First John/Chapter 4:7-21/Commentary

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First John Chapter 4:7-21 Outline I .Brotherly Love Commanded: 4:7-21 A. Love Originates From God: 4:7-8 B. God Loved Us First: 4:9-16 C. Love and Confidence: 4:17-18 D. Cannot Love God and Hate Our Brother: 4:19-21 “In 3:23 John summarized God's commandment as being ‘to believe in Christ and to love one another’. He has unfolded in 4:1-6 some of the implications of belief in Christ; he now turns abruptly to the subject of mutual love. This is the third time in the Epistle that he takes up and applies the supreme test of love....What John is at pains to demonstrate is the ground of this imperative obligation. Why is reciprocal love the plain duty of Christians? He does not rest content with his former declarations either that love is part of the commandment, new and old (2:7-11), or that love is evidence that they are ‘in the light’ and possess "eternal life" (3:11-18). He now elaborates what he had already begun to say in 3:16, that God has revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ as self-sacrificial love. It is because God is love in Himself (8,16), has loved us in Christ (10,11), and continues to love in and through us (12,13),

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