"Beloved,¹ no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning; the old commandment is that which ye heard.  Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining" (2^7,8).

    By a certain stateliness in the introduction of his theme the writer shows how strongly he is moved by the sense of its greatness.  His desire to come very close to the heart of his readers breaks out spontaneously in the affectionate and appealing "Beloved"; while, with deliberate skill, he uses the rhetorical device of reticence in order to whet their interest.  He announces his subject only by suggesting that there is no need to announce it wraps it up in half-revealing, half-concealing paradox.  "No new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment. . . . Again, a new commandment I write unto you."  But he has sufficient confidence in the perspicacity of his readers to assume that they will at once recognise in the commandment which is both "old" and "new" the familiar precept, "Love one another" (cf. 2 John ⁵).

    In this identity, though it has been denied or missed by some exegetes,² lies the fine significance of the antithesis.  The commandment is "old," because it is what "ye heard from the beginning."  It is "new," because it is "true (has its vital realisation) in Him and in you."  The commandment is "old."  It is no novelty the Apostle is about to urge upon them.  The test of walking in the light is nothing erudite or far-fetched.  To the readers of the Epistle it is "old" as the familiar fundamental law of Christianity which they had been taught among the first rudiments of the Gospel ("from the beginning," cf. 2²⁴).  But in a wider sense it is old as humanity itself, nay, older.  It is the law God has impressed upon all creature-life; which is seen in the self-sacrificing care of the tigress for her whelps, of the mother-bird for her nestlings.  It is the Eternal Law the law of God's own Being.  God is Love.  And, therefore, it is always "new," a fresh and living commandment.  Other laws become archaic and obsolete.  Like the ceremonial law of Judaism, for instance, they are now fossils, relics of modes of thought and of religious and social conditions that no longer exist.  But never can age antiquate or custom stale this commandment.  Never can the time come when men shall appeal to tradition or to statutory authority as a reason for loving one another.  This commandment is always "new," instinct with vital force, a spark from the Divine fire that kindles every soul into being.

    But to the Christian it is "new" in another and a special sense: - "which thing³ (not the law itself~ but the fact that it is a new and living law) is true in Him and in you."  There are times when the Law of Love shines out with a morning splendour, when it reveals a new significance to the human conscience and enters upon a further stage in its predestined conquest of human life.  And this was supremely the case when it was embodied in Christ, and when He infused into the precept, "Love one another," the new dynamic, "as I have loved you" (John 13³⁴).  The Love of Christ, typified by His washing the disciples feet (John 13^1-17) and completely realised in the laying down of His life for those whom only His love made His "friends" (John 15¹³), created a new commandment - gave to mankind a new conception, and imposed a new obligation.  And this commandment is still "new" in Him.  His whole Love expressed but did not exhaust itself in one act.  He laid down His Life that He might take it again.  The Love of Calvary is an ever-flowing fountain.  But also in "you" - in the Christian life - the commandment is always "new."  It is "old," - a word once for all heard and accepted, - but it is also a law continually realising itself in the movements of life, daily imparting fresh light and impulse in the experience of all upon whose heart it is written by their entering into and abiding in that life-transforming relation to Christ which is declared in the great words, "as I have loved you" (cf. 2 Cor. 5^14,15).

    The following clause, "because the true (avlhqino,n = real) Light is already shining," may be regarded as stating either the reason why the commandment is "new" in the experience of the Apostle's readers, or the reason why he writes to remind them of this.  The sequence of thought, in either case, is far from obvious; but it is less obscure and more forcible on the latter⁴ supposition than on the former.  The "true Light" that is vanquishing the darkness is not the dawning light of the Parousia (Huther) but the light of the Gospel.  It points back to the announcement on which this whole section of the Epistle is based, "God is Light" (1⁵).  The Light, which is the self-revelation⁵ of God, is now shining forth as never before.  In former times it had shone dimly and fitfully: in the Gentile world only as starlight; in the Old Testament only as a prophetic dawn.  In Christ it is as the sun shining in its strength.  The greater, then, is the necessity that men assure themselves of their walking in the Light of God, and the more is it necessary to remind them that, since the central glory of that Light is now seen to be the Divine Love, the inevitable test of fellowship with God is that the commandment of Love - the law of God's own Being - be fulfilled in them.

    "This old commandment, which ye heard from the beginning, is, nevertheless, a new, fresh, living commandment - a fact that is realised first in Christ and then in you; and of this commandment I once more put you in remembrance, that ye may assure yourselves thereby that ye are walking in the true Light which now is shining in the world."

    In the following verses (2^9-11) we have the application of the test.

    "He that saith he is in the Light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even until now" (2⁹).

    The ominous "He that saith" (cf 2^4-6) points unmistakably to the Gnostic, who, glorying in his superior enlightenment, despised the claims and neglected the duties of brotherly love.  With regard to such an one, the Apostle, instead of saying "He lies," states the plain, concrete inference, "He is in the darkness even until now. The light that does not reveal the obligation and impart the impulse of love is but a barren phosphorescence.  Even though the true light is now shining, he that lives in hate walks in darkness; for God, who is Light, is Love.

    "He that loveth his brother abideth in the Light, and there is no stumbling-block in him" (2¹⁰).  From the connection between the two clauses, it is evident that here the stumbling-block (ska,ndalon⁶) is conceived, not as a temptation that a man puts in another's way (Haupt), but that in his own disposition, which is a source of temptation to himself (Rothe; Westcott characteristically attempts to combine both ideas).  As in broad daylight obstructions over which one might trip and fall are seen and avoided, so, if we live in the habitual disposition of Love, we are not liable to be taken unawares by any temptation to sin against our brother.  Not only does Love remove such ska,ndala as pride, envy, jealousy, revenge; it is the one sure light for the path of duty, the one infallible guide in all our complex relations to our fellow-men.  It is because self-seeking governs men that life becomes so entangled. Love is that power of moral understanding⁷ which, almost with the certainty of instinct, discovers the way through the maze to those "good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."  There is nothing in love to entrap into sin.

    On the contrary, "He that hateth his brother is in the darkness, and walketh in the darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded⁸ his eyes" (2¹¹).

    The antithesis is complete in every item.  Towards a brother, not to love is to hate.⁹  There is no third possibility.  And he that hateth is ignorant of the stumbling-blocks that are in him.

    His whole moral being and doing are enveloped in darkness.  Without the guiding light of Love, he knoweth not whither he goeth¹⁰ - does not perceive the true character of his own actions.  The selfish man is innocent of any notion that he is selfish; the quarrelsome person thinks that every one is unreasonable except himself; the revengeful, that he is animated only by a proper self-respect.  "His whole life is a continual error."  Even if he does observe that his relation to his brother is somehow out of joint, he goes on imputing to him all the wrong and the mischief, the roots of which are really in himself - "Because the darkness hath blinded his eyes."  The penalty of walking in the darkness is the extinction of vision.  The Word of God is full of this truth.¹¹  He who will not see, at last cannot.

    The thought that gives unity to the second Cycle of the Epistle is Divine Sonship (2²⁹-4⁶); and here, accordingly, Love is enforced as a test of participation in the Life of God.  In the previous paragraph, to love one's brother is the proof of having passed from darkness into Light (2¹⁰), here, of having passed from death into Life (3¹⁴).  The paragraph, however, is not so regular in structure, nor are its contents knit so closely to the leading thought as is the Writer's wont.  But the leading thought itself is clearly fixed at the beginning, "Whosoever loveth not his brother is not of God."

    "Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother."

    Here the first clause sums up the preceding paragraph; the second unobtrusively effects a transition to the new¹² paragraph and propounds its thesis:  "Whosoever loveth not his brother is not of God."  The ultimate ground for this assertion is, of course, the impossibility of the loveless soul's having any community of life with God, Who is Love.  This, however, is advanced only in the third cycle (4^7,8); and, meanwhile, the Apostle is content to base his argument upon the primacy of Love, not in the Divine nature, but in the revelation of the Divine will.

    "Whosoever loveth not his brother is not of God.  For this is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we love one another" (3¹¹).  What was formerly announced as a "commandment" (2⁷) is here expressed as a "message."¹³  "Love one another is not only a definite Christian precept (John 13³⁴), it is the sum of Christian ethics.  All that Christ was and did says to men this one thing, "Love one another" (John 15^12,13).  This the Apostle's readers had heard "from the beginning."¹⁴  No one can learn the Gospel at all without learning this.

    In what follows, the Apostle, instead of developing his theme dialectically, does so pictorially.  He sets before us two figures, Cain (3¹²) and Christ (3¹⁶), as the prototypes of Hate and Love, and, therefore, of the children of the Devil and the children of God.

    In John 8⁴⁴ the Devil is represented as the "murderer from the beginning"; but here a more vivid image of the diabolical spirit is displayed in Cain, the firstborn of darkness, in whom that spirit, like Minerva from the brain of Jove, sprang immediately to full growth.

    "Not¹⁵ as Cain was of the¹⁶ evil one, and slew his brother.  And wherefore slew he him?  Because his own works were evil, and his brother s righteous" (3¹²).

    The word translated "slew" (e;sfaxen)¹⁷ suggests the brutality of the deed.  But it was not in the manner of the deed, it was in its astounding motive that the essentially diabolic spirit of brother-hatred was manifested.  This is brought out by the vivid interrogation and answer: - "And for what reason was it that he slew his brother?  Incredible as it may seem, it was because his brother's works were righteous, while his own were evil."  His brother's works were righteous, and he, therefore, hated and slew him.  The goodness he refused to emulate was unendurable; it goaded his self-love to madness.  A sentence was surely never penned that sheds a more horrifying light upon the evil capability of the human heart.  If we did not know as a fact and an experience the envy "which withers at another's joy and hates the excellence it cannot reach," it would seem a thing entirely preposterous a - fantasy from some grotesque nightmare world.  Yet, that man can become such a child of the Devil as to be filled with envy - what is this but proof that he is made to be the child of God?  How insatiable must the heart be that seeks to allay its thirst with the wine of Hate!

    "Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you" (3¹⁸).  This is most simply and logically taken in close connection with the verse preceding.¹⁸  "Cain still lives, and still hates Abel for his righteousness' sake.  The causeless and inexplicable hate that the world manifests towards you need awaken no surprise.  You are to it what Abel was to Cain.  It hates you because its works are evil and yours are righteous" (cf. John 15^18,25).

    "We know¹⁹ that we have passed from death into life,²⁰ because we love the brethren.  He that loveth not abideth in death" (3¹⁴).

    The primary stress of the sentence falls upon the emphatic "We know."

    As Cain, because he was of the evil one, hated and slew his brother, whose works were righteous, and as the world, because it is subject to the evil one (5¹⁹), still hates the children of God; so, on the contrary, the proof that we are begotten of a different spirit - that we have passed from death into life - is that we love the children of God - "the brethren."  The point of immediate emphasis is not that "we have passed from death into life" (though this also is necessarily emphatic), but that the test by which this is ascertained in our own case, is love to the brethren.²¹

    "We have passed from death into life because we love," contains a profound truth.  "The life which is the highest good is that which enters with ever quick and fresh responsiveness into the personal relationships in which our humanity is realised" (Newman Smyth).  By Love the soul lives and grows.  Selfishness spends for the poorest returns the noblest capacities of human nature.  The gold it lays its hands upon turns to dross; the flower it plucks withers.  Love alone discovers and possesses the highest good that is in all things human and Divine. It has the magic wand that changes even dross into fine gold.  To love the least of our brethren is to enrich the soul from the treasury of God.  To love is to live.²²  "He that loveth not abideth in death."  The statement is more than simply antithetic to what precedes.  There is no clearer proof of the great transition from life to death than love of the brethren; but the absence of such love is not only the absence of such proof, it is proof that the transition has not taken place.  This strong, severe statement is defended and confirmed in the verse following, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that, no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."  Here the "not loving" of the preceding verse becomes "hate" (cf. 2^10,11).  In the absence of Love, Hate is always potentially present.  "We often reckon want of love as mere indifference.  But such it is only while there is no rivalry or collision of interests.  As soon as this occurs indifference reveals its true character; it becomes actual hate" (Rothe).  You have but to irritate a man's self-love, to render yourself disagreeable to him; and, if there be no love in him toward you, there will presently be hate.  "And every one that hateth his brother is a murderer."  The proposition is stated as one of inherent necessity (pa/j o` misw/n).  "Hates any man the thing he would not kill?"  Literally, of course, this is not true.  Many hate who do not commit murder, nay, for whom the desire or dream of doing so is beyond the limit of the imaginable.  Yet, morally, the proposition is true; not merely because hate is the invariable precursor of murder, but because both reveal essentially the same moral attitude, and differ from each other only as a mild differs from a virulent attack of the same malady, or as a homicidal maniac under restraint differs from the same maniac at large.  In actual manifestation, hate may proceed no further than the feeling of a certain satisfaction in the discovery or report of what redounds to the hated person's discredit; but let hate be released from all the adventitious restraints of circumstance, of the conventional morality which sanctions hate but forbids overt injury, of the sensibilities engendered by civilised life, to which bloodshed or violence is aesthetically abhorrent; let hate act out its spontaneous impulses, and infallibly it would - as with the savage or the tyrant it does - kill.²³  In spite of seeming exaggeration, it is a profoundly true moral judgment - "He that hateth his brother is a murderer."  A fortiori is this true of the man, if such there be, who hates the brother beside whom, as he at least imagines, he lies in the bosom of the same Divine Love.  "And ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."  Comment is unnecessary. The word translated "ye know" (oi;date)²⁴ signifies that the matter requires neither demonstration nor even reflection (cf. Rev. 21⁸).

    So stringent, so inevitable, in its negative aspect, is the test of Love.

    The development of the subject that now follows (3^16-18) differs in two respects from that which has preceded.  The presentation, which thus far has been negative, becomes positive - Hate as personified by Cain gives place to Love as personified by Christ (3¹⁶).  And the test, which thus far has been applied in the abstract, is now brought closer to the facts of life (3^17,18).

    "In this, that He²⁵ laid down His life²⁶ for us, have we learned what Love is, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (3¹⁶).  Virtues are best illustrated by their contraries; and now we discover that the sinister figure of Cain has been introduced only the more perfectly to reveal the glory of Another Who is fairer than all the children of men.  Cain sacrificed his brother's life to his own wounded self-love; Christ sacrificed His own life in love to His brethren.  Cain slew his brother because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous; Christ's works were righteous and His brethren's evil, yet He took on Himself the burden of their evil deeds, and laid down His sinless life for their sakes.  And every man belongs to the brotherhood either of Cain or of Christ.  "In this we have learned to know²⁷ what Love is" (3^16a).  The fine point of the statement is lost by the insertion of any supplement - "of God" or "of Christ " after "Love."  This - this devotion of Jesus Christ to sinful men - is Love; and in this we have for the first time recognised what deserves the name.  "And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (3^16b).  We lay claim to Love.  What the nature of Love truly is, we have learned by this, that He laid down His life for us.  And Love must reproduce²⁸ in us what it was and did in Him.  If we have, so to say, a drop of the blood of Jesus Christ in our veins, we are under bond and pledge (ovfei,lomen),²⁹ whensoever the call comes to us, to manifest our Love in the same way of uttermost sacrifice.  For, though to think of Christ's Love to us, and then to think after what fashion it may be repeated in our relations to our fellow-men, is to compare the infinite with the infinitesimal - the sun with a flickering candle; yet, as light is light whether in the candle or the sun, as it has the same properties and the same laws of action, so Love is Love whether in Christ or in us.  Our lives must exhibit the same properties, obey the same spiritual laws, must be built upon the same ground-plan, as that Life of which the Cross was the perfect expression.  This is the test of our union with Him and of our Divine sonship in Him.

    But, though this obligation to lay down our lives for the brethren ever rests upon us, though our lives are mortgaged to this extent, opportunity for a full discharge of this obligation rarely comes (and, necessarily, it cannot yet have come to any living man, unless he have proved a recreant). A nd we must, above all, beware of crediting to ourselves as Love what is but the mouthing of well-sounding phrases, the play of the imagination upon lofty ideals, or the thrill of merely emotional sympathies.  This is a danger which besets Christianity, most, perhaps, of all religions.  Its ideals are so sublime, the emotions they awaken are so lofty and satisfying, that we are apt to regard our appreciation of those ideals and our susceptibility to those emotions as entitling us to a high place in the moral scale to feel as if we had paid every debt to Love when we have praised its beauty, felt its charm, and experienced its sentiment.  There needs some homelier test of Christian Love than the laying down of life.

    "But whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the Love of God abide in him?" (3¹⁷).  The word "beholdeth" (qewph/|) implies, not a casual glimpse, but a more or less prolonged view.  The case supposed is that the rich brother's sympathy is naturally drawn out by the spectacle of his poor brother's necessitous condition, but, when sympathy is on the point of becoming an impulse to action, the thought of the price in "the world's goods" causes him suddenly to call it back and, as it were, turn the key (klei,sh|) upon it.  Then, with vivid and even contemptuous interrogation, the niggard is held up before our eyes - "In what fashion does the Love of God dwell³⁰ in "such a man³¹ as that?"  By the "Love of God" we are to understand neither the love of God to us (Rothe, "How can God do otherwise than turn away His love from such a man?") nor our love to God (Huther, Haupt), but the Love which is the nature of God, which He has manifested toward us in Christ (3¹⁶), and in the possession of which consists our community of nature with Him.³²  To have "the Love of God abiding in us" is equivalent to having "Eternal Life abiding" in us (3¹⁵), to being "begotten of God" (4⁷) and to having God Himself "abiding in us" (4^12,16).

    The Apostle next sums up the paragraph with an affectionate exhortation to the practice of the truth which has been elucidated (3¹⁸), and a restatement of its reality as a test of our Divine sonship (3^19,20).

    "Little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth" (3¹⁸).³³  It is true, of course, that "words" are sometimes the best "deeds" of Love; and also that, as St. Paul insists (I Cor. 13³), there may be "deeds" without the "truth" of Love.  St. John is content to put the contrast broadly and strongly (cf. Jas. 2^15,16).

    "And by this shall we recognise that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him, whereinsoever our heart condemn us; because God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things" (3^19,20).

    This statement seems to resile from the settled certainty asserted in 3¹⁴.  "We know that we have passed from death into life, because we love the brethren."  But this knowledge must still be sustained by the testing fact - that "we love the brethren"; and how this testing fact is to be established has just been shown (3¹⁸).  The future tense, "we shall recognise" (gnwso,meqa), points not to the future fulfilment of the conditions laid down in 3¹⁸ (Westcott), - that, of course, is assumed, but to the future possibility of some shadow falling upon the clear mirror of the soul, as when our own heart condemns us.  Even then, if we have loved "in deed and in truth" we shall recognise by its proper marks the fact that our lives are, in their measure, an expression of that Divine Truth of which Christ is Himself the full embodiment (cf. John 14⁶, 18³⁷).  But this verse and those that follow (3^19-22), in which the effect of Love in "deed and in truth" upon the consciousness of our relation to God is exhibited, will come under consideration in a later chapter.³⁴  We proceed, therefore, to the third Cycle of the Epistle.  Here the place of primacy, which in the first and second Cycles is held by Righteousness, is given to Love.

    In the first Cycle, Love has been exhibited as the great "commandment" of the Christian Life (2^7,8).  In the second, it is regarded as the sign and test of Divine sonship (3^10b,14,17); but this, though assumed, has not been clearly grounded.  That the life begotten of God is essentially a life of Righteousness has been expressly deduced from the nature of God: - "If ye know that He is righteous, know that every one also that doeth Righteousness is begotten of Him" (2²⁹).  But no parallel statement has hitherto been made with regard to Love; and it is this development of the subject, therefore, that occupies the present paragraph.  Here the Epistle rises to its sublimest height.  It is impossible to conceive that the theme which is the ethical heart of Christianity could be more nobly enshrined than in these few sentences of gold pure and unadorned.  Brief as the paragraph is, it is worthy to be set beside the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, as the loftiest that man has ever been inspired to indite.

    "Beloved, let us love one another, because Love is of God" (4^7a).  Again the prefatory "beloved" (cf. 2⁷) reveals how warmly the Apostle's affections are stirred towards his readers by his thought of the truth he is about to declare (cf. 2⁷).  It urgently commends to their thought the "old commandment," - an exhortation so familiar that it might be in danger of being accepted and neglected as a truism.

    "Let us love . . . because Love is of God."  This, as has been said, is a new connection of ideas.  It has been implied, but not hitherto expressed.

    Up to this point Love has been regarded as duty rather than as disposition (2^7,8,  3²³).  The duty of active Love has been urged as indispensable to "walking in the Light" (2¹⁰), as an obligation bound upon the Christian by the example of Christ (3¹⁶), and as a tangible proof that we are "of the truth" (3¹⁹).  But now the deeper underlying thought, "Love is of God," reveals a deeper motive for the duty, "let us love."  Let us express in word and deed the Divine nature which is ours - let us cultivate the disposition of Love and bring forth its fruits.  Thus the verse emphasises equally the Divine source of Love and its manifestation in human activity.³⁵  The "exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe" does not supersede, but only heightens the power of volition (Phil. 2^12,13).  Therefore, "let us love one another, because Love is of God."

    "And every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God" (4^7b).  The redemptive relation to God is here presented in its double aspect as the being "begotten of God," and as "knowing God"³⁶ (cf. 2^3,4, 4⁶, John 17³).  And as the reality of this has been already tested, in both aspects, by Righteousness and Belief (the Divine Begetting by Righteousness, 2²⁹, by Belief, 4^2,3; the knowledge of God by Righteousness, 2^2,3, by Belief, 4⁶), so now it is subjected, in both aspects, to the test of Love.  The inter-relation of these terms - "loving" "begotten of God," "knowing God" - has been variously³⁷ construed.  But it is quite clear that the relation of "loving" to each of the other two is that of the test to the thing tested.  Love is the test, because the invariable consequence of the Divine Begetting.  And it is the test of the knowledge of God, either because it is its invariable consequence, or because it is its indispensable condition.  We may say that only he who loveth knoweth God, because like is known only by like.  Love is the organ of spiritual insight - the Divine in us which enables us to apprehend the Divine (2^9,11).  But it is equally true that Love is the effect and, therefore, the test of all true knowledge of God.  We may choose either form of the argument, or adopt both.  The resulting truth is that every one who lives the life of Love has therein the realisation of the fact that he has been made partaker of the nature of God, and that he has a continuous and progressive perception (ginw,skei) of what God's nature is.

    On the contrary, "He that loveth not has no knowledge of God, because God is Love" (4⁸).  Here the negation is heightened in proportion as the affirmation is strengthened.  It was said of "every one that loveth" that he has a continuous perception of what God is (ginw,skei); but what is said of him "that loveth not" is that he has never had any perception of God at all (ouvk e;gnw).³⁸  The reason is that God is Love.  There is nothing in Him that is not Love.  Otherwise it might be claimed for "him that loveth not" that he has some perception of God, though not of His love.  But God is Love; and the blindness of the unloving is unbroken by a single gleam.

    The exposition of the next two verses has been given in an earlier chapter.³⁹  Here, it is enough to indicate their place in the sequence of thought.  The first (4⁹) is closely linked to the idea of knowledge; the second (4¹⁰), to the idea of Love.  Begotten of God and loving one another, we have the faculty for spiritually apprehending the nature of God, Who is Love.  But wherein is God fully revealed for our apprehension?  "Herein was the Love of God manifested toward us, that God hath sent His Only-Begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him."  And what is the essence of this manifestation, the nature of the Love thus revealed?  "Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins."

    From this sublime contemplation of the Divine Love, the Apostle returns to his main theme.  "Beloved, if God loved us, we also are bound⁴⁰ to love one another" (4¹¹).  If it was thus that God loved us, if His love was so transcendently great, and so independent of all worthiness or attractiveness in us that our very sinfulness became the occasion of its supreme activity: then we, if we are partakers of His nature, are bound, - for us it is a moral necessity to love even as He loved (cf. Matt. 5^43-48, John 13³⁴).  But by what is this debt to be paid?  The answer to this question is highly significant.  Instead of the anticipated "We ought to love God," it is "We ought to love one another"; and why it must be so is immediately explained.

    "God (in Himself) no man hath ever seen; if we love one another, God abideth in us, and His Love is perfected in us" (4¹²).  God is invisible.⁴¹  We cannot directly do Him any good.  We can make no sacrifice for His immediate benefit.  He has no need of our help.  We cannot give to Him, but can only receive from Him blessings upon blessings, numberless as the sand of the shore.  We cannot, in short, love God after the same fashion in which He has loved us.  Yet, if we are "begotten of God" we have in us the same nature of Love that He has manifested toward us in Christ.  And there is provision by which this nature may be manifested and exercised in us.  "If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and His Love is perfected in us."  If we have the Love⁴² that is not merely liking for the likeable, admiration for the admirable, gratitude to the generous - Love whose will to bless men is undeterred by demerit or unattractiveness, that bears another's burden, dries another's tears, forgives injuries, overcomes evil with good, - Love which is prompt to help those who need our help (hoping for nothing again), instead of those who need it not (hoping for much in return) - then the Love that manifests itself in us is that Divine kind of love which is most worthy of the name; yea, it is God Himself within us, acting out His Life in ours.  It is His Love that is "fulfilled"⁴³ (tetelei,wtai) in us.  Thus the end of the paragraph answers to the beginning.  The Apostle's exhortation and its ultimate ground are:  "Beloved, let us love another - If we love one another, the Love of God is perfected in us."

    The same theme is resumed and developed in the final paragraph on Love (4²⁰-5^3a).⁴⁴  In all that has been said, the necessity and the sufficiency of Love as a test of genuine Christianity have been established.  But before leaving the subject the Apostle will once more remind us of the tests by which Love itself is to be recognised as genuine (cf. 3^16-18).  These are found, first, in its action towards our fellow-men (4²⁰-5¹); and, secondly, in its moral integrity (5^2,3a).

    "If any man say,⁴⁵ I love God, and hateth⁴⁶ his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen" (4²⁰).

    The argument is, at first sight, one which it is difficult to maintain.  For, while it is true that visibility and neighbourhood conduce to love, that "If the object to be loved incites to love by the immediate impression it makes upon us, love is easier than when we have no sensuous perception of it at all" (Rothe, so also Huther and Weiss); it is no less true that the impression made may be such as by no means to incite to love.  To love my brother may be to love one in whom there is little that is amiable, one, perhaps, who has done me grievous wrong; to love God is to love Him Who first loved me, Who has forgiven me a thousand wrongs, Who is Himself all that is glorious, beautiful, and good.  The Apostle must not be held guilty of making a statement so preposterous as that it is easier to love such a brother,⁴⁷ because he is visible, than to love God, since He is invisible.  The truth is that this interpretation is based on an erroneous notion of what, in the mind of St. John, Love is.  With him, Love does not stand for a passive emotion awakened by the impression that others make upon us.  It is an active principle, a determination of the will to do good, the highest good possible, to its object.⁴⁸  This being borne in mind, the argument here is both intelligible and absolutely cogent.  It is, in fact, the same argument, in more explicit form, as we have already found in 4¹².  Visibility and invisibility signify the presence or absence, not of attraction or incitement to love, but of opportunity for loving.  Your brother is in sight; and when you will you may do him good.  But God is invisible; your beneficence, your sympathy, cannot reach unto Him Who is the bearer of all burdens, the giver of all good gifts (cf. Ps. 50^9-12, Matt. 26¹¹).  In the nature of the case there is no other medium through which our love to God, who first loved us, can be realised than by loving our brother, especially if he have not first loved us.

    It is now asserted, moreover, that our relation to our brother is ordained for this very end.  "And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also" (4²¹).  The first reason why love to God is necessarily realised in love to men is the consideration of opportunity (4²⁰).  The second is the express revealment of the Divine purpose for man.  The ultimate end for which all social relations exist is that they may be, so to say, the arteries through which the Divine Life of Love shall flow.

    In the following verse a third reason is adduced affinity of nature.  The commandment that "He who loveth God love his brother also" is based on the deep universal law of kinship.  "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Clrist is begotten of God: and whosoever loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him"(5¹).  Here the first⁴⁹ clause is strictly introductory to the second.  The statement, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is Christ is begotten of God," is made only in order to define the persons to whom the brotherly love of Christians is due, and the grounds on which it is due.  In opposition to Gnostic exclusiveness it claims for all believers the full measure of brotherly love; and it does so, because all are children of the One Father - "Every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him."

    He who loves the parent who is the source of his own life, must love those whose life is derived from the same origin.  Fraternal love follows by psychological necessity from filial love.  He that is "begotten of God" cannot but love those who share with him the life that unites men in their deepest convictions, dispositions, aspirations, and hopes.

    In the next brief sub-section, containing the Apostle's last word on this theme, Love, whether towards God or towards man, is finally tested by Righteousness.⁵⁰  Genuine Love must be holy.  "Herein we know (recognise) that we love the children of God, when we love God and do His commandments" (5²).  This is a verse the great significance of which is apt to be overlooked.  Its statement of the necessary relation of love to God and love to man is the exact converse of that which is given in the preceding verses.  There it has been shown that by a threefold necessity necessity of opportunity (4²⁰), of obedience to express ordinance of the Divine Will (4²¹), of the instincts of spiritual kinship (5¹) love to God can only realise itself in love to man.  Here, on the other hand, it is maintained that love to man is truly love only when it is rooted in and governed by love to God.  Piety without philanthropy is unreal; philanthropy without piety may be immoral - may instead of a fish give a serpent, - at best, it is impotent to bestow the highest good, and instead of bread gives a stone.  It is a great ethical principle that St. John here enunciates.  We cannot truly bless our fellow-men, - unless in our personal lives we follow after the highest good - "love God and do His commandments."  The man who does many generous actions but lives a licentious or an impious life does, upon the whole, more, and more enduring harm than good.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, and "the true philosophy of doing good is, first of all and principally to have a character that will of itself communicate good."  The love of Christ had its supreme activity, not in His feeding the hungry or giving sight to the blind, but in this - "For their sakes I consecrate Myself, that they also may consecrate themselves" (John 17⁹).  The highest service that any man can render to humanity is to "love God and keep His commandments."

    "For this is the Love of God,⁵¹ that we keep His commandments" (5^3a).  The Apostle re-echoes his Master's words (John 14^15,21) in asserting that to speak of a love to God that does not essentially signify moral integrity is to speak of what does not and cannot exist.  To love God is not only a motive impelling to obedience; it is, in itself, assimilation to the Divine.  To love God is to love all that is of "righteousness and true holiness."  It has no other meaning than this.

    Thus it has been shown that from love to God there necessarily issue both love to our brother (5¹) and moral integrity (5^2,3a).  Hence also it follows that neither of these can genuinely exist without the other (cf. 3¹⁰).  "By this we recognise that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments" (5²).  This is the Apostle's last word on Love.

    Of the various themes which are so wonderfully intertwined in the Epistle, that to which it most of all owes its imperishable value and unfading charm is Love.  There are portions of it that are seldom read and more seldom expounded in our churches; but there are few passages of Scripture more familiar than those in which St. John has been so divinely inspired to write of the Eternal Life, in God and in man, as Love.  This is due to nothing concrete or dramatic in the presentation; and insistent as he is that Love is essentially a practical energy, yet as an exponent of the practical implications of Love he does not come into competition with St. Paul.  There is nothing in the Epistle that is comparable to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, with its delicate analysis, or to the twelfth chapter of Romans, with its masterly exposition of the manifold applications of the New Commandment to the actual relations of life.  On the other hand, St. John's development of the theme, according to his peculiar genius and for his special purpose, is unapproachable and final.  He has demonstrated from every point of view that Christianity without Love is a contradiction in terms.  Do we think of the Christian life as a walking in that Light which is the self-revelation of God, then the central ray of that Revelation is Love; and to walk in Light is to walk in Love.  Do we think of it as that Life of which Christ is the Archetype and Mediator, then His spirit of absolute self-surrender must be reproduced in it.  Do we think of it as participation in the Divine Nature itself then God is Love, and every one that loveth, and none else, abideth in God and God in Him.  Finally, would we be assured that that Love which is the nature of God is operative in us, then this must be made manifest in our conduct toward our fellow-men.

    But it is just here that a feature emerges in which St. John's conception of Love seems to be strangely circumscribed and defective - its rigid limitation to the love of Christians toward their fellow-Christians.  The urgency with which every argument and plea is plied to enforce love to our " brother," to the "children of God," only makes the fact more glaring, that from first to last there is not the suggestion of an outlook beyond the Christian community.  By the modern reader this limitation is scarcely noticed, for we instinctively give the widest scope to the language used, and interpret our "brother" as our fellow-man.  But by the exegete the fact has to be recognised that, in the teaching of the Epistle, there is no hint that h` avga,ph - the Love that is the replica in man of the Love of God - is due from us to any other than our fellow-Christian.  The point is one that has received little consideration.  It is not enough to say that it is "only through the recognition of the relation to Christ that the larger relation is at last apprehended" (Westcott).  How shall we explain the absence of anything to indicate that the larger relation has been at all apprehended by the Writer?  Or, again, if all that can be said is that "other members of the human race are not excluded, they are not under consideration" (Plummer), it must be admitted that, in point of Christian insight, the Epistle lags far behind the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  Nor is it inconceivable that this should be the case.  But as we have found, I hope, a key to some of the perplexities of the Epistle regarding its doctrine of Righteousness in its immediate polemical purpose, it is from the same quarter, probably, that we must seek light upon the present difficulty.  For it must be observed that it is exclusively as a test, that the idea of Love is employed in the Epistle.  Even when the utterance is most positive and hortatory, the underlying thought is that of the test supplied by the obligation enforced.  And if we think of the circumstances of a Christian community in the Apostolic age, it is very evident that the most immediate, practicable, and certain test of Christian Love was to be found, not in its widest extension, but in the sphere of its most definite and obvious obligation.  This difference of purpose must be allowed for in comparing the teaching of the Epistle with our Lord's great parable.  There, He holds up to us the Samaritan as a pattern of the Love that makes neighbours, and says, "Go and do likewise."  Here, St. John holds up the Priest and the Levite as specimens of the lovelessness that declines the claims even of brotherhood, and says: "If you can thus shut up the bowels of your compassion from a needy brother, you are a Christian only in name" (3¹⁷).  And even this he does with direct polemical aim.  He is striking, not at a universal tendency, but at a special manifestation of that tendency.  As has been shown in a previous chapter,⁵² the utterances of the Epistle regarding Love are as directly anti-Gnostic in their aim as those regarding Righteousness and Belief.  The task thrust upon the writer was not to urge the truth, "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto," but to insist, in view of the arrogant and loveless⁵³ intellectualism of the Gnostic character, that Love is of the essence of the God-begotten Life; and, in view of its esoteric and separatist tendencies, that Christian Love must be extended to the whole Body of Christ - must comprehend without distinction all the children of God.⁵⁴