1 John 4:9

The passage opens with a tender word. “Beloved” translates agapētoí, people who are loved, from the same root as the verb for love, agapáō. John reminds his readers who they are before he tells them what to do. They are loved by God and by him, and they belong to one family. “Let us love one another” is an exhortation that includes John himself, what grammarians call a hortatory subjunctive. He calls the church to keep practising love, and he stands among them as he asks it. It is still a command, and every believer shares the duty to live out the love that comes from God.

John has just told his readers to test the spirits and to tell true prophets from false ones (1 John 4:1). Now he turns to love as the deepest test of genuine faith. The false teachers troubling these churches denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh (1 John 4:2), and they claimed a superior knowledge of God while their lives showed little care for other people. John answers them here. True knowledge of God shows itself in conduct, and above all in love for fellow believers.

“For love is of God” gives the reason for the command. The Greek ek tou theou means “out of God”: love has its source in him and flows from him. Every true act of love reflects his character, because it came from him first.

“Every one that loveth is born of God.” The verb gennáō means to beget, to father a child, and John uses it for the new birth, when God gives his own life to a person. Children bear their father’s likeness, so those born of God come to share his character, and love is the clearest mark of it. John uses the same phrase of everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 5:1) and of everyone who does righteousness (1 John 2:29). Believing, doing right and loving are signs of one new birth. Those who receive Christ are born of God (John 1:12–13), and the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to them (Romans 5:5). Paul names love among the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23).

“And knoweth God.” The verb ginṓskō here means knowing someone personally, through relationship, as one knows a friend. To know God in this way is to have a relationship with him that shapes character and conduct, and love flows out of it.

Verse 8 states the same truth from the other side: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” In Greek the verb “knoweth” here is in the aorist tense, where verse 7 used the present. So a life without love shows a person who has never come to know God at all, the God whose very nature is love.

“For God is love” gives the reason, introduced by hóti, “because”. With the plain verb estí, “is”, John speaks of God’s very being. Love belongs to who God is, and every act of his love flows from it. Theós is the word for God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, and here it means the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose nature is love. This love is the driving force behind creation, redemption and the work of making his people holy. That is why love is the test John gives. To know God is to be drawn into his love and to reflect it.

This is one of the most distinctive sentences in the New Testament, and John says it twice, here and again in 1 John 4:16.

“In this was manifested the love of God toward us.” The verb phaneróō means to make visible, to bring into the open. God’s love moved from the unseen depths of his being into human history through one act that all can see. “In this” points forward to the act itself, “because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world”, where “because that” is hóti again, tying God’s love to a real event.

The verb for sent, apostéllō, means to send someone out on a mission with authority. It shows that God took the initiative and that the Son came with a purpose, and it tells us that the Son existed before he was sent and came in obedience to the Father’s will. In verse 9 the verb is in the perfect tense, a sending whose effect remains, while verse 10 uses the aorist. “Into the world” means that the Son truly entered human history and a fallen world, on a mission as wide as the world. This answered the false teachers who held that Jesus had only the appearance of a body. John states the plain fact that God sent his Son into the world.

“That we might live through him” gives the purpose, introduced by hína, “so that”. This life is spiritual life, reconciliation with God and the promise of eternal life, set against the death that sin brings. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10), and he called himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Paul writes that God, “who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us” (Ephesians 2:4–5), made us alive together with Christ even when we were dead in sins (Ephesians 2:5). The life comes “through him”, and Christ himself is its only channel and source.

“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” “Herein”, en toútōi, points again to what follows, and what follows is the true meaning of love. It is found in what God did. His love came first and moved him to act toward people who were estranged from him and undeserving, so it is pure grace from beginning to end.

Our love for God matters greatly, and it is our answer to his. John says so a few verses later: “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). God’s love is the origin and foundation of all true love, including our love for him, and knowing that keeps us humble and gives our love and obedience their strongest motive. Paul says the same: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

The word for sins, hamartía, means missing the mark, any departure from God’s perfect standard, whether by doing wrong or by leaving right undone. Our sins, each person’s and all humanity’s, stood as a barrier between us and God, and the Son was sent to deal with them.

John addresses his readers again as “Beloved”, agapētós, people loved by God. The word reminds them of who they are, so the command that follows comes as a loving call to live as God’s beloved children.

“If God so loved us.” The “if”, ei, assumes the truth it states, much as we would say “since”. John has just shown in verses 9 and 10 how certainly God loves us. “So”, hoútō, points to the manner and greatness of that love: God sent his Son as the propitiation for our sins. The verb “loved”, agapáō, is in the aorist tense, a decisive act of love completed in the past, and our present duty is built on it.

“We ought also to love one another.” Opheílō is the word for owing a debt, and so for a moral duty. Having received such great and undeserved love, believers owe a response of the same kind, and loving one another is the necessary fruit of true faith. A child who has received boundless love from a parent ought to show respect and affection in return, and so God’s children ought to love. “One another”, allḗlōn, makes it a mutual love practised within the church, the same kind of love God showed in sending his Son.

Jesus gave this command: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34), and again, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). He showed how far such love goes, laying down his life for his friends (John 15:13), and he taught his disciples to love even their enemies (Matthew 5:44). John drew the same conclusion earlier in his letter: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). Paul writes, “walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2).

The duty comes with the power to carry it out. The Holy Spirit pours God’s love into our hearts and enables us to love as Christ loved, so this “ought” is a gracious invitation to share in Christ’s own life and love.

“No man hath seen God at any time.” God in his full glory is beyond the sight of human eyes. The LORD told Moses, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (Exodus 33:20), and John’s Gospel uses the same words as this verse (John 1:18).

Then John tells where this unseen God is known: “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us.” The false teachers prized secret knowledge, and John points to the plain love believers show one another. The verb ménō, “dwelleth”, means to abide, remain or live somewhere, a lasting presence. God makes his home in his people by his Spirit, as he promised in the new covenant: “I will put my spirit within you” (Ezekiel 36:27). He dwells in each believer and in the church together, the community that lives out his love, and their love for one another shows and confirms that he is there. The verses that follow join God’s dwelling in us, our love for one another and our assurance (1 John 4:13–16).

So the unseen God is made known first in his Son and then in the church that is his body. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and he said, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). When believers love one another, they reflect the image of Christ, who loved perfectly and revealed the Father perfectly.

The love John asks of us begins with God, so he is the place to look for it. We love because he first loved us, and his Spirit has poured that love into our hearts. His love for you rests on his own gracious character, which frees you from the tiring work of striving to be accepted. You can trust it, and you can draw from it.

That same love is meant to reach the people around us, and above all our brothers and sisters in Christ. It shows itself in practical things: seeking another’s good, forgiving, bearing burdens, making peace, and serving when it costs us. When the church loves like this, the love of the unseen God is on display, and the world can recognise the disciples of Jesus by their love for one another.