Several years ago I was asked to conduct a funeral for a young woman who had died of cancer. She had had something of a death-bed conversion, so I felt relieved about her eternal well-being. But she had run around with a rough crowd, none of whom were church-goers, and I doubt that any of them would have identified themselves as Christians. I had never before seen such despair at a funeral. Their grief was inconsolable. Their sense of loss was absolute. Death, for them, was darkness, contemplated with only with fear and dread.

There is suppressed in everyone a fear of death and the judgment to follow. The Bible clearly teaches that all people know that there is a God, and that He shall judge them by His law (Rom 1:32). Buried within us all is a dread of death, of facing God and His judgment. The writer to the Hebrews writes of “those (meaning all of us) who through the fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Heb 2:15). Much of human behavior can be seen as attempts to escape this fear (through wealth or hyper-activity), to medicate it (with drugs and alcohol), or placate it (with religion and morality). In this way fear becomes bondage to its substitutes. Fear emotionally paralyzes us and, too often, gives way to escapist and destructive behavior.

By way of contrast, the Apostle John writes of believers having “confidence in the day of judgment” (4:17). They have “no fear” (4:18). Confidence of God’s love for us, expressed in Christ Jesus, has cast out that fear. Fear of judgment has to do with fear of punishment (4:18). However, where confidence of God’s love has matured, has been “perfected,” fear of eternal punishment is banished.

Is this not the confidence that we all want? It can be ours in Christ. We can have confidence rather than dread in the face of our inevitable death and judgment. As one who has often been there as believers approached death, I can say that I have seen calm on the part of the people of God time and again. They have confidence even as death stalks.

Assurance has been a constant throughout his epistle (see especially 2:12-14; 3:19-24). The Apostle John applies it here directly to the theme of final judgment. He says we may have confidence on the day of judgment because God has given us His Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the key to the passage. We may have confidence as we face judgment because 1) we believe the truth to which the Spirit bears witness, and 2) the Spirit of love abides in us, assuring us of God’s love as we continue in that love.

The Spirit

By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. (1 Jn 4:13)

We can “know” that we “abide” or “remain,” or “live” (NIV) in God, in a right relationship with Him, as opposed to falling away from Him or having departed from Him, because “He has given us of His Spirit.” Confidence comes from the knowledge that we have been given (perfect tense = a past experience with present effects) the gift of the Holy Spirit who now indwells us. “By this we know.” By this we can be certain. The Apostle Paul calls the Spirit “a pledge of our inheritance” (Eph 1:14). He is the down-payment. He is the guarantee of our complete redemption. Present possession of the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our future salvation.

Who is given the Holy Spirit? “Us.” All Christians. The Apostle John is addressing all believers. The Apostles preached this from the very beginning:

And Peter said to them, "Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself." (Acts 2:38-39)

The gift of the Holy Spirit is certain. “You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” the Apostle Peter preached in his Pentecost sermon. Also, the Apostle Paul said,

However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. (Rom 8:9)

The Holy Spirit is not a special endowment given to a spiritual elite. Neither is the Holy Spirit a temporary presence that comes and goes in relation to our consecration. All those who are genuine believers have the Spirit of Christ within them. We are “indwelt” by the Holy Spirit as a permanent endowment. We walk by the Spirit (Gal 5:16), are led by the Spirit (Rom 8:14), are filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18). He teaches us “all things” (Jn 14:26) and guides us into “all the truth” (Jn 16:13). Christianity is a supernatural religion. It cannot be reduced to a philosophy, a theology, or an ethic. The Holy Spirit dwells within believers, empowering us for life. His presence is the guarantee that we “abide,” remain in God’s love, which love is the grounds of our confidence in judgment.

Does the Spirit of God dwell within us? Have we received Him as a gift? How do I know, one might ask. One answer is, we can sense it. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:16). Seek the gift of the Spirit and the assurance that He is there. The Apostle John says, “We know . . . because He has given us of His Spirit.” If we have God’s Spirit, we remain in God’s love, and can have confidence on the day of judgment.

The Spirit of Truth

How does the Holy Spirit make Himself known? Perhaps our answer so far is unsatisfactory for some. The “internal testimony of the Spirit,” as we’ve described it from Romans 8:16, is too subjective. How do we know that we have Him? Jesus says the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth” (Jn 14:17). He leads us, as we’ve seen, into “all truth” (Jn 16:13). We know that we are indwelt by the Spirit of God, and so abide in God and remain in His love (the Apostle John’s concern), by our confession of the truth. Confession of gospel truth is how we know that we are genuine Christians, authentic, as opposed to self-deceived fanatics.

And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. (1 Jn 4:14)

“We have beheld” or “seen” (ESV, NIV) refers to actual eyewitnesses. The incarnation (“the Father has sent”) and the cross (“Savior of the world”) are objective, historic, factual events.[1] What was objectively witnessed (v 14) is confirmed by the Holy Spirit (v 13) and issues in confession:

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. (1 Jn 4:15)

What does the Holy Spirit guide us to confess? That Jesus is the “Son of God.” Notice the Trinitarian reference. The Father sends the Son to whom the Spirit bears witness (cf. Gal 4:4-6; Jn 15:26,27; Acts 5:32). “Confesses” is in the aorist tense, indicating, says Stott, “a single and decisive public confession.”[2] Such a confession is seen as proof of the presence of the Holy Spirit, that in the Apostle’s language, “God abides in him, and he in God.” Confession of gospel truth is the key to confidence. Why is this so? Because, as the Apostle Paul says, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). The Apostle John said the same thing earlier:

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; (1 Jn 4:2)

The Holy Spirit leads us to confess “that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” For a person to come to the place where they believe that the historic man Jesus is the divine “Son of God” and “Savior of the World” requires the supernatural work of the Spirit. If one believes these gospel truths, then it follows that one has confidence in God’s love because the gospel events are the ultimate expression of that love. “In this is love,” the Apostle said. In what? In that “God . . . loved us and sent His Son (not the second-string) to be the propitiation (not just use band-aids) for our sins” (4:10).

Let’s pause for just a moment to note the importance placed upon confession of the truth. Nothing puts us so much at odds with our time as this insistence on truth. It seems like a weekly occurrence that someone, often a professing Christian, sometimes a practitioner of another religion, will insist that “we’ll all end up in the same place in the end.” Unless they mean hell (which, of course, they don’t), this is not the biblical view. For twenty-first century people, sincerity is all that matters, and that may not even matter. All religions are the same, they say. No religion at all is okay too. Belief is irrelevant. Theology is of no consequence. All that matters (if anything matters) is behavior. The Apostle John will insist on moral behavior (2:3-4) and on loving behavior (4:19-21). However, he also insists on Truth with a capital “T.” It matters what we believe. He has maintained this consistently (2:20-24; 4:1-4). Twenty-first century people don’t believe in Truth or its relevance. We are thorough-going theological relativists. Not so the Apostles, and not so apostolic Christianity. Truth counts. We are saved by believing and confessing the Truth (Rom 10:9,10).

Theological relativism is a powerful temptation to us today. It sounds so nice to say we’ll all end up in the same place. It sounds so open-minded, accepting, and non-judgmental, virtues which our civilization esteems and the opposite (interestingly enough) condemn. None of us, however, should take it upon ourselves to make up our own version of Christianity. We know nothing of Jesus but what the Apostles tell us. He and they teach that He is the “Savior of the world.” He is not a savior among many, but the Savior, the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 14:6).

Further, the Apostle John says,

And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. (1 Jn 4:16a)

We “know,” he says, we “have believed,” he affirms, in “the love which God has for us.” We are confident of this. We are even certain of this love. Why? Because the Spirit has convinced us that because of the love of God, Jesus the Son of God, was sent to be Savior of the world. “By this the love of God was manifested.” “In this is love” (4:9,10)! We believe that we are sinners. We believe that we need a savior. We believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world. Love is behind His sending of His Son to be the Savior. This means that God loves us. We have continued to believe the message of God’s love and so have remained in that love, that love decisively expressed at the cross. We have not departed from God or God’s gospel. We remain or abide in that gospel, consequently, we remain in that love, and in God Himself.[3]

Again, such a conviction with confession is a sure sign of authentic Christianity since no one can come to this conclusion on his or her own. The Holy Spirit’s presence in a person’s life will always issue in the confession of Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of the world. Confession and confidence are bound together. If I do not confess that Jesus is the Son of God, but that He’s just a great man, or an insightful teacher, or even a supernatural but created person, then His sending is not so costly and not such a singular demonstration of God’s love. If I do not confess that Jesus is the Savior of the world, then His death is not a sacrifice that atones, or propitiates, and is not so extraordinary a manifestation of the love of God. Deny that He is the Son and the Savior and I undermine the foundation of confidence of God’s love.

The Apostle John is battling the false prophets then as we are now. They were denying Christ’s Sonship and His atoning death. They were undermining the believer’s confidence in a God of love. Over the centuries there have been those who have wanted to reduce Jesus to a great moral example, and His death to a means of moral influence. There have been so called “governmental” and “moral” theories of the atonement. No, says the Apostle John. A propitiatory cross is proof of a God of love (4:10). Our belief that the Son is the Savior means that we have received that love (when we first believed) and “abide” or remain in it (through ongoing faith).

Don’t make the mistake of thinking of doctrine as dry and impractical. It is only as we grasp the identity of Christ (as eternal Son) and the work of Christ (as propitiating Savior) that we can experience the depths of the love of God. “In this is love.” God loved us when we were unlovely, sinners, helpless, enemies (Rom 5:8-10). He loved us, saved us, delivered us, adopted us, and privileged us at extraordinary cost. It is that cost that assures us that He loves us, and our confession of that truth assures us that we continue safely, securely in that love. Or, again, if we have been loved we will believe in that love, a love, as the hymn says, “that will not let me go.” Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:39).

The Spirit of love

So far we have seen that we can have confidence in the day of judgment because we have remained in, because we “abide in,” the truth, enabled by the Spirit of truth to believe, confess, and persevere in that truth (4:13-16a).

Does the Holy Spirit do anything else to assure us? Yes, indeed. As we abide in God and God abides in us, we are not only convinced of the truth of His love (4:16a), demonstrated by the sending of His Son (4:8-10), but we practice love. I can know that I am abiding in the love of God because I’ve not departed from the truth of that love found in the gospel (4:13-16a), and because I am loving others (4:16b-21). The key to understanding this section is verse 19:

We love, because He first loved us. (1 Jn 4:19)

The love of which the Apostle will speak, whether of our love for God or for our fellows, is the result of God’s prior love for us. Our love is not a good work for which we can take credit. Our love is not generated from within, an act of our wills. Our love is not meritorious or praiseworthy. Our love is responsive. We love because we have been loved by God. His love has enabled our love. His love is transformative. His love has vanquished our hatreds, jealousies, and envies, as well as our selfishness and sloth. His love enables and inspires us to love selflessly and sacrificially, as we have been loved.

The Apostle John’s point is that love is a sign. Where love abides (dwells, lives, remains) in us, it must be that God abides in us, since God is love. This brings us back to verse 16b.

God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 Jn 4:16b)

Because “God is love,” it then follows that “the one who abides in love” or “lives in love” (NIV) also “abides in God.” If one abides in God then also “God abides in him.” Clearly we are still dealing with the theme of the Holy Spirit. The God who “abides” in us is the Holy Spirit. Where one “abides in love,” there is the indwelling Spirit of the God of love. Is this necessarily so? Yes. The Holy Spirit will produce this love in our hearts. The love of God is transforming, and once experienced, results in love for others. This “abiding in love” is probably meant in two senses.

First, it indicates our love for God. When the Apostle says, “the one who abides in love,” he probably has in mind our love for God as well as God’s love for us (see v 20). If I experience God’s love, then I will love Him in return. His love is “poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom 5:5). This outpouring of love overflows in love for God in return for His love.

Love for God, like confession of the truth of God, is proof of the Holy Spirit’s presence in a person’s heart because we cannot love except by the Holy Spirit. The point of verse 19 then would be that we love (God) because He first loved us. God’s prior love for us, experienced in Christ, produces our love for God. He does not love us because we love Him; the opposite is the case. It is “not that we loved God.” No, rather, “but that He loved us” (4:10). We love Him only because He loved us first. As is true of faith, the initiative is all with God. We sometimes hear people say, “I have always loved God a lot.” Or, “I love God so much.” It is noteworthy that we don’t read of any of the Apostles talking about how much they love God. They say a great deal about how much God loves them, but not the opposite (Jn 3:16; Gal 2:20). Besides, no one has “always” loved God “a lot” or “so much.” We are not lovers of God by nature. We are born in Adam as haters and enemies of God (Rom 3:10-20). If we love, it is only because of the love we first received in Christ.

I have sometimes been uncomfortable with A. J. Gordon’s hymn, “My Jesus I Love Thee,” for this reason. The first stanza says much, too much perhaps, about our love for Jesus:

            My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine;

            For thee all the follies of sin I resign.

            My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou;

            If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.

The second stanza provides the corrective, and should always be sung in conjunction with the first:

            I love thee because thou hast first loved me,

            And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.

            I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow;

            If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.

“I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,” he rightly says. Our love is responsive love.

Still, where love for God is present, it is reassuring. If we continue in God’s love for us, and continue to love Him in return, then, the Apostle goes on to say, “love is perfected” and it is completed; it reaches its goal, and “we may have confidence.”

By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. (1 Jn 4:17)

Jesus was a man and so are we. “As He is, so also are we in this world.” He was confident of God’s favor and so can we be. He loved His God and His disciples, and as we do the same we can know that we, as He, remain with God, and therefore need not fear judgment (Jn 13:1,34; 15:9,12).

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 Jn 4:18)

Our experience of God’s love, when it comes to completion or perfection, generates a responsive love in us and eliminates fear of death and judgment. One who knows the forgiveness of sins no longer fears “punishment” (kolasis) in the sense of eternal punishment (Mt 25:46). “Love casts out (this) fear.” We are to fear God in the sense of reverence, and even trembling (see 2 Cor 7:15; Eph 6:5; Phil 2:12). We also rightly fear His temporal discipline (Heb 12:5ff). But we do not fear the damnation of our souls. Yes, He disciplines. Yes, we shall give account on judgment day. But our souls are saved, and where love has reached a point of maturity in a person’s life, the conviction of safety and security is unshakeable and fear is banished.

This is a great gift of the gospel. All the world fears death, and rightly so. The world secretly dreads the judgment. “It is,” says the writer to the Hebrews, “a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31). We face death and judgment without fear because we do not face punishment. Jesus has paid the debt for all our sins. The love which atoned for our sins will protect and preserve us to the end.

Second, it indicates our love for others. Finally, to “abide in love” encompasses the whole realm of love, including my fellow believer.

If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. (1 Jn 4:20,21)

Words are easy. I can say that I love God, but do I really? The Apostle provides a test, a means by which to confirm if my words match reality. The Apostle’s argument is from the lesser to the greater. Man is the image of God. It is easier to love and serve the image of God that I see (my fellow man) than to serve the invisible God. If I do not love the image that I see, I cannot claim to love the image I cannot see (cf. Jas 3:9,10). Do I love God? “To affirm one’s love for the unseen while failing to love the seen,” says Morris, “is to enter the realm of fantasy.”[4] Love for the seen may even be regarded as proof of the Unseen, even as the absence of such love is its rebuttal. Love for God will be evident in love for my neighbor. We’ve seen the Apostle make this point already. “Whoever has the world’s goods,” he said, “and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (3:17). It doesn’t. “Let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth” (3:18).

In the Apostle John’s first Epistle all religious claims are tested by moral behavior. Do I know the God who is light?

If we say (there are those easy words again) that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 Jn 1:6,7)

If I know the God who is light, I will walk in the light. Period. We see this pattern of verbal claim, words, tested by behavior again and again (1:8,10; 2:4,6,9; cf. 2:22,23; 3:18).

Do I know God as my Father? Am I born of Him?

By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother . . . But whoever has the world's goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? (1 Jn 3:10, 17)

Do I know the God who is love?

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. (1 Jn 4:7,8)

The Bible never allows us to remain abstract, theoretical, or speculative. We cannot claim to be “religious” or “Christian” without its affecting how we treat our neighbor. Do I love God? Then it will show. It will show. If I love God, it will make me a better employee or employer, a better husband or wife, a better child or parent, a better neighbor colleague, classmate. Truth and love, truth and love, truth and love. Upon both the Bible insists. Not love without truth, not truth without love. The scales right now are tilted against truth and in favor of love, understanding love as acceptance, tolerance without respect to truth claims. “Tolerance,” said G. K. Chesterton, “is the virtue of the man without convictions.” Perhaps in previous times the scales were tilted in the other direction, truth without due attention to the demands of love. The Bible, however, is wonderfully balanced. It insists on both.

Let us, then, ponder our mortality. Our time is limited. God has numbered our days (Ps 139:16). We are as the grass that withers and the flower that fades (Is 40:6,7). Our “days” are as “handbreadths” and our “lifetime as nothing in (God’s) sight” (Ps 39:5). There will come a time when our last day shall arrive and our life shall end. How then can we have confidence as we contemplate the end of all things and judgment? What is the key? It is the love of God who sent His Son to propitiate our sins (4:10). It is the love of God demonstrated at the cross, received by faith, and continued in life. It is the presence in us of truth and love. The Holy Spirit is our down-payment and guarantee of our salvation. Is the fruit of the Spirit there in my life: belief in the truth of Christ and love, love for God and love for my fellow believers? Truth and love. Not truth without love. Not love without truth. Do not break asunder what God has joined together. Remain in the truth of God: Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the world. Remain in the love of God: love God in return and love one’s fellow believer. Where these are present, love is being perfected and it is casting out the fear of judgment and replacing it with confidence, certainty, security, at death and before God.

We “have come to know” and “we have believed” in “the love which God has for us,” he says. John’s meaning, Smalley argues, is “that true believers can be sure of the reality of God’s love and rely on it because they have personally experienced it.”[5]

[1] “Based on that (eyewitness) testimony believers may know and rely on the love of God for them” (Kruse, 165).

[2] Stott, 167.

[3] “What the author is implying in 4:13 . . . is that because the Spirit teaches believers about the love of God expressed in the sending of the Son to be the Savior of the world (4:14), and because they believe that teaching, they may be assured that they dwell in God and God in them” (Kruse, 163). i.e. “The Spirit teaches the truth about God sending Jesus as the Savior of the world and knowing this provides believers with the basis for assurance” (163).

[4] Morris, 1407.

[5] Smalley, 255.