1 John 2

These things are written so that you may not sin. Wesley hears a guard against abusing reconciliation: God’s words are leveled against sin. And if anyone does sin, let him not lie in sin despairing. The Advocate is not a mean person, not a guilty one needing pardon for himself, not a mere petitioner on charity. He is Jesus Christ the righteous, who has fully merited what He asks.

Arminian readers keep both clauses: the gospel aims at holiness, and when a believer sins there is an Advocate. Access is not a license. The righteous Christ stands for those who come; His merit is sufficient for any sinner who will use it.

Calvin: the sum of the gospel is that we depart from sin, and yet, though always exposed to judgment, we are certain that Christ so intercedes by the sacrifice of His death that the Father is propitious. The two parts must not be lacerated: no license to sin, and no silence about gratuitous remission.

Application: the conditional if is almost causal—it cannot be but that we sin. The Advocate is the continual application of His death. Intercession is not Christ on His knees beside other patrons; He alone is priest and advocate for His people.

He is the propitiation—the atoning sacrifice by which wrath is appeased. For our sins, Wesley says, who believe. And not for ours only, but for the whole world as well: as wide as sin reaches, the propitiation reaches too.

Here the two readings of the atonement’s extent part ways, as they do at 1 Timothy 2:1–7 and Titus 2:11–15. Classical Arminians take whole world as every person. The “not for ours only” is not a widening from Jewish believers to elect Gentiles; it is a widening from those who already believe to the world that still sins. Provision is as broad as the disease. Those who perish do not perish because no propitiation was made for them.

Calvin will not let whole world include the reprobate, still less Satan. The school formula (sufficient for the world, efficient for the elect) he allows as true, yet denies it is John’s point here. John’s design is to make the benefit common to the whole Church: under all or whole he designates those who should believe, scattered through various parts of the world—not every individual.

Reformed reading, matching 1 Timothy 2 and Titus 2: world is all kinds, the elect among the nations, the Church in its worldwide reach. The propitiation actually expiates those who by faith embrace the gospel. Do not flatten “whole world”; do not, on this reading, turn it into a ransom that fails for most of those it named.

Knowing Him is not a bare claim. We know that we know him: if we keep his commandments—particularly, Wesley says, those of faith and love.

Knowledge is saving and proved in a kept word. Commandments are not a ladder into knowing; they are the fruit by which the tree is known. Grace that can be received can also be walked in—or neglected.

Calvin: the knowledge of God derived from the gospel is not ineffectual; obedience proceeds from it. There is no one who in everything keeps the commandments; John does not mean a sinless satisfying of the law, but those who strive, according to human infirmity, to form their life to God’s will.

Works are evidence, not foundation. Faith recumbs on the grace of Christ alone; piety distinguishes true faith from a fictitious, dead knowledge.

The saying without the keeping is a lie. Truth is not in the mouth that will not obey.

Profession without a kept life is not a weak stage of grace; it is falsehood. Knowing Christ and ignoring His commands cannot coexist as a settled state.

Calvin: he proves they are liars who boast faith without piety, even by the contrary effect—the knowledge of God is efficacious. The sentence would be superfluous if no false profession were made.

God is not known by a naked imagination. He reveals Himself inwardly by the Spirit; a commandment-less “I know him” is empty.

Whoever keeps His word: Wesley hears the commandments, and the love of God reconciled to us through Christ, perfectly known. By keeping we know we are in Him. To know Him, to be in Him, to abide in Him are nearly synonymous, with a gradation: knowledge, communion, constancy.

Love perfected is love brought to its proper fruit in a kept word, not sinless arrival. The test is public enough to humble a merely verbal faith.

Calvin defines the true keeping of the law as to love God. To love God in sincerity of heart is to keep His commandments. If no one has loved God thus perfectly, it is sufficient that each aspires according to the measure of grace given.

We are in Him comes from the gospel—fellowship with the Father and the Son. No communion without love; no progress in faith except one who cleaves from the heart to God.

Abiding implies a durable state: constant knowledge of and communion with Him. Otherwise, Wesley says, they are vain words. Walk as He walked in the world.

Union language without Christ’s walk is theater. The Advocate of v. 1 is also the pattern of v. 6. Grace that saves is grace that conforms.

Calvin: he does not simply exhort us to imitate Christ, but from the union we have with Him he proves that we ought to be like Him. A likeness in life and deeds will prove that we abide in Christ.

The “ought” is not a bare moralism. It is the moral shape of union. Those in Christ have put off the old man; the walk matches the Head.