1 John 4

From the doctrine just defended John draws the exhortation. Wesley: it is by the Spirit that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. Every one that truly loves God and neighbor is born of God.

Love is not a decoration on knowledge; it is how new birth shows. The command is meant seriously: let us love. Grace that regenerates is grace that can be walked in toward the brother.

Calvin returns to the exhortation that fills the letter: mutual love, not merely loving those who love us. No one can prove himself a son of God except he loves his neighbors; true knowledge of God necessarily produces love.

Love is of God as fountain. The born-of-God know Him in a knowledge that regenerates. Separate faith from love and you attempt to take heat from the sun.

He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love. Wesley lingered here: this little sentence brought John more sweetness in the writing than the whole world can bring. God is often styled holy, righteous, wise; He is said to be love in the abstract—His darling, reigning attribute, shedding amiable glory on the rest.

Both camps confess this. One hears a God whose reigning attribute is love toward persons He actually seeks to save. Not-loving is not-knowing; the attribute page of the faith rests here as shared ground.

Calvin: God is love—that is, His nature is to love men. He does not here speak of the essence of God as the later debates would press it, but of what God is found to be by us. As He is light with nothing dark in Him, so He is love, and the effect is diffused wherever the knowledge of Him comes.

God is love, and the one who doesn’t love doesn’t know Him. The attribute is not denied. The fork, if it comes, is not whether God is love, but how that love elects and how “world” is heard in the sending verses that follow.

Love was made manifest: God has sent his only born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. The world is the place into which the Son is sent, and the purpose is life through Him—held out where the sending goes.

Arminian reading of the sending: the same world as 2:2. Manifest love is not a private disclosure to a secret few; it is the Son given into the world that people might live. Unbelief can refuse the life; the manifestation is not a feint.

Calvin: this is the principal evidence that far surpasses other proofs of God’s love. He spared not His own Son. He calls Him only-begotten for amplifying: the only Son by nature makes many sons by grace and adoption—even all who by faith are united to His body. The end: that we might live through Him; without Him we are all dead.

The we who live are those united to Christ by faith. The world is the stage of the sending; the life is given to the adopted. Electing love is not the opposite of “God is love”; it is how that love actually saves.

Herein is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. The initiative is His; the propitiation is the same word as 2:2.

We did not go first. He loved, He sent, He propitiated—and 2:2 has already said not for ours only but for the whole world. The “our sins” of a confessing church does not shrink the sending into a narrower atonement than the world-verse allows.

Calvin: God’s love has been gratuitous. He loved us before we were born, and when through depravity we had hearts turned away. Were it true that each is chosen as God foresees him worthy of love, this doctrine that He first loved us would not stand. He sent His Son as propitiation: we were alienated until Christ intervened; this honor of expiating for the sins of the world belongs only to Christ.

First love is electing love, not a response to foreseen faith. Propitiation here, as in 2:2 on Calvin’s reading, is the Church’s expiation—actual, not a potential spread across every individual. Look nowhere else than to Christ to know you are loved.

If God loved us in this way, we ought. The so is the sending and the propitiation. Love is not mercenary repayment; it is the fitting answer.

Those loved with a love that reached a world are not free to draw a smaller circle around the brother. The ethic matches the width of the gift.

Calvin accommodates the doctrine to purpose: God’s example, as Paul sets forth Christ. Our love ought not to be mercenary; we have been loved freely. Regard of our own advantage is self-love, not love to others.

Those freely loved freely love. The us is the Church that has tasted propitiation; the brother is not optional once that love is known.

No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected—has its full effect, Wesley says.

The test is not a private vision but a public love. Abiding is true and can be shown—or refused—in how the brother is treated.

Calvin extends John 1:18: the power of God is comprehended by faith and love, so that we know we are His children and He dwells in us. God shows Himself present when by His Spirit He forms hearts to brotherly love.

Love is the effect of the Spirit. Boast of having God without loving the brethren is proved false in this one thing: it separates God from the boaster.

The Spirit given is how we know the mutual abiding. Wesley will treat the Spirit more largely here and in 3:24 and 5:6.

The Spirit is gift, and the knowledge is lived. Abiding is not a bare decree; it is communion the Spirit actually sheds abroad.

Calvin: we know by the Spirit given that He dwells in us. Love is the fruit of the Spirit; we cannot truly love the brethren except the Spirit puts forth His power.

God by His Spirit dwells in us; by love we prove it. The Spirit is given in measure to each; the evidence is not speculation about hidden things.

Seen and testify: the Father sent the Son as Savior of the world. Wesley: these are the foundation and criteria of abiding—the communion of the Spirit and the confession of the Son.

Savior of the world is the same wideness as 2:2. The apostolic testimony is not “Savior of our party.” The world is the field of the sending; salvation is sincerely for those in it who will believe.

Calvin: God communicates Himself to us in His Son. Seeing is the seeing of faith that recognized the glory of God in Christ, that He was sent to be the Savior of the world. That knowledge flows from the Spirit’s illumination.

As in 2:2, world is the worldwide scope of the Church’s Savior, not every individual as saved. The testimony is public; the salvation is Christ’s actual saving of His people from the world.

Wesley: whoever shall, from a principle of loving faith, openly confess in the face of opposition that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him.

Not a password but loving faith made public. Abiding accompanies a confession that can cost, and that can be refused.

Calvin: faith and confession are used indiscriminately here; he acknowledges none who ordinarily confess but such as truly and from the heart believe. “Jesus is the Son of God” briefly includes the sum of faith.

Men are united to Christ by faith, and so to God. Hypocrites may boast; John does not.

We know and believe—by the same Spirit, Wesley says—the love God has for us. God is love; the one who dwells in love dwells in God.

Shared confession again: God is love. Abide in love as the way of remaining in God. Knowing and believing are the Church’s present hold, not a past event only.

Calvin: we have known by believing. Uncertain opinion differs from faith. The paternal love of God is found in Christ; nothing certain is known of Christ except by those who know themselves children of God by His grace. God is love: by faith God dwells in us; then love ought to be there.

Love is necessarily connected with faith. The minor premise of the argument is this verse’s second sentence.

By this communion, Wesley says, love is made perfect so that we shall have boldness in the day of judgment, when the stout-hearted tremble. As He—Christ—is all love, so are we who are fathers in Christ, even in this world.

Boldness at judgment is the fruit of perfected love, adult communion, not presumption. As He is, so are we: a likeness begun now.

Calvin: two clauses—we are partakers of adoption when we resemble God as children their father; and this confidence is invaluable, for without it we must be miserable. God’s love toward us is perfected—abundantly poured forth—when those who are conformed to Him prove themselves children.

Works are not the cause of salvation; they are added. No one cheerfully meets Christ except faith is fixed on grace alone; yet John excludes from confidence those in whom no image of God is seen.

No slavish fear where love reigns. Wesley’s fourfold: a natural man has neither fear nor love; one awakened, fear without love; a babe in Christ, love and fear; a father in Christ, love without fear. Perfect, adult love casts out slavish fear, because such fear has torment.

Fear and love can coexist in a true Christian who is not yet adult in love. Casting out is a work of maturing grace, not a switch thrown at justification only.

Calvin reads this as the love of God known by faith, which gives peace so the conscience no longer trembles. Not chiefly servile versus filial as a duty-contrast, but the known love of God removing torment. Fear is not so expelled that it never assails; it is so expelled that it does not impede the peace faith obtains.

It is owing to unbelief when anyone has a disturbed mind; the love of God known tranquilizes the heart. Victory is God’s love seen, not our nerve.

We love him, because he first loved us. Wesley: this is the sum of all religion, the model of Christianity. None can say more; why should anyone say less, or less intelligibly?

First love is the source of ours. The priority is grace, not our decision as the first mover. That first love, on this reading, is the love that sent a propitiation as wide as the world.

Calvin: as God anticipated us by free love, we ought to render love to Him; and that love must generate brotherly love. First love stands against any scheme in which our love is first in order because God foresaw it.

He first loved us is the death of merit and of foreseen-faith election. Our love is echo, not cause.

Say “I love God” and hate the brother: a lie. Wesley: the brother is daily presented to the senses to raise esteem and move kindness.

Unseen God is not loved in a mouth that will not love the seen image. Bigotry that loves only a party is already failing this verse.

Calvin: they are liars who boast love to God and hate the brethren. God offers Himself in those who bear His image. The boast is fallacious when God’s image before the eyes is not loved.

Participation of the same nature and mutual intercourse should allure to love, except we are harder than iron. Love of God is proved, or exposed, here.

This commandment we have from Him—both God and Christ, Wesley says. He who loves God loves his brother: every one, whatever his opinions or mode of worship, purely because he is the child and bears the image of God. Bigotry is the want of this pure and universal love.

The must is not a mood. Love of God that will not love the brother is disobedient, not merely incomplete taste.

Calvin’s stronger argument: Christ not only commanded love to God but bade us love our brethren. We must so begin with God that there is a transition made to men.

The word “commandment” carries authority, not sentiment. The one who loves God must love his brother also. The letter will not let the two loves live in different rooms.