---

It is a curious phrase, "we do know that we know Him." But it is a familiar one to us in other applications. I say to a friend, "Are you sure that you know that man? You see him, perhaps, every day; you work with him; you talk with him. But do you know that you know him? Have you got any real insight into his character?" Sometimes the answer is quite confident. "I am certain that he is, or that he is not, an honest, or a kind, or a wise man." And yet it may not inspire us with confidence. We may say or we may think, "You are deceived in that man." But now and then one has a strong conviction that a friend does understand the man we are asking him about, does appreciate him. Now St. John assumes that the knowledge of God is as possible, is as real for human beings, as any knowledge they can have of each other. Nay, he goes farther than this. There are impediments to our knowledge of each other, which he says do not exist with reference to that higher knowledge. There is an uncertainty, a capriciousness, a mixture of darkness with light, in every human being, which make us hesitate a little, even when we think he has given us the clearest evidence of what he is. We may know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. I sometimes suspect that we give too loose a sense to that word "keep." No doubt it means to "obey"; it does not mean more than that, for obedience is very comprehensive. The word "keep," if we consider it, may help us to know what obedience is, and what it is not. A friend gives me a token to keep for him; he wishes that it should remind me of him, that it should recall days which we have spent together. Perhaps it may be only a flower or a weed that was gathered in a certain place where we were walking or botanising; perhaps it is something precious in itself. If instead of giving me anything he enjoins me to do a certain act, or not to do a certain act, I may be said as truly to keep that injunction as to keep the flower. To fulfil it is to remember him; it is a token of my fellowship to him, of my relation with him. "He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." The apostle uses strong language, for this lie was spreading in the Church of his own day, and would spread, he knew, further and further in the times that were coming. There were many in that time who used this very phrase, "We know God," and used it for the purpose of self-exaltation; therefore for an immoral, destructive purpose. "There are a set of common Christians," they said, "vulgar people, who may learn certain lower lessons; they are capable of nothing better. The law is very good for them. But we can enter into the Divine mysteries; we can have the most magnificent conceptions about the spiritual world which Christ has opened. What are the commandments — what is common earthly morality — to us?" "I tell you," says St. John, broadly and simply, "that if they are nothing to you, God is nothing to you. You may use what fine language you will; you may have what fine speculations you like; but it is in practice, in the struggle with temptation which besets us all in different ways and forms, that we come to know Him; thus, and only thus." And he adds words which, if understood rightly, were even more crushing to the pride of these haughty men than those which were aimed at themselves. "But whoso keepeth His word, in him verily the love of God is perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him." As if he had said, "You talk about the perfect, the initiated man, and the mere beginners or novices. I will tell you who is the perfect or initiated man. Look at that poor creature who is studying hard, in the midst of all opposition from his own ignorance, to be right and to do right; who is trying to hold fast that word which is speaking to him in his heart, though he can form no high notions at all about things in earth or heaven. There is the initiated man; he is the one who is learning the perfect lore; for God's own love is working in him; God's own love is perfecting itself in him. He is keeping the commandments, and they are teaching him that in himself he is nothing; that in God he has everything that he wants."

(F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

---

---

KJV: And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.

WEB: This is how we know that we know him: if we keep his commandments.