1 John 4:11

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

4:7-13 The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love. He that does not love the image of God in his people, has no saving knowledge of God. For it is God's nature to be kind, and to give happiness. The law of God is love; and all would have been perfectly happy, had all obeyed it. The provision of the gospel, for the forgiveness of sin, and the salvation of sinners, consistently with God's glory and justice, shows that God is love. Mystery and darkness rest upon many things yet. God has so shown himself to be love, that we cannot come short of eternal happiness, unless through unbelief and impenitence, although strict justice would condemn us to hopeless misery, because we break our Creator's laws. None of our words or thoughts can do justice to the free, astonishing love of a holy God towards sinners, who could not profit or harm him, whom he might justly crush in a moment, and whose deserving of his vengeance was shown in the method by which they were saved, though he could by his almighty Word have created other worlds, with more perfect beings, if he had seen fit. Search we the whole universe for love in its most glorious displays? It is to be found in the person and the cross of Christ. Does love exist between God and sinners? Here was the origin, not that we loved God, but that he freely loved us. His love could not be designed to be fruitless upon us, and when its proper end and issue are gained and produced, it may be said to be perfected. So faith is perfected by its works. Thus it will appear that God dwells in us by his new-creating Spirit. A loving Christian is a perfect Christian; set him to any good duty, and he is perfect to it, he is expert at it. Love oils the wheels of his affections, and sets him on that which is helpful to his brethren. A man that goes about a business with ill will, always does it badly. That God dwells in us and we in him, were words too high for mortals to use, had not God put them before us. But how may it be known whether the testimony to this does proceed from the Holy Ghost? Those who are truly persuaded that they are the sons of God, cannot but call him Abba, Father. From love to him, they hate sin, and whatever disagrees with his will, and they have a sound and hearty desire to do his will. Such testimony is the testimony of the Holy Ghost.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another -

(1) Because he is so much exalted above us, and if he has loved those who were so inferior and so unworthy, we ought to love those who are on a level with us;

(2) because it is only in this way that we can show that we have his Spirit; and,

(3) because it is the nature of love to seek the happiness of all. There are much stronger reasons why we should love one another than there were why God should love us; and unless we do this, we can have no evidence that we are his children.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

11. God's love to us is the grand motive for our love to one another (1Jo 3:16).

if—as we all admit as a fact.

we … also—as being born of God, and therefore resembling our Father who is love. In proportion as we appreciate God's love to us, we love Him and also the brethren, the children (by regeneration) of the same God, the representatives of the unseen God.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

We discover little sense of this love of his to us, if we do not so.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Beloved, if God so loved us,.... As to send his Son to be a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, and to obtain eternal life for us through his sufferings and death: the apostle uses the same language his Lord and master did, John 3:16;

we ought also to love one another; for those who are the objects of God's love ought to be the objects of ours; and if God has loved our fellow Christians and brethren to such a degree, as to send his Son to die for them, we ought to love them too; and if we are interested in the same love, the obligation is still the greater; and if God loved them with so great a love, when they did not love him, but were enemies to him, then surely we ought to love them now they are become the friends of God, and ours also; as God loved them freely, and when unlovely, and us likewise in the same manner, and under the same circumstances, then we ought to love, and continue to love the saints, though there may be something in their temper and conduct disagreeable: God is to be imitated in his love; and his love to us, which is unmerited and matchless, should influence and engage us to the love of the brethren, who have a far greater claim to our love than we can make to the love of God; and which indeed is none at all, but what he is pleased to give us.

Geneva Study Bible

{9} Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

(9) An other reason by comparison: if God so loved us, shall not we his children love one another?

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

1 John 4:11. Conclusion from 1 John 4:9-10, giving the motive for the exhortation in 1 John 4:7.

The love of God (previously described: οὕτως) to us obliges us, believers, to love one another. The obligatory force lies not merely in the example given by God’s act of love, but also in this, that we by means of it have become the children of God, and as such love as He loves (Lücke). At the same time, however, the correspondence between ἡμᾶς and ἀλλήλους is to be observed; the Christian, namely, as a child of God, feels himself bound to love his brother because he knows that God loves him, and him whom God loves God’s child cannot hate.

Expositor's Greek Testament

1 John 4:11. Here, as in John 3:16, οὕτως may denote either the extent or the manner of God’s love—“to such an extent,” going such a length (cf. Romans 8:32); “in such a manner,” righteously, not by a facile amnesty but by a propitiation. ὀφείλομεν: see note on 1 John 2:6. Noblesse oblige. If we are God’s children, we must have our Father’s spirit. Cf. Matthew 5:44-48. Thus we requite His love. Aug.: “Petre, inquit, amas me? Et ille dixit: Amo. Pasce oves meas” (John 21:15-17).

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

11. Beloved] For the sixth and last time the Apostle uses this appropriate address: see on 1 John 3:2. No address of any kind occurs again until the last verse of the Epistle.

if God so loved us] As in 1 John 3:13, 1 John 5:9, the fact is stated gently, but without any doubt (εἰ with the indicative): here ‘if’ is almost equivalent to ‘since’; ‘If, as is manifest, to this extent God loved us’. Comp. ‘If I then, the Lord and the Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet’ (John 13:14). ‘So’ refers to what is said in 1 John 4:9-10.

we ought also] Better, as R. V. we also ought: ‘also’ belongs to ‘we’; we as well as God. In the spiritual family also noblesse oblige. As children of God we must exhibit His nature, and we must follow His example, and we must love those whom He loves. Nor is this the only way in which the Atonement forms part of the foundation of Christian Ethics. It is only when we have learned something of the infinite price paid to redeem us from sin, that we rightly estimate the moral enormity of sin, and the strength of the obligation which lies upon us to free ourselves from its pollution. And it was precisely those false teachers who denied the Atonement who taught that idolatry and every abominable sin were matters of no moral significance.

Bengel's Gnomen

1 John 4:11. Ὁ Θεὸς, God) who owes nothing.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 11. - Beloved introduces a solemn exhortation, as in verses 1, 7. The "if" implies no uncertainty (see on 1 John 5:9); it puts the fact more gently, but not more doubtfully, than "since." The "so" οὕτως covers both the quality and the quantity of the love. Καὶ belongs solely to ἡμεῖς: "we also on our part ought to love one another." We should have expected as the apodosis, "we also ought to love God." But this link in the thought the apostle omits as self-evident, and passes on to state what necessarily follows from it. In verse 12 he shows how loving God involves loving one's fellow-men (comp. 1 John 2:5 for a similar passage over an intermediate link). 1 John 4:11

Vincent's Word Studies

So (οὕτως)

Emphatic.

We ought

See on 1 John 2:6.