Summary of passage: 1 John 4:7-21: God is love and showed it to us by sending His Son so that we may live. We ought to love one another. If you love, you know God. If you acknowledge Jesus and God’s Son, then God lives in you. You should have no fear.
1 John 5: To love God is to obey His commands. Only those who believe Jesus is the Son of God will overcome this world and have eternal life. The Spirit, the water (baptism), and the blood all testify the truth. If we ask anything according to his will, God hears us and will answer us. We are born of God. He keeps us safe from the evil one. We are God’s children. Jesus gives us understanding. Stay with the truth.
Questions:
12) Part personal Question. My answer: He sent His Son to dies for us so that we might live. He has given us the Holy Spirit as a guide. He has taken away our fear. I am more loving towards others and compassionate. Love overflows from God’s love.
13a) We have eternal life through faith in Jesus. We do not continue to sin as the Holy Spirit is our guide.
b) We do not continue to sin and are kept safe from the evil one. We are God’s children. Christ gives us understanding so that we may know the truth.
Conclusions: John repeats himself here, summing up what he just said and what’s most important: loving God and others and obeying his commands. Jesus’ baptism, death, and Spirit testify to who he is and are a gift from God to us.
End Notes: 1 John 4: We love one another because and only because we are loved by God. Otherwise, we’d all hate each other. Man is still capable of love because we are made in God’s image. But it’s imperfect and messy like man. The Greek says is best: agapetoi agapomen, “those who are loved, let us love.”
When you are born of God, you have a love you didn’t have before, one you weren’t capable of. Because it’s God’s love, not man’s, which is non-existent without God.
This is the agape love, the love without expecting anything in return. If we want to love one another more, we need to draw closer to God. Love is a triangle with God at the apex.
God does everything out of love. He’s righteous and holy and just because He loves us. He is incapable of hating.
Love is also the giving of the Father as much as it is the sacrifice of the Son. This should read only begotten Son, indicating God and the Son are of the same substance or being.
The love of the Father takes away our sin and allows us to live. Both are important for we still deserve death but God wants us with Him.
His love for us initiates our relationship of love with Him, our love only responds to His love for us. We can’t love God the way we should unless we are receiving and living in His love.
Love is the constant. Wherever there is love, there is God. This is our evidence since we cannot see God that He exists and is working in our lives. However, God is also spirit (John 3:24), light (1 John 1:5), righteous (1 John 2:29; 3:7), holy (1 John 2:20), powerful or great (1 John 4:4), faithful (1 John 1:9), true (1 John 5:20), and just (1 John 1:9).
We know (not hope) that Jesus is in us (through the Holy Spirit) and we are in him (giving us this knowledge is the Holy Spirit).
“We” are the disciples and the eyewitnesses. Believers must acknowledge of confess that Jesus is the Son and believe God loves them even when they don’t feel His love. God’s love will be complete on the day of Judgment.
Fear here is not the fear of God of his awesomeness but the fear that robs us of having a life full of peace in Him. We should not fear judgment when Christ has taken it all on him.
“We love because he first loved us.” We love God and Christ. God has always loved us since before time. Our love for God is always in response to His love for us; He initiates, and we respond. We never have to draw God to us; instead, He draws us to Himself.
Loving others is a choice and that is why it is a command from God. We must choose to love others even when it’s not easy; otherwise, God is not in us if not. To love God more is to love others more. If you want to love God move, love fellow Christians more.
1 John 5: John wants to make sure you understand that you don’t earn salvation by loving others. You trust in Jesus and his atoning sacrifice on the cross to earn salvation.
Our love and obedience to God is a demonstration of love to the body of Christ. Love for God will show itself in obedience. Commandments are gifts from God to show us the most fulfilling life possible. The Holy Spirit enables us to obey.
The key to victory is faith (reliance upon, trust, etc) in Jesus as Son and Savior.
“water and blood” has perplexed scholars for centuries. What exactly did John mean here? Some think water is our baptism and blood is communion (Luther and Calvin). Some think this is the water and blood that flowed from Jesus when he was pierced with the spear at crucifixion (Augustine). Others think the water is Jesus’ birth from the womb and the blood is his death.
Most likely, John means the water of Jesus’ baptism, and the blood of His crucifixion. This was when Jesus’ ministry began and ended. This explanation is the oldest recorded Christian understanding of the passage. Jesus identified with man when he was baptized and saved us with his death. This also supports John 3:5.
A priest was always ordained by sacrificial blood, cleansing water, and oil that spoke of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus also had these same three witnesses to His priestly ministry.
John keeps harping on this point because of the Gnostics. If Jesus was not fully God at death, then his death was not sufficient to pay for our sins.
The Holy Spirit testifies that Jesus is the Son of God in two ways: When the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism and he continues to affirm this truth in the heart of believers.
Note on 1 John 5:7-8: This passage is disputed. Some words were added to the Latin manuscript that never appeared in any Greek manuscript that still appear in some Bible versions. The NIV has it correct however. Words were probably added to clarify the Trinity late in the Middle Ages.
If you reject Jesus, you are calling God a liar with your unbelief.
Eternal life is a gift from God receive in Jesus.
Ask anything and everything in His will. Why doesn’t God just answer prayers? God wants us to work with Him, and that means bringing our will and agenda into alignment with His. He wants us to care about the things He cares about, and He wants us to care about them enough to pray passionately about them. God is delighted when we pray His promises. It shows our will aligned with His, our dependence on Him, and that we take His Word seriously.
We pray for our sinful brothers. There are sins that lead to death but not all. This could refer to the Gnostics adamant denial of the truth and their shameless immorality. This is a spiritual death. Another view here is a physical death because a believer continues to sin so God takes their life (1 Corinthians 11:30).
If we are in Jesus, Satan cannot harm us. Some bibles say “touch” instead of harm here. It means “grasp” or “lay hold of”. The only other place in his writings where John uses this particular verb for touch is in John 20:17, where He literally tells Mary to stop clinging to Me.
Significantly, this understanding must be given. We cannot attain it on our own. If God did not reveal Himself to us, we would never find Him. Jesus is fully man and God.
Idols interfere with our relationship and fellowship with God. Remember, putting anything (wealth, money, others, clothes, power, self, food, etc) above God is an idol.
