1 JOHN 4

(Unless otherwise noted, all of the scripture quoted here is from the NIV, because I think it is the best literary rendering of this chapter.)

Though neither of my sons are particularly shy, babies generally go through a phase where they are very comfortable with their parents and other adults they know, but they seem to feel naturally uncomfortable, even scared, in the presence of strangers. One day, when my older son was just learning to walk, my wife brought him to my office for lunch. He didn't want anything to do with my fellow employees who gathered around him, but when he saw me, he came to me and grabbed my leg as if to say, "I'm going to hang on to the only person here I feel safe with." With that as background, consider the following passage from the English Standard Version (ESV) of John's gospel:

John 10:1 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.

10:2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

10:3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

10:4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

10:5 A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers."

John expects Christians to know the Good Shepperd's voice and to flee from strangers. There are many shepperds in this life. Everyone from politicians to golf instructors offers to help us in some way. John is probably not asking us to avoid anyone who can help us improve our golf swing, but he begins this chapter by giving us some insight about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are who offer us spiritual insight. I don't think the following verses are meant primarily as a litmus test, though they are that, as they're meant to remind us of what we should already know. The message below is to follow Jesus and to flee anyone who leads us away from him.

1 John 4:1 "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

4:2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

4:3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

4:4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

4:5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.

4:6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood."

It is common throughout scripture, particularly in John's writing, to use contrasts to make a point. John was apparently dealing with an increasingly popular error in his generation, being taught by gnostics, that Jesus did not have a real body. John stresses the physical incarnation of Christ not only in this epistle, but in passages such as John 19:34-37. We can trust those who acknowledge Christ's incarnation and divinity, and we cannot trust those who don't.

The next contrast, however, has a subtle twist. Christians have overcome the false spirits in the world because the Spirit in us is greater than the spirit of the world. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us, but whoever does not know God does not listen to us. This is contrasted with those outside of Christ, who speak from the world's viewpoint and the world listens to them. Everything in verses 4-6 is spoken of as an ongoing reality which is still taking place, except for the part which says we have overcome, which is spoken of as a past event and a done deal. We would expect to read that we will overcome, or that we are overcoming, but God sees it as a past event, because Christ has already overcome the world. We have been baptized into his death and raised with him to walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:1 "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

6:2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

6:3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."

We can also more fully understand what John means by saying that we have overcome the spirit of antichrist in the world by looking ahead to the passage below from the next chapter:

1 John 5:4 "for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

5:5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."

We have overcome the world because we have placed our faith in Christ who has overcome the world by his own faith and by the power of his sinless life and his willingness to give himself as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Also in the next chapter, John will end this letter by saying:

1 John 5:21 "Dear children, keep yourselves from idols."

At first, that seems oddly out of context, since idols aren't mentioned anywhere else in this book. It will make more sense when we come to it, if we remember that John asks us in this chapter to test the spirits we listen to, and to only listen to those who acknowledge the essential facts about the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

However, John is not content for us merely to verbally ascent to the truths about the incarnate and risen Jesus. Real proof of our discipleship can only be achieved by living in accordance with God's character. As the passage below shows, the very essence of God's nature is love, and love must be the essence of our discipleship as Christians.

1 John 4:7 "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

4:9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

4:11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

Love is a very messy problem for us in a world full of sin. When people speak of love, they often are not speaking of the unconditional and unchanging love which comes from God. When I was a junior in high school, I had quite a crush on one of my female classmates. She knew it, but I was pretty shy with girls, so we didn't do much together outside of school, and we never even held hands. One day, early in my senior year, we were walking out of class toward the bus we rode together on the way home, when she announced: "I have a boyfriend now, I don't need you anymore." Without any warning or justification, I found out I had outlived my usefulness. I don't see that as a tragedy today, because I now understand that she wasn't taking away from me the sort of love John speaks about throughout his gospel and his epistles. But I'll never forget how I felt when this happened. I hope my sons will listen to me when I tell them that the only love worth finding is the sort of love which can't be lost, but they'll probably have to figure it out the hard way, like I did. Ironically, the only asset I had at the time was the pain I felt. Pain seems like an odd thing to call an asset, but it can ultimately be good for us because it lets us know how far off track we've been.

Not only are we looking for love in all the wrong places, but most people spend much of their lives looking for the wrong kind of love in all the wrong places. John lets us know what kind of love we should be looking for by reminding us that God sent his only Son into the world to become an atoning sacrifice for us. The kind of love which caused Jesus to willingly give up his glory in heaven to come here and hang on a cross couldn't possibly be generated by the shallow temporary commitment my high school girlfriend had to me. I'm not saying that to criticize her, but only to point out the essential difference between divine and human love.

John isn't just content to tell us about the kind of love God has. He says we don't even know God unless we give others the same kind of love Jesus has given us. Unless we know God and Jesus is living in us, we're not even capable of that kind of love, at least not for an extended period of time. One has only to consider the divorce rate in the United States to realize how temporary and circumstancial human love generally is. Non-Christians are fond of telling us that our churches are full of hypocrites, yet Jesus has never divorced any of them.

1 John 4:12 "No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

4:13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit."

It is only when his Spirit lives in us that we are capable of God's love, the life-sacrificing love which is the result of knowing God. Jesus commands us to love each other, which implies we have a choice to make, a choice to obey him or to disobey him. How can I reconcile the passages of scripture like this one, which say God has given us his Spirit, yet Jesus has commanded us to love one another, which implies that we might not do it, with verse 8, which says that whoever does not love does not know God? This seems to imply that we may have the Holy Spirit, but still refuse to love others, and not know God. How can that be?

Here's my interpretation, for what it's worth. When John speaks of knowing God, he isn't just speaking about recognizing God in the way that someone might recognize a familiar face from a high school yearbook. He is speaking about an ongoing moment by moment fellowship with God, which we might refer to as the presence of God. The practical application is that when we find ourselves falling short of the love of Christ, we ought to confess it as sin and ask God to restore his abiding presence with us. I recall a story from Corrie Tin Boom's book, "The Hiding Place", in which she is speaking at a church about forgiveness after World War II. After the service, she was approached by a former Nazi prison guard, who had been quite cruel to her while she was in a concentration camp with her sister during the war, but he had come to Christ after the war ended. Humanly speaking, even though she had just spoken about forgiveness, she had every reason to hate this man and not to forgive him. Yet Corrie was not out of fellowship with God, and she knew this would be her only opportunity to extend kindness to him, rather than returning his cruelty. Failing to do so would damage both his walk with the Lord and her own credibility and confidence in her message. So she prayed and asked God to immediately show her his love for him. When she prayed, she said she immediately felt love for him which was overwhelming, and she spoke to him as if she were being reunited with a dear friend instead of an ex-Nazi. That was Corrie's story, and I don't have a better one from my own experience. The point is that God's love did what Corrie Tin Boom's love could not have done. God knows we will fall short of his love from time to time, and he wants us to learn to depend on his presence to fill the gap between who we are and who we ought to be.

4:14 "And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

4:15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.

4:16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

4:17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.

4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

4:19 We love because he first loved us.

4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

4:21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother."

In these final verses, John makes three points. We are not the initiators of love, God is. Love is the essence of God's nature, and God has been in the love business since the beginning of time and creation. As John said in the first chapter of this book, God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. God is not the author of death, disease, natural disasters or human sorrow. Indeed, God has a plan to put an end to all of these things.

In the meantime, he asks us to walk in the way Jesus walked, to live the self-sacrificing way Jesus lived, and to depend on his presence and his forgiveness to deepen our knowledge of him and our commitment to others. If we love God, we are to share his love with others.

Finally, verses 16-18 tell us that we should rely on God's love for us and give that love to others, in order that we may have confidence in his presence. We are probably all familiar with the story in Genesis that Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God after they sinned. Ever since then, God has been working on restoring his fellowship with mankind, and he wants to restore fellowship with us individually. Verse 18 is one of the most memorable verses in the Bible because of how obviously true it is. How many drivers slow down when they see the police? It's a good thing that they slow down, but God wants to be a father to us, not just another cop. But he can only do that if we are willing to be his children and obey his commandments, especially the commandments below:atthew 22:34 "Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.

22:35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:

22:36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

22:37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'

22:38 This is the first and greatest commandment.

22:39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

22:40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.""