Exploring 1 John: God’s Love is Perfected in Us
1 John 4:12-14 - We cannot see God, but we can know that His love abides in us.
“No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”
1 John 4:12-14 NASB1995
John begins this next passage with a puzzling statement that no one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us! I seem to recall in my Bible readings over the years that God “appeared” to many in the Old Testament, like Adam, Moses, the nation of Israel and Isaiah. But I learned a new word today reading commentary: Theophany! According to Gotquestions.org, a theophany is defined as follows:
A theophany is a manifestation of God in the Bible that is tangible to the human senses. In its most restrictive sense, it is a visible appearance of God in the Old Testament period, often, but not always, in human form.
But John is saying no one has seen God. This is true when you think about it! These appearances were done with an outward manifestation of the immortal, INVISIBLE God that would make sense to the humans viewing it. It’s like seeing a shadow or reflection of the real being. I found a delightful commentary about this from Precept Austin quoting the late Harry Ironside, who was at Moody Bible College:
This is not the first time this expression is found in the Scriptures. In John 1:18 you will find the exact same words, “No man hath seen God at any time.” Let’s examine these controversial words, for Scripture seems to indicate that there were many instances where men saw God. Didn’t God speak with Moses face to face, and didn’t He put him in a cleft of the rock while He passed by? Didn’t Adam speak with God in the garden? And doesn’t Isaiah say that “In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1)? Didn’t Ezekiel have visions of God, and didn’t the glory of the Lord appear to Daniel and many others? Yes, and yet it remains true that, “No man hath seen God at any time.”
God is a Spirit, infinite and eternal, and is Himself invisible. Christ, however, has revealed God to men. But before Jesus became incarnate, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit were all invisible. The Old Testament characters of whom it is written that they saw God, saw a form that God took-a Theophany-by which He revealed Himself to them. They saw His glory and splendor, but they could not see His deity.
No one, in a sense, has ever seen you. People have seen your body, your face, and your eyes, but they have never seen the real you-the spirit that looks out through your eyes. We cannot see the real man, for under present conditions the spirit of man is invisible. We shall never really see one another as long as we are in the flesh, but in eternity we shall see and know one another in spirit.
No one has ever seen the sun. Someone might object to that and say, “How can you tell me that I have never seen the sun! Of course I have seen it. I have seen it rise, I have seen it moving through the heavens, I have seen it set as it dips into the west.” But you are mistaken. You have never seen the sun! You have seen the robe of glory that envelopes it, but you cannot pierce that glory and see behind the flame that enfolds that great globe. That would be impossible. It is the sun that gives out that glory and you cannot even gaze on that in its full strength at noonday for one minute, because of its blinding glare.
A great astronomer was so delighted when one of the finest telescopes was first invented that, in his haste to look at the sun through it, he forgot to put the dark glass over the lens. Swinging that great instrument into place, he leaned down and with the naked eye looked through the lens at the sun. The next moment he uttered a cry of pain as the blinding light burned his eye, destroying its sight completely! Plato said, “The radiant light is the shadow of God.” David declared of God, Thou “coverest thyself with light as with a garment” (Ps 104:2). The light, the glory, the radiance is just the garment, and God is behind it all, invisible.
Just think about that statement that no one in this fleshly life has seen the REAL you! They see the physical being of your body, your eyes, your smile, but they cannot see your soul. In fact, YOU have never seen the real “you” although you can sense and know of your inner soul, but you have only seen the most important feature of your physical self, your face, in a reflection. Whoa! Sounds like something that could keep you up at night. But we will know each other in spirit in eternity.
Oh, Steve and I did gaze upon the sun (with dark lenses) during the eclipse recently, but one could never gaze at it with the naked eye for more than a second or two because of the glory and blinding nature of the light. Our sun is a middle-of-the-road fusion furnace (described as a “yellow dwarf”) among trillions of similar and more impressive cosmic cousins in our universe. So think about what the light of God must be like!! And He is behind that light, a spirit that is invisible. Steve has written recently about light in his devotionals , so it is no coincidence that I am in this passage in 1 John right now.
Photo © 2024, Steven Sande. The “diamond ring” effect at the end of an eclipse, when the sun peeks out from behind the moon again and everyone runs for their eclipse glasses and filters.
Even though we cannot see God (or the Holy Spirit) we know that He abides in us when we love one another and His Spirit has been given to us. Jesus became a physical manifestation of the Triune God (He was invisible before the incarnation) and John, the beloved disciple, probably knew and loved every feature of His face. Jesus is the face of God!
John is reassuring believers of their salvation in that their love means that God is abiding in them and is perfected by them. Let’s do a quick word study:
“Perfected” comes from the Greek word τελειόω or teleióō, with the following Biblical usages; Strong’s G5048 is used 23 times in the New Testament:
to make perfect, complete
to carry through completely, to accomplish, finish, bring to an end
to complete (perfect)
add what is yet wanting in order to render a thing full
to be found perfect
to bring to the end (goal) proposed
to accomplish
bring to a close or fulfilment by event
of the prophecies of the scriptures
His love through us brings things to completion! I also found this commentary to be quite good, from Pastor Steven Cole in Precept Austin, on why this assurance from John is so vital:
Almost every Christian at some time has struggled with assurance of salvation. Perhaps you heard some godless university professor rail against the Christian faith, or you heard about a book or movie like The Da Vinci Code, and it caused you to doubt the truth of Christianity. Then the enemy hit you with the thought, “How could you be a genuine Christian and have these thoughts?” Or, it may have been during a time of severe trial, where God did not seem to be answering your prayers. The difficulties in your life multiplied without relief. You cried out to God, but He seemed to be on vacation. You just couldn’t make sense out of what was happening to you. Then, you began to doubt both the Christian faith and whether you were really a Christian at all. The enemy has many such ways to shake our assurance of salvation. In the case of John’s first readers, false teachers were spreading heresy among the churches. They had left to form new churches, and many had followed them. When your friends join a new group with new teachings, it can cause you to question whether what you believe is really true. So the apostle John writes to his little children to give them assurance that they were truly abiding in Christ.
I can tell you from personal experience that our culture, steeped in whispers and shouts from the enemy, can certainly influence people to walk away from Christian faith, if that faith is in any way a “little shaky”. If you are a Christian then you are simple-minded, bigoted, hateful, stupid, uneducated, fearful, unscientific, superstitious, a lover of fairy tales, and you believe in an invisible being! You threaten democracy by wanting a theocracy! You might as well believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster! I saw believers get called all of those things in some of the secular humanist publications that I read in my wilderness years, from loveless, hopeless humans who thought they were smart. Thank God in His great mercy for calling me back to belief and to His love! And I don’t want a theocracy! His kingdom is not of this world, but this world certainly benefits from His believers as they perfect His love.
In the last verse of this passage, John talks about how he has seen and testified that the Father sent the Son to be the savior of the world. This is the Gospel in a nutshell. His love cannot abide and be perfected by us unless we confess and believe that Jesus is our Redeemer. Enduring Word has some good commentary on this verse:
We have seen and testify: Speaking as one who has the Spirit of God (He has given us of His Spirit), John declares three essential truths about who God is and how He saves us.
· That the Father has sent the Son.
· That He (Jesus) was sent as Savior of the world.
· Knowing and understanding Jesus is the foundation for abiding in Him (Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God).
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God: It isn’t enough to know the facts about who Jesus is; we must confess the truth. The idea behind the word confess is “to be in agreement with.” We must agree with God about who Jesus is, and we find out what God says about Jesus through the Word of God. You may know something without being in agreement with it; God demands our true agreement.
Though John has been writing much about love, he does not ignore the issue of truth. John does not think it is “enough” if a person has some kind of love in his life if he does not confess that Jesus is the Son of God. It isn’t a matter of deciding between love or truth; we must have both.
“To acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God is not simply to make a statement about his metaphysical status but to express obedient trust in the One who possesses such a status.” (I. Howard Marshall)
“To believe in Christ and to love the brethren are not conditions by which we may dwell in God but rather are evidences of the fact that God has already taken possession of our lives to make this possible.” (James Montgomery Boice).
We must have both love and truth and be in agreement with God about who Jesus is; just demonstrating love is not enough!
My next devotional examines 1 John 4:15-16 - Know and believe the love of God.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - I know what You look like! You look like Jesus, who was incarnated as man and came among us with His perfect love. I confess and believe in Him as my savior and trust in my salvation! Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Precept Austin was accessed on 6/7/2024 to review commentary for 1 John 4:12-14.
The Blue Letter Bible was accessed on 6/7/2024 to review the lexicon for “perfected”.
Gotquestions.org was accessed on 6/7/2024 to review the definition for Theophany.
Commentary from Enduring Word by David Guzik is used with written permission.