1 John 4:7-21

Knowing God through Love

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

9 God's love was revealed among us in this way:^[a] God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the^[b] propitiation^[c] for our sins.

11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

12 No one has ever seen God.^[d] If we love one another, God remains in^[e] us and His love is perfected in us.

13 This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given to us from His Spirit.

14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.

15 Whoever confesses^[f] that Jesus is the Son of God-God remains in him and he in God.

16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

17 In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; for we are as He is in this world.

18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment.^[g] So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love.

19 We love^[h] because He first loved us.

Keeping God's Commands

20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.^[i]

21 And we have this command from Him: the one who loves God must also love his brother.

Footnotes

• [a] Or revealed in us
• [b] Or a
• [c] The word propitiation has to do with the removal of divine wrath. Jesus' death is the means that turns God's wrath from the sinner; see 2 Co 5:21.
• [d] Since God is an infinite being, no one can see Him in His absolute essential nature; see Ex 33:18-23.
• [e] Or remains among
• [f] Or acknowledges
• [g] Or fear has its own punishment or torment
• [h] Other mss add Him
• [i] Other mss read seen, how is he able to love . . . seen? (as a question)