1 John 4:11

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 1Jn 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 thisextent 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.

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.