1 John 4:7–21_Perfect love casts out fear

15/6/25

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1 John 4

Questions

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. ⁸ The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1. How does love relate to knowledge of God?¹ Why?

⁹ By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God sent his one and only Son into the world in order that we may live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the ἱλασμόν² for our sins.

2. What is the ultimate demonstration of God’s love?³

¹¹ Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us and his love is perfected in us.

3. Is there a connection between love and seeing God?⁴

¹³ By this we know that we reside [μένομεν] in him and he in us: that he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

4. What role does the Holy Spirit play?⁵

¹⁵ Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides [μένει] in him and he in God. ¹⁶ And we have come to know and have believed the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides [μένει] in love resides in God, and God resides [μένει] in him.

5. What must we confess if we are abiding in God? What does it mean to reside [μένω] in God?⁶

⁶ And YHWH passed over before him, and he proclaimed, “YHWH, YHWH, God, who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger [lit. “long of nose”], and abounding with loyal love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping loyal love to the thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and he does not leave utterly unpunished, punishing the guilt of fathers on sons and on sons of sons on third and fourth generations.”

Exodus 34:6–7

5. Does the statement that “God is love” align with God’s revelation of his character to Moses in Exodus after the golden calf rebellion?

¹⁷ By this love is perfected [τετελείωται [perfect, passive]] with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as that one is, so also are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear includes punishment⁷, and the one who is afraid has not been perfected in love.

6. Why is there no fear in love?⁸ What does “perfected” [τετελείωται] mean especially in the context of “just as that one is, so also are we in this world”?⁹

¹⁹ We love, because he first loved us.

7. What does John emphasise about our love in contrast to God’s love?¹⁰

²⁰ If anyone 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 is not able to love God whom he has not seen. ²¹ And this is the commandment we have from him: that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

8. How does John 4:20 challenge the hypocritical claims of loving God? Again, why does he reference seeing God in this context?¹¹

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BibleProject Guide: The Books of 1-3 John

1. Loving others is evidence of being “born of God” and knowing him. Those who lack love prove they do not truly know God (4:7–8).

2. "In the Septuagint, hilasmos sometimes is used to translate כִּפֻּרִים (kippurîm, “atonement”). In the NT, the word appears only in 1 John (2:2; 4:10). Both passages refer to Christ as the hilasmos for humankind’s sins—i.e., the sacrifice of atonement." Adriani Milli Rodrigues, “Atonement,” in Lexham Theological Wordbook, ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Bible Reference Series, Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014.

3. Sending his “one and only Son” as an atoning sacrifice for sin, which reconciles humanity to himself (4:9–10).

4. While no one has seen God visibly, his love becomes visible when believers love one another.

5. The Spirit testifies to God’s indwelling presence, assuring believers of their relationship with him.

6. Acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God, which aligns with orthodox belief against docetic heresies.

7. "Punishment (most properly expressed in Hebrew by some form of פָּקִד, pakád, strictly “to visit,” and in Greek by κόλασις [here] or τιμωρία, but frequently denoted by other terms). The following account is based upon the Scripture statements, with illustrations from ancient and modern sources." John M’Clintock and James Strong, “Punishment,” in Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1894), 787.

8. Perfect love expels fear of judgment, as those confident in God’s love know they are “like Christ”

9. John speaks in the present tense that God’s love is completed in us “just as that one is [Jesus], so also are we in this world”. We cannot say we are without sin but love is made complete by our mutual abiding in God and he in us!

10. Our love is a response to God’s prior love; it does not originate within ourselves.

11. It declares that anyone who hates a brother/sister is a liar, as love for God cannot exist without love for others. It is in loving one another we get a glimpse of God.