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1 John 4:1. Beloved! Believe not every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4:2. Know the Spirit of God (and the spirit of error) this way: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Having explained the doctrine of love for one's neighbor, indicating in this love a sign of the indwelling of the Spirit, which we have received, the apostle now adds a sign to distinguish between true brothers and neighbors, so that, bearing in mind this difference, regarding the commandment of love, we would not enter into close relationships with false brethren, false apostles and false prophets, and thus would not cause ourselves great harm. For, having fellowship with them as equals, we, firstly, will harm ourselves, without fear communicating the teaching of faith to the wicked and casting the holy thing to the dogs; then we will harm those who are devoted to us. For our love for false brethren, false apostles and false prophets will incline many to accept them as teachers and to believe their teaching without caution, and they will be deceived by our treatment of them. What is their sign? Next: every spirit, that is, everyone bearing the title of prophet or apostle, who confesses the Lord Jesus, who has come in the flesh, is from God, and whoever does not confess this is not from God, but his dignity is from the Antichrist, as you have heard. The Apostle a little higher (1 John 2:18) said that many antichrists have appeared in the world, that is, the forerunners of the antichrist. And confession of the coming of Christ in the flesh must be done not only in the tongue, but also in deeds, as the Apostle Paul says: “We always carry about the death of Jesus in the body, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body” (2 Cor. 4:10). So, whoever has Jesus active in himself, died to the world, lives no longer for the world, but for Christ, and bears Him not only in Christ’s flesh, but also in his own, he is from God. But whoever lives not for Christ, but for himself and for the world, that is, for worldly pleasures, is not from God. Therefore, Paul again says: “If there is envy, contention and disagreement among you, are you not carnal? and are you not acting according to human custom?” (1 Cor. 3:3). He who walks according to human custom does not have the Spirit of Christ; and whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ, that is, does not live according to the teachings of Christ, is not Christ’s. 1 John 4:3. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ who has come in the flesh is not from God, but it is the spirit of the Antichrist, about whom you heard that he would come and is now already in the world. The Apostle says that the Antichrist is already in the world; of course, not personally, but in the person of false prophets, false apostles and heretics, anticipating and preparing his coming. And the Antichrist himself will be a man who carries Satan within himself, “exalting himself above everything that is called God or that is holy” (2 Thess. 2:4). That is why he will forbid serving idols (the apostle meant them by “shrines”), and will present himself alone as God. 1 John 4:4. Children! you are from God, and you have overcome them; for greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:5. They are from the world, that’s why they speak worldly, and the world listens to them. 1 John 4:6. We are from God; He who knows God listens to us; He who is not from God does not listen to us. Above, the apostle indicated the sign of the prophets and apostles of the Lord. Now he adds: you, being children of God, defeated them, that is, the false prophets. Why? Because God who is in you is greater than he who is in the world, according to whose spirit the false prophets decided to live. Then he gives them another sign of false prophets, in that it saddened the simple ones among the faithful themselves a lot. Some of them could naturally grieve, seeing that many accepted them very zealously, but they were despised. The Apostle says: do not grieve if many despise you, but they are accepted; for like strives for like: they are from the world and speak worldly things, that is, they teach carnal desires, which is why they have the same listeners, that is, depraved - depraved. And we, being from God and having removed ourselves from worldly lusts, become unpleasant to them. The one who listens to us is the one who lives chastely, and therefore knows God, and is ready to listen to us. Christ says about this: “he who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15), that is, He testifies that he has ears who is prepared to listen with obedience. 1 John 4:6. Therefore we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 1 John 4:7. Beloved! let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 1 John 4:8. He who does not love has not known God, because God is love. 1 John 4:9. God's love for us was revealed in the fact that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we could receive life through Him. 1 John 4:10. This is love, that we did not love God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Above, the apostle showed who should be treated and who should not be treated; now, as it were, he puts a seal on what has been said: therefore we know who has the Spirit of truth, and who has the spirit of error, false prophecy. Then he starts talking about love again. Having shown that you need to love some, namely like-minded people, he returns to what he said at the beginning. He says that love and the lover are from God, that the lover, and he alone, is born of God and knows God, and he who does not have love does not know God. Why does the one who does not love not know God? This is confirmed as follows. God is love. This is evident from the fact that He sent His only begotten Son into the world so that He would bring us true life and we would come to life through Him. For just as God is called goodness because through goodness he created the mental and sensory world, so, out of love for us, sending His only begotten Son into the world, He showed through this that He is also love. Therefore, he adds: “in this is love,” that is, this proves that God is love. Then, showing the superiority of God’s love, he says: God did this, that is, He gave His Own Son for us, not because we loved Him, but He was the first to begin to do good to us out of love and sent His Son, and not only sent, but also made atonement for our sins with His own blood. If, he says, God loved us so much, although we are by no means of the same nature as Him, then we should love much more, love those related to us, and, having learned the superiority of love, show it to others. For just as he is guilty who does not choose what is worthy of election, so praise belongs to those who love those who are worthy of love, because they are loved. We, having positioned ourselves in this way, have both: we are loved because God loves us and has taken us into his own (as children); We are loved because we love our neighbors. 1 John 4:11. Beloved! if God loved us so much, then we should love each other. 1 John 4:12. No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, then God abides in us, and His love is perfect in us. 1 John 4:13. That we abide in Him and He in us, we know from what He has given us from His Spirit. 1 John 4:14. And we have seen and testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. We have noticed before that the Apostle John is in the habit of repeating the same thing about the same thing. That's what he does now. God, he says, no one has ever seen. Speaking about love for brothers, he pointed out God as an example of love, who, out of love for us, gave up His only begotten Son to death. Another, having heard this, could ask: on what basis are you talking about invisible objects? In response to such a question, he says: I myself say that no one has ever seen God; but by loving one another we know that God is in us. And he says this rightly, because we learn many objects invisible to us from their actions. For example, no one has seen the soul, but from actions and movements we are convinced that it exists and operates in us. So we recognize God’s love for us through some movement and action. If there is nothing incongruous in this, then this holy man also proves with due action that God exists in us. What kind of action is this? Pure love for our neighbors. It is a sign of our abiding in Him and of Him in us, and also because He gave us of His Spirit. For the pure gives birth to the pure and undefiled. And since through pure love we have fellowship with Him, then from here we, who have seen Him in the flesh, have known and testified that the Father sent Him, the Savior of the world. In order to more fully confirm us in this knowledge of ours, He Himself gave an explanation about His Face. Sometimes he said: “I came from the Father and came into the world” (John 16:28), that is, the Father, out of love for us, sent His Only Begotten Son from heaven into the world. Sometimes it is even clearer: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish” (John 3:16); and: “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47). So, we ourselves have seen, and from the Only Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18), we have heard, and from the action of mutual love we know that God is in us, and has given us of His Spirit, and we are in communion with Him. 1 John 4:15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 1 John 4:16. And we knew the love that God has for us and believed in it. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. This relates to what was said a little above (v. 2): every spirit that confesses the Lord Jesus who has come in the flesh. The Apostle has sufficiently proved that believers are children of God and that God abides in them; and they proved this by love for each other, because the Holy Spirit was given to them. After this, he returns to the aforementioned speech and says: whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, because, as said above, every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ, who has come in the flesh, is from God. With these words the apostle expresses another truth, that those who so confess and have the indwelling Spirit, that is, God, themselves abide in God. How? Through love for each other. And remembering love, he repeats everything he has said about love, in order to further establish the doctrine of love. 1 John 4:17. Love reaches such perfection in us that we have boldness on the day of judgment, because we act in this world as He does. 1 John 4:18. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because in fear there is torment. God is light, and His saints, according to the saying of the Gospel (Matthew 5:14), are the light of the world and are alien to the fear of torment, because they are filled with love for God. I want, says the apostle, for you to be perfected in love so that on the day of judgment we will have boldness before God, because He is also the Judge, according to His own saying: “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22). And that our boldness will be before God made man, the apostle expressed in the following words: “we act in this world as He does,” that is, when we have already proven that God is in us and we are in Him, then we ourselves are witnesses to the perfection of love. How He was blameless and pure in the world, which is why He said: “The prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me” (John 14:30); so we will be in God and God in us. If He is the teacher and giver of our purity, then we must carry Him in the world purely and blamelessly, “always bearing His deadness in our body” (2 Cor. 4:10). If we live this way, we will have boldness before Him and will be free from all fear. For, having achieved perfection in love through good deeds, we will be far from fear. In confirmation of this he adds: perfect love casts out fear. What kind of fear? He himself says that fear is torment. For you can love someone else out of fear of punishment. But such fear is not perfect, that is, it is not characteristic of perfect love. Having said this about perfect love, he necessarily says that we must love God, because He first loved us, and since He first did good for us, we must force ourselves all the more diligently to repay it. Based on the words of David: “Fear the Lord, ye His saints, for those who fear Him have no want” (Psalm 33:10), others will ask: how does John now say that perfect love casts out fear? Are the saints of God so imperfect in love that they are commanded to fear? We answer. Fear is of two kinds. One is initial, with torment mixed in. A person who has committed bad deeds approaches God with fear, and approaches in order not to be punished. This is initial fear. Another fear is perfect. This fear is free from such fear; which is why it is called pure and abiding forever (Psalm 18:10). What kind of fear is this, and why is it perfect? Because the one who has it is completely delighted with love and tries in every possible way to ensure that he does not lack anything that a strong lover should do for his beloved. 1 John 4:18. He who fears is imperfect in love. 1 John 4:19. Let us love Him because He first loved us. By fear here we mean initial fear. He who sincerely loves God does what pleases Him not out of fear of punishment, but out of an attraction to virtue and love for God, without even protecting himself with the legitimate fear of loving what is good. And that fear, which does something in order not to be punished, is identical with the first. Therefore it is added: “in fear there is torment.” 1 John 4:20. He who says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, is a liar: for he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? Above, the apostle persistently proved that love must be mutual, passing from God to us and from us to God; added to this that if God loved us so much, then we should love each other. Now - he again raises the speech to the same thing and says: since we have a duty to love our brother, following the example of God’s love for us, and by repaying God with love, we satisfy this duty; then we must certainly love our brother for the most perfect proof of love for God. For if this does not happen, then our love for God will not be preserved, since our duty towards our neighbors will be violated, the duty arising from love for God. He adds an even stronger word to denounce those who want to pervert divine love. The Apostle says something like this: love is obviously formed through treating each other; conversion presupposes that a person sees his brother and, after treating him, becomes even more attached to him with love; for vision attracts very much to love. If so, then whoever places much more value on love, who does not love the brother whom he has seen, how can he be recognized as true when he says that he loves God, whom he has not seen, who is neither in his dealings with him nor is he embraced by any feeling? If someone shamelessly says that he loves God and hates his brother, he, perverting divine love, turns out to be in addition to this and a transgressor of His next commandment: “By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Therefore, whoever loves God and tries to be His disciple, according to His commandment, also loves his brother. 1 John 4:21. And we have this commandment from Him, that he who loves God should also love his brother. You might be interested in: