Divine Love, Unlimited Atonement; Deity of Christ; 1 John 4:15-18

1 John 4:15 ^NASB “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” This is a key verse in understanding the problem of the false teacher. It is going to apply abiding in Christ and fellowship, and the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in understanding doctrine, to the false Christology of these false teachers. “Confesses” is the verb homologeo [o(mologew] which means to admit or acknowledge. “Whoever” is they who are in fellowship and are able to understand this doctrine.

What does John mean when he says “Jesus is the Son of God”? This is a key point in the epistle. John uses the phrase “Son” in relationship to the Son of God 22 times, and 7 times in the epistle he emphasises the phrase “Son of God.” So this apparently is a major issue that they were facing in terms of false teaching, in terms of the deity of Christ. The phrase “Son of God” is used over 42 times in the New Testament to refer to Jesus Christ, and just the tern “Son” itself is used many more times. The problem is that we tend to understand the tern “son” in a creaturely sense of derivation, descent, offspring or birth. This is the problem the early church faced in the fourth century when they encountered the heresy known as Arianism.

The issue at the Council of Nicea which convened in 325 was over two words: homoousios [o(moousioj] and homoiousios [o(moiousioj]. It was called the battle of the diphthong. What this meant was whether or not Jesus was of the same substance as the Father, which would indicate that He is eternal God, or whether He was of a similar substance. Everything depended on the difference of one small letter. In the Greek it is the letter iota. At the Council of Nicea they clearly articulated the eternality of Jesus Christ. But then things got political. The emperor Constantine died and his son took over and the homoiousoios crowd, the Arians, came along and got him on their side, Athanasius was exiled, and heresy was in control of the church. Athanasius was exiled four times in his life and it wasn’t until later on in the century at the Council of Ephesus and then finally in the next century at the Council of Chalcedon that they finally settled. Things went back and forth for about 70 years before they finally settled on this. After 70 years they began to see the implications of what Arius taught: that there was no salvation because you don’t have a real saviour if He is not fully God. So Arianism finally disappeared, except for a few instances that cropped up here and there until Charles Taze Russell came along in the 19^th century and found the so-called Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The term “son of” is a Hebrew idiom for describing the character of a person. For example, in Numbers 17:10 ^NASB “But the LORD said to Moses, “Put back the rod of Aaron before the testimony to be kept as a sign against the rebels, that you may put an end to their grumblings against Me, so that they will not die.” Te word “rebels” is a translation but the Hebrew says “sons of rebels.” It wasn’t that their fathers were rebels but that they were characterised by rebellion. Psalm 89:22 ^NASB “The enemy will not deceive him, Nor the son of wickedness afflict him.” The son of wickedness is an idiom for wickedness. The point is that the term “son of” does not indicate birth or derivation, it was a descriptive idiom and the second half of the phrase, whether it is wickedness or rebellion of what ever, is what is being emphasised. That is the attribute that is being assigned to the person. 2 Kings 6:32 ^NASB “Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. And {the king} sent a man from his presence; but before the messenger came to him, he said to the elders, ‘Do you see how this son of a murderer has sent to take away my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold the door shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?’” He is not referring to the king’s father as being a murderer but that the king himself was a murderer. Job 30:8 ^NASB “Fools [Heb. “sons of fools”], even those without a name, They were scourged from the land.” 1 Samuel 25:17 ^NASB “Now therefore, know and consider what you should do, for evil is plotted against our master and against all his household; and he is such a worthless man [Heb. “son of Belial”] that no one can speak to him.” Belial was a designation for someone who was worthless. Proverbs 31:5 ^NASB “For they will drink and forget what is decreed, And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.” The phrase translated “afflicted” is actually “the sons of affliction” in the Hebrew. Ezra 4:1 ^NASB “Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile [sons of the exile] were building a temple to the LORD God of Israel.” That means they are the ones exiled. Amos 7:14 ^NASB “Then Amos replied to Amaziah, ‘I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs.’” Isaiah 19:11 ^NASB “The princes of Zoan are mere fools; The advice of Pharaoh’s wisest advisers has become stupid. How can you {men} say to Pharaoh, ‘I am a son of the wise, a son of ancient kings’?” This indicates wisdom and loyalty. Acts 4:36 ^NASB “Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means Son of Encouragement).” His attribute or character was that he encouraged people. James and John were called the sins of thunder because they were rather loud and boisterous, it didn’t have anything to do with their father Zebedee. Luke 10:6 uses the phrase “son of peace” to indicate a person who is a man of peace, a peaceful individual. Ephesians 2:2 talks about the “sons of disobedience,” describing all humanity because every human being is born a sinner and disobedient to God. In John 17:12 Judas is called the “son of perdition,” and that is the noun of the word apollumi [a)pollumi], apoleia [a)pwleia] which is “destruction.” Judas is characterised as one who perished. That means he was an unbeliever. “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition…” This is a clear statement that Judas was lost.

The conclusion is, having gone through all these idioms, is that the title Son of God does not emphasise Jesus’ birth, does not mean that there was a time when Jesus was not but that it emphasises His deity. Te word that follows the “of” tells us what the characteristic is. When Jesus is called the Son of Man it emphasises His humanity; when He is called the Son of God it emphasises His deity; when He is called the son of David that is indicating that he is in the class of the Davidic heirs. So when we come to 1 John 4:15 which says whoever is convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, i.e. whoever admits that Jesus is fully God, undiminished deity, God abides in him and he in God. That indicates that there is no such thing as fellowship among folks like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are probably not even saved because they don’t have a true Saviour.

1 John 4:16 ^NASB “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” The first verb, translated “we have come to know,” is the perfect active indicative of ginosko [ginwskw]. As a perfect tense verb it emphasises present results, an action that has been completed. (An intensive perfect emphasises the present results of a past action. So John is emphasising a present tense reality in the life of the apostles—“we [the apostles] have come to know.” We have reached this state in the past and we still believe the love that God has for us. In the first part of the verse we see that coming to know is not related to salvation but is related to spiritual growth after salvation. But it only comes as a result of studying the Word and the Holy Spirit producing maturity in the believer. We saw this in 2:3, “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” So how do we know if we have come to know God? Because we are obedient; we are keeping His commandments. 2:4, “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” It doesn’t means he is not a believer but He is still an immature believer and has not reached the point of learning enough doctrine to really know who God is. Once we learn doctrine and know who God is it affects our behaviour. We are now obedient to His commandments. 2:5, “but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been matured. By this we know that we are in Him.” How do we know that the love of God has matured in us? It is related to keeping His Word. To keep His Word we have to know His Word. To know His Word we have to make doctrine a high priority in our life. Keeping commandments is central to spiritual growth and it is a consequence of the filling of the Spirit, it is not a cause of the filling of the Spirit.

In 1 John 4:16 “we have believed” is a perfect active indicative of pisteuo [pisteuw] emphasising a present reality from a past action. We hot spiritual adulthood and we believe the love that God has for us. We have now come to understand it and are believing the mandates, the commandments related to that love, i.e. that we are to love one another. In the second half of the verse: “and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Notice how John weaves this thread again and again, he keeps repeating this, tying each thread together showing how it relates to the concept of enjoying fellowship, i.e. abiding in Him. When we have come to know Him, have advanced to spiritual maturity, then we are abiding in God and God is abiding in us.

This is the process: We take in the Word under the filling of the Holy Spirit; we meditate on it, we understand it, believe it. God the Holy Spirit then takes it and breaks it down and converts it into spiritual growth, making it usable doctrine. Then we use it while we are abiding under the filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Spiritual growth takes place—maybe it’s slow; maybe it’s fast. One day there is a demonstration of love in our life. Personal love for God is motivating us and we are beginning to recognise what it means to truly and personally and unconditionally love people who are obnoxious to us. What has happened? Love has been brought to maturity.

1 John 4:17 ^NASB “By this, love is perfected [matured] with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” John ties it right back to the theme of this section in 1 John 2:28 where he had warned that believers needed to abide in Him so that when He appears we may have confidence and not be ashamed at His coming. Here inv. 17 we see that love must be perfected. We must hit spiritual adulthood so that we can have confidence at the day of judgment. He concludes: “as He [God] is [in terms of His love], so also are we in this world,” i.e. we are manifesting His love in this world.

1 John 4:18 ^NASB “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.” Two mistakes are made here. 1) Taking the word “perfect” here in some sense of virtue, of flawlessness, of an absolute state of being without sin. It is the same word we have seen all along, teleios [teleioj], and in this verse 17 love is brought to completion. When love is brought to completion we are going to have confidence before the judgment seat of Christ and so we won’t be afraid of being ashamed. Matured love casts out fear because if we have maturity in love we are not going to have anything to be afraid of at the judgment seat of Christ. “Fear involves punishment” isn’t fear in abstraction. It is not contrasting fear of anything with love, it is saying fear in a particular context; and the context is the judgment seat of Christ. And the fear is related to a loss of rewards and shame at the judgment seat of Christ. So what John is saying in context is that if we reach maturity in love we are not going to have anything to be anxious about, to be fearful of, to be ashamed of, at the judgment seat of Christ. Therefore mature love is going to remove that fear from us. Fear involves what kind of punishment? Punishment at the judgment seat of Christ—loss of rewards. The one who fears is not matured in love.