1 JOHN 4 — TESTING THE SPIRITS, GOD IS LOVE, AND LOVE MADE COMPLETE

Chapter 4 returns to the doctrinal test with a discussion of how to test the spirits and then develops the theme of love, which is the climax of the letter. The two parts are connected: both are concerned with how believers can know what is genuinely from God. The first part (verses 1–6) concerns the testing of prophetic and spiritual claims, and the second (verses 7–21) is a majestic exposition of the nature of God as love and of the believer's response. These verses contain one of the most famous statements in the Bible: God is love. The testing of spirits was a practical necessity for churches in which prophecy and spiritual gifts were active. The early church was a Spirit-filled community, in which people spoke in the name of the Spirit, and some of these voices were false. John does not dismiss the supernatural but insists on discernment. The criterion he gives is doctrinal: the confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. The connection with the opposing teaching that separated the divine Christ from the human Jesus is obvious. The second part of the chapter shows that the very nature of God is love, expressed supremely in the sending of the Son, and that the believer's love for others is the evidence of divine life in them. The chapter prepares for the conclusion in chapter 5, which stresses faith in Jesus as the Son of God and assurance of eternal life.

The statement "God is love" marks a distinctive feature of the Christian understanding of God. In the ancient world, the gods of the pagan pantheons were often capricious, needing to be appeased, and philosophical conceptions of God, such as the unmoved mover of Aristotle, were remote and impersonal. Even in strict monotheistic traditions, the love of God is not presented as an essential attribute in the same way, as Christianity connects it to the doctrine of the Trinity, in which love is eternal within the Godhead. The claim that this love was made visible in a historical event, the sending and death of the Son, gives it an objective foundation and distinguishes it from a vague sentiment. The early Christians' practice of love was highly visible: the Letter to Diognetus, from the second century, describes Christians as those who love all people and are persecuted by all, and Tertullian reports the pagan comment about how Christians love one another. The emphasis on love stands in a historical line from the teaching of Jesus (John 13:34–35). The instruction about testing the spirits also reveals the character of the early church. It was a community that valued spiritual experience but did not accept all claims uncritically, and so it developed criteria for evaluation. The Didache, in the late first or early second century, gives rules for testing prophets: a prophet who asks for money or stays beyond a short time is false, and one whose behavior does not match his teaching is false. The concern with the incarnation as the central test is confirmed by the writings of Ignatius, who a few years after John wrote insisted that Christ was truly born, truly suffered, and truly rose, in opposition to those who said that He only seemed to. The unanimity of these early voices suggests that the apostolic message about the incarnation was widely shared and zealously defended.