The Confessed Son and the Love That Makes God Known

“Try” is dokimazete, the word for assaying metal to find out whether it is genuine. “Are gone out” is the verb of 2:19, where the antichrists “went out from us”: these prophets may once have sat in the same meetings, and are now at work in the wider world.

“Hereby”, en touto, “by this”, is the letter’s favourite hinge, used more often in 1 John than in any other book of the New Testament. “Is come” is a perfect participle: Jesus Christ as one who came in flesh and remains so. The word sarx, flesh, recalls John 1:14, “the Word was made flesh”.

Irenaeus, Origen and some Latin copies knew a reading “every spirit that looseth Jesus”, that is, that separates Jesus from the Christ; the Greek manuscripts read “confesseth not”. The word “antichrist” occurs only in the letters of John, and here it names a spirit already at work rather than a single figure still to come.

“Little children”, teknia, is the elder’s tender address, used seven times in the letter. “Have overcome” is a perfect tense, a victory already on record. The verb nikao is John’s word for conquest, and it returns in 5:4–5 and in the promise to “him that overcometh” in each of Revelation’s seven letters.

Three uses of “world” in one short line, and the reasoning runs in a deliberate circle: they come from the world, speak its idiom, and so the world listens. Their audience is explained by their origin. A hearing is treated as a family resemblance, not as evidence of truth.

The “we” narrows to the witnesses of 1:1–3, those who heard and handled. The test of spirits becomes a test of listeners. “The spirit of error” appears only here in the New Testament, and the Community Rule among the Dead Sea Scrolls sets a spirit of truth against a spirit of falsehood in strikingly similar terms.

The call to love follows straight on from the testing of spirits, with no bridge. The Greek is a present subjunctive, “let us keep loving”. “Is born of God” is a perfect tense: love is the sign of a birth that has already happened, not the way to bring it about.

“Knoweth not” is an aorist in Greek, “never came to know”: the loveless person did not lose touch with God but never knew him. “God is love” appears only here and in verse 16, and stands beside “God is light” (1:5) and “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24), the three “God is” sentences in John’s writings.

“Only begotten” translates monogenes, used of Jesus only by John (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18). It means one of a kind, unique, and Hebrews 11:17 uses it of Isaac, who was not Abraham’s only son but his only son of promise. “Manifested” repeats the verb of 1:2, where the life itself “was manifested”.

“Propitiation”, hilasmos, occurs in the New Testament only here and at 2:2. Its family includes hilasterion, the Greek Old Testament’s word for the mercy seat, the lid of the ark sprinkled with blood on the Day of Atonement. “Not that we loved God” is a perfect tense, “not that we had loved”.

The “if” states a fact, not a doubt: since God so loved us. The “so” echoes John 3:16. The obligation then turns sideways where one might expect it to turn back: not “we ought to love God in return” but “we ought to love one another”.

The opening words match John 1:18, “No man hath seen God at any time”, where the answer is that the Son has declared him. Here the answer is a people who love. The verb for “seen” is theaomai, the gazing word used in 1:1 of what the apostles “looked upon”.

“Of his Spirit” is partitive in Greek, ek tou pneumatos, “from his Spirit”: a share given, not the Spirit handed over for anyone to command. The wording nearly repeats 3:24, so that the whole testing of spirits in verses 1–6 sits between two statements about the Spirit God gives.

“Have seen” is again the gazing verb, in the perfect tense, a sight that still stands. The title “Saviour of the world” occurs elsewhere in the New Testament only in John 4:42, on the lips of the Samaritans of Sychar. In the same period it was carved on inscriptions honouring Roman emperors.

“Whosoever shall confess” uses the aorist, a single confession spoken out, like a vow made before witnesses. What follows is two-directional: God dwelling in the confessor and the confessor in God. The confession is short, four words in Greek after the verb, and the letter treats it as sufficient.

“Known and believed” are both perfect tenses, knowledge and faith that have settled into a state. “The love that God hath to us” is literally “in us”, en hemin. With the second “God is love” the definition gains a home: the one who remains in love is remaining in God.

“Boldness” is parresia, the free speech of a citizen who may say anything in the assembly; 2:28 used it of standing before Christ at his coming. “As he is, so are we in this world” is compressed, and most take it to mean that believers stand toward the Father as the Son does, which is why the day of judgment need not terrify.

“Torment” renders kolasis, which elsewhere means punishment, as in “everlasting punishment” in Matthew 25:46: this fear carries its penalty inside it. “Casteth out” is ballo exo, to throw out of doors, the words John 15:6 uses of the fruitless branch “cast forth”.

The oldest manuscripts read simply “We love, because he first loved us”, with no object; “him” was supplied in later copies. Without it the sentence covers love in every direction. “First” carries the weight: God’s love is the cause, and every human love comes second.

The claim joins the letter’s run of tested boasts: “if we say” three times in chapter 1 and “he that saith” three times in chapter 2. “Liar” is the blunt verdict each receives. Many manuscripts end with “cannot love God”, a flat impossibility, where the King James has a question.

“From him” most likely points to Jesus, whose new commandment in John 13:34 was that his disciples love one another. Jesus had himself tied the two great commandments together in Mark 12:29–31. The letter compresses that pair into a single commandment with two objects.