touching on the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, soteriology, ordo solutis, etc.). But notice that these deep oceans of doctrine are to be sailed in the vessel of the Father’s great love for us in Christ, which we partake in by the Spirit which dwells in us.

¹Smith, David. The Expositors Greek Testament. Edited by W. Robertson Nicoll. Vol. Five. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979. Pg 192

1 John 4:11-16 | The Offensive Love of God

by Ben Zornes · Feb 10, 2023

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, then we ought to love one another. 12 No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13 In this we know that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 And we have seen and bear witness that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him, and he in God. 16 And we know and believe the love that God has to us. God is love and he that dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.
1 John 4:11-16

While the Love of God has been explained, this passage is a bit of a hinge which turns to instances of how the Love of God is displayed in us. Here again is a familiar if/then statement. If God has loved you, then love one another.

Though God is invisible (Cf. 1 Tim. 1:17, Col. 1:15), we might be assured of His abiding with us as we love one another. This indeed is the perfecting of His love, that He might dwell with us, and put an end to Cain’s tradition of fratricide.

The invisible God is displayed in the midst of His people as they abide in love with one another. This can only be brought about by a new birth. As such, this is not a matter of UN councils decreeing peace and harmony. This is the work of the Spirit of God, taking out our heart of stone, and giving us a heart of flesh. It is by the Spirit washing us with clean water, whereby we might dwell together in love.

Indeed, this is what John explains in 4:13, loving one another is a proof that we partake of His Spirit. This is supernatural love. It is also propositional love. It is love founded on objective truths. It is the Incarnate Love that the Apostles witnessed in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is where progressive Christians, social gospelites, and “woke” evangelicals drift off into the swamps of error. They talk about following Jesus’ example of love. But here John puts front and center the offense of the Gospel of Jesus. First, John states that the Apostles bear witness to the Father’s purpose in sending the Son to save world, and that the saints partake of this by the Spirit. This is rock-ribbed trinitarianism. This of course makes Unitarians blush and modern heirs of Modalism get more flustered than a Gender Studies Professor trying to define what a woman is.

Secondly, John’s statement in 4:14 forces the issue that man needs salvation from his sinful nature and deeds. Jesus came to redeem us from sin. This confronts us with the question of what exactly our sin is. John has already explained how Christ’s Gospel sheds new light on the glory of Moses’ Law (1 Jn. 2:3-6). He’s told us that sin is breaking God’s law (1 Jn. 3:4). This means there is such a thing as sin, and it isn’t defined democratically.

Lastly, John’s assertion in 4:15 demands that only those who make a certain confession dwell in God. This is not mushy ecumenicism. Those who dwell in God, and in whom God dwells, are those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God. This is the narrow way (Mt. 7:14). This is the only way to the Father (Jn. 14:6). This rebukes all the notions of “many ways to God.”

Though this offends milquetoast religionists, for the Saints, this is once more bold statements of immense comfort and assurance. You dwell in God and God dwells in you if you confess that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the World. John also gives us a helpful diagram of evangelical faith: know, believe, confess.

This faith is grounded on the nature of God, who is Love. We know it, believe it, and confess it. God has begotten us, giving us His own nature of love; love towards Him and love towards our brother. You dwell in love, and this is because God dwells in you and you in Him. All because the Spirit has been poured out upon you by the free grace and favor of God.

The Supper & the Antichrist

by Ben Zornes · Feb 8, 2023

When you gather around this table with your brothers & sisters in Christ, you are coming to the end of the world. This is how the world will end. You in Christ & Christ in you. All the saints (of all time) gathered round in fellowship with the Triune God.

But from the days of the Apostles until now, this inevitable end has faced opposition. John reminds the early church that the antichrist had, even then, gone out into the world, along with a swarm of antichrist clones. Now, the term Antichrist, in modern evangelicalism, brings to mind a character in a black suit, slicked back hair, with a smarmy smile and all the credentials required to sit in the globalist halls of influence.

The term Antichrist, however, could also be rendered “rival christ.” And while that term suits any number of wicked men throughout history, it should instruct us as to how to think rightly about the world’s end. The Supper memorializes the true Christ. The Christ who was incarnate. The Christ slain by Pilate & the unbelieving Jews. The Christ who was crushed by the Father’s wrath in your stead. The Christ who rose again by the Father’s power, and by that same power raised you from your dead works to share in the eternal life which Christ won for you.

This meal nourishes your faith that in Him, and in no rival, is life. Life in its full potency. Life without end. And rival-christs despise this message and oppose it. They want to be their own savior, they want life on their terms, they don’t want to bend to Jesus of Nazareth. But this meal proclaims that all knees will one day bend. For Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, died in our stead, and rose again to eternally reign over this world.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

1 John 4:7-10 | God is Love

by Ben Zornes · Jan 5, 2023

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God 8 He that loves not, knows not God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested unto us because He sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son: the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:7-10

John’s thought now moves into an extended discussion of God’s love towards us, and its effects in us. The base confession that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh assists us in prioritizing our earthly loves. We are to overcome those who are “anti-Christ”, and this how we love our enemies (4:4). We don’t link arms with false teachers. Rather, we oppose them with the truth of God’s love to us in Christ’s Incarnation.

The Christian life is one that is begotten by God’s love. This makes us both partakers and distributors of God’s love. We love our enemies, and we do this by faithfully opposing their errors, in all gentleness, firmness, and humility. So we love those who are “without” in one way, but we ought to bear love towards those who are “within” the fellowship of God. Those born of Him, should love others who are born of Him. Thus John gives his famous command to “love one another”. Clearly, we must love those who share in the regenerating love of God.

But it is important to note that truly loving others is only possible through a new birth (v7). Those who love are born of God, and know God. From this, we should see the opposite is also true; those who do not love aren’t born of God nor do they know God (v8). While man is born with natural affections, it is the new birth through Christ which restores and rightly orders these loves.

But there is an important error that many people make with John’s famous line, “God is love.” They read it, and then immediately invert it to: “Love is God.” AW Tozer points out the folly of inverting John’s statement, “This is a great error. John was by those words stating a fact, but he was not offering a definition.”^⁠1 This line should be taken with John’s earlier statement that God is light (1:5). Love & light (i.e. wisdom) are communicable attributes of God, but they aren’t the definition of God. If we get that wrong we end up worshipping attributes of God, not God Himself.

All that being said, we must affirm that if God is the fount of true love, those whom He transforms by His love will bear this family resemblance. The light of God illuminates for us the Love of God. It is vital that we understand what love is in light of God’s truth, and we do this by looking at how God manifested His love (vv9-10). God loved us by sending (literally commissioning) His Son, in the flesh, to make a way for us to obtain Life. But the way in which Jesus brought us life was by His death.

God’s love was not content to simply overlook our sin. Rather, He made Christ the propitiation (the covering) for our sins. And here is one of the deepest doctrines of Scripture, which many have protested against. This love was shown to us not because we first showed love to God, but because He determined, by His sovereign grace, to shed His love upon us in Christ. You did not choose Him, but He chose you (Jn. 15:16). It wasn’t as if you loved Him enough so as to obligate God to love you. God’s love was freely given, through no deserving on your part.

In other words, the Love of God is no gentle kitten. It is not sentimentality. It is not warm fuzzies. Rather it is a bulwark of deliverance. It is a deep ocean of forgiveness. It is a heaven of undeserved favor. God’s Love, through Jesus Christ coming in the flesh to die in your stead, forms the basis for our love towards our brethren, and our love for our enemy.

This is a love that is true. Your sins were black as hell, but the light has come in Christ. This love of God did not redefine our sin. This Love was manifested in the flesh that He might die to cover our sins. This is a love that dies. This is a love that tells the truth. This is a love that has come that we might live.

Yes. God is Love. And John doesn’t leave us to erroneously invert that statement into a worship of the false goddess of love. He defines that Love. God’s Love had a name: Jesus. God’s Love died in our place, because our sins were like scarlet. God’s Love was Life, and now by Him we partake of that Eternal Life.

All this, we should bear in mind, was aiming to undermine the false teacher, Cerinthus, who taught that the Spirit came upon Jesus at His baptism, and left Him before the Passion. In other words, John insists that it was in the Incarnation and subsequent life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ where God’s love is imparted to us. And in no other way. In this was the Love of God displayed, and it alone.

William Gadsby’s wonderful hymn put’s it wonderfully:

His loving heart engaged to be
Their everlasting Surety;
’Twas love that took their cause in hand,
And love maintains it to the end.
Love cannot from its post withdraw;
Nor death, nor hell, nor sin, nor law,
Can turn the Surety’s heart away;
He’ll love his own to endless day.^⁠2

¹Tozer, A. W. Essay. In The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life, 97. San Francisco, Ca.: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

²Gadsby, William. “The Love of Christ Is Rich and Free.” Hymnary.org. Accessed January 5, 2023. https://hymnary.org/text/the_love_of_christ_is_rich_and_free.

1 John 4:4-6 | Overcoming Swarms of Devils

by Ben Zornes · Dec 6, 2022

4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is He that is in you then he that is in the world. 5 They are of the world: therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them. 6 [But] we are of God: he that knows God hears us; he that is not of God hears us not. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
1 John 4:4-6

Despite the fact that a swarm of devilish rival-christs, along with their fanboys have gone out into the world, this should be of no discouragement for the children of God. As God’s children, we share in His victory. It can be truly said that we overcome (2:13-14). The basis for our triumph is not in ourselves of course, but because God, the Greatest of all, has come to dwell in us by His Holy Spirit. He is greater than he that is in the world. As Watts put it wonderfully:

Shall persecution or distress
Famine or sword or nakedness,
He who hath loved us bears us through,
And makes us more than conquerors too.

The teaching of the false prophets of 4:1 is enlarged upon here in 4:5. They speak of––or perhaps a more vivid rendering would be “prattle on about”––the world. As one put it well, “The world listens to those who speak its own language.”^⁠1 Their nature is worldly, therefore the content of their message is worldly, and the world eats it up with a spoon. Itching ears want ticklish messaging (2 Tim. 4:3).

Worldliness is insanity. In its quest for transcendent glories it bypasses the glory of the Transcendent becoming Incarnate. It is the ultimate self-loathing. The gnostic denial of Jesus Christ coming in the flesh, lusting after secret knowledge, is a longing for “un-creation.” It is the insane desire to be “un-made”. In Jesus, God remade the world. Creation was not evil, it was fallen. In Jesus Christ, the world is saved (2:2). Creation is redeemed, restored, and God says, “It is good” once more. But only in Christ.

Therefore, those who adapt, mar, mangle, twist, torture, or otherwise change the Apostles’ witness regarding Jesus of Nazareth being the Eternal Christ in the flesh are not of God. This is line in the sand between truth and error. Do they affirm the Apostles’ Witness to Jesus Christ’s divinity and humanity? Their answer will tell you all you need to know. Those of God will affirm this fundamental Gospel creed. Those of the world will run headlong into the void. They have the spirit of error (literally delusion/deception).

One final comment is needed. If you hear the witness of God’s Word, you are of God. You cannot hear His voice, unless you have been given new ears by the Spirit of Truth. Once more, simple & straightforward assurance is given to us. If you know God, you will hear the Apostolic Gospel. If you don’t know God, you won’t endure the sound doctrine of Christ’s heralds.

¹Smith, David. The Expositors Greek Testament. Edited by W. Robertson Nicoll. Vol. Five. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979. Pg 190

1 John 4:1-3 | Stranger Danger

by Ben Zornes · Dec 2, 2022

1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 2 In this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. 3 But every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that antichrist that you have heard should come and even now is in the world already.
1 John 4:1-3

John moves on to addressing a question which his last statement (3:24) might raise. How do I know that it is indeed the Spirit of God which dwells in me? You know that you dwell in Christ by faith because Christ gives His Spirit to you. False prophets (the word here is literally pseudo-prophets) have gone out into the world, and those who heed such charlatans will be tempted to misgivings about whether they indeed have the Spirit of God dwelling in them. Beyond that, false teachers will endeavor to convince true saints that the real Spirit of God is over here, in this white, windowless van. John is giving the “stranger danger” talk to his beloved children.

So John tells us to prove the spirits. The word here is used elsewhere in Scripture and is used more broadly to describe the testing of a counterfeit coin against the genuine. It was not uncommon for ancient coinage to have bits shaved off in order to gradually produce more (but fraudulent) coins. John says to hold up an objective truth against a spirit and by this test determine whether it is the genuine Spirit of God, or the spirit of Antichrist.

That which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. Now this might seem overly simplistic, but here is the basic Christian confession: God became man, He was name Jesus, and He was the Christ who died, but by the power of God rose again. In other words, this “test” John gives is a proto-creed. Did the eternal Christ come in the flesh as the man Jesus of Nazareth? Yes. And this, it should be evident, is the Gospel Comfort which the Spirit of God takes from the Father and the Son and shows unto us (Cf. Jn. 16:13-15).

Therefore, it follows quite logically that the central lie of heresies is that Jesus Christ is not come in the flesh. In other words, antichrist spirits want to dodge and evade the plain testimony that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Put plain as day, it isn’t of God to deny the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Notably absent in much of the modern evangelical infatuation with “the Antichrist” is that it misses this central error of false prophets. It thinks of Antichrist as some political figure. But John tells us that this figure (which I take to be Cerinthus in particular) was already in the world, and that his teachings which denied the incarnation of Jesus Christ must be kicked to the doctrinal curb. This antichrist spirit was already in the air in John’s day, and we know the central error of that “hydra-like” doctrine.

The practical application here is that the Christian is not stuck in an endless esoteric guessing game. The Word, the same Word which made heaven and earth, came in the flesh. By faith, you partake of the triune God’s divine joy. Any imaginative gymnastics routine which tries to reject the Gospel that Jesus Christ came in the flesh (and by implication lived, died, and rose again for our salvation) can, not so politely, be told to touch grass.

1 John 3:23-24 | The Nail in Timidity’s Coffin

by Ben Zornes · Nov 23, 2022

23 And this is His commandment, That we should believe upon the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment. 24 And he that keeps His commandments dwells in Him, and He in him. Now hereby we know that He dwells in us, by the Spirit which He has given us.
1 John 3:23-24

As this line of argument comes to a close, John puts a nail in timidity’s coffin. Here is the command we are to keep. A command which is uncomfortably simple to both the self-righteous and the self-pitying. But this command is a deep comfort to the feeblest of saints: believe in Jesus, and love one another (v23); and then trust that you rest in Him as He abides in you.

John’s argument (in vv20-21) is a decision making flowchart of sorts. Does your heart condemn you? If, yes? God is greater than your heart. Now, in light of that, does your heart condemn you no more? Good, then say your prayers (v22).

To come to God in prayer is to come to Him by the Son, by the Intercessor. Only a fool would try to come before God in order to pull off a heist; as if he could dupe God by coming in any other way than by the Son. When God’s greatness is displayed in Jesus Christ manifested in the flesh, prayer becomes like the no-doubt 3-pointer. We pray “Thy Kingdom come”, and we are certain that near and far, in our heart and in our homes, from shore to shore Christ is King and shall be exalted in all the earth. Who could pray such a bold prayer unless that had certainty that the Father would hear & answer such prayers?

This might feel like a curious point that is being made. The text asserts (in v22) a certainty of receiving our requests, and it grounds this certainty in the fact that “we keep His commands, and do those things which are pleasing in His sight.” At first this sets us Protestants ill-at-ease. Sounds like works-righteousness. But this is to miss the simple point John is making. He answers this objection immediately in verses 23-24. God’s commandment is to believe in Jesus, and love the brethren. Once again it is made abundantly clear for even the feeblest saint, our confidence towards God is on the basis of faith in Christ alone. ”Faith alone” should be the key signature of our prayers.

Faith looks to Jesus. Assurance of grace flows from looking, it is not the prerequisite of the looking. Looking comes first, the seeing comes after. The effectual call of the Spirit begets the faith described in verse 23, giving us grace to respond to the Gospel call in true faith. This then leads to the assurance that we dwell in Christ, and therefore that the Spirit of Christ dwells in us.

In all of this, it should be kept in mind that the way to find assurance of grace is not to hunt after the assurance itself. As if it was left in some box down in the cellar. Rather, it is found by looking to Christ in faith. Believe on the name of God’s Son Jesus, and then love one another as He commanded. If you trust in Christ alone, and are eager to love those whom God has commanded you to love (both your brother and your enemy) this is, in part, the means which God has given of growing the grace of assurance in the heart.

« Previous Page