Verse 16: [And] 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 translators again, just as in verse 14, have skipped over the word and which logically connects verse 16 with the previous verse. For by virtue of the fact of whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, we (John and his readers) have come to know and believe God’s love.
Here John’s phrase nearly mirrors the confession of Our Lord’s disciples as proclaimed by Peter in John 6:69: “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” Whereas Peter’s confession perceives the divine truth of the distinct nature of Christ, here John is referring to His divine love.
To Know and Believe
There are two parts to the opening phrase of this verse. First, the believer has come to know His love. This refers to our enduring intimate fellowship with Christ, of which Our Lord stated: “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me” (John 10:14).
Second, also we have believed God’s love. Stated by itself this seems strange. Since belief always has an object, the stated object of our steadfast belief is God’s love. How is it that we have believed in God’s love? Because, John tells us, He continually has an unfailing resource of divine love for us. A love that is the basis of our salvation (John 3:16) and that keeps us eternally secure as Our Lord stated: “I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:28). This is the essence of the apostle Paul’s proclamation:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38–39)
We have believed also in His love as demonstrated by His daily logistical provisions: food, shelter, and clothing. For the Psalmist tells us of His love for us:
For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
The Lord gives grace and glory;
No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11)
The apostle Paul substantiated this:
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
And elsewhere Paul states:
And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)
And of even greater importance, He has provided our spiritual necessities: Biblical truth and the Holy Spirit as our instructor (John 14:26; 16:13). The apostle Peter maintained this when he wrote:
Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. (2 Peter 1:3)
We ought to consider ourselves enormously rich, not by worldly standards, but by God’s supreme standard of grace, love and mercy as Paul proclaimed:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–7)
God is Love
God is love refers to one of His divine attributes. Matthew Henry aptly explained:
He is essential boundless love; he has incomparable incomprehensible love for us of this world, which he has demonstrated in the mission and mediation of his beloved Son.1
John repeats this phrase from 4:8 for emphasis, so that it will be ingrained in our thinking every minute throughout our days on earth. He obviously wanted to stress the point of how our Creator, the God of the universe, reached down into the chaotic quagmire of our world and provided salvation for sinful mankind at the great cost of His Son’s death on the cross—suffering in our place and bearing the payment for the sins of the entire world. That is the extent of how God so loved the world. It is not a sentimental, emotional love, but instead a judicial love that satisfies His righteous demands (1 John 2:2; 4:10).
It is of great misfortune that the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s carelessly embraced this phrase, as do many in our culture today, not realizing that unless they believe in Christ for salvation they will never experience God’s love and regrettably will perish (John 3:16). John the baptizer summarized this truth:
“He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” (John 3:36)
Therefore, to glibly state “God is love” without belief in Christ as commanded (1 John 3:23) is hollow and devoid of absolute truth; for they do not abide in God, neither does God abide in them.2
Abiding Love
The one who abides in love does not refer to abiding in just any kind of love; instead in love denotes a specific place where the believer resides—in the sphere of God’s divine love. All believers are invited (John 15:9) to this place of fellowship with God, where we walk in the Light (1:3, 7). While we are in this place of residence, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) enabling us to serve God; to obey His commands (John 15:10; 1 John 3:24); to love others (Matthew 22:39; John 15:12); to bear “much fruit” (John 15:5); to “grow in the grace and knowledge of Our Lord” (2 Peter 3:18); being motivated by our personal love for God, the Father (Matthew 22:37; 1 John 2:5)—this is the plan of God for our life.
Residing in God’s sphere of love is designed by Him to be our continuous status. However, when we sin, we no longer reside in His love relationship; instead we walk in darkness (1:6). And for our benefit, John has already provided the remedy for us to be restored to fellowship by confession of our sins (1:9).
The final phrase describes the intimacy of our fellowship with God while we reside in the sphere of His divine love: we abide in God and God abides in us. This should stagger our imagination and cause us to stand in awe that we are the objects of His mighty love (Romans 5:8). And that on the basis of His amazing love, God intentionally pursued us so that we might have an intensely powerful and personal relationship with the God of the universe.
[1] Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume (p. 2451). Peabody: Hendrickson.
[2] Lenski, R.C.H. (2001). Commentary on the New Testament, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 11.510.
© 2025 David M. Rossi
Very well done, Sir!
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