1 John 3:16-18

1 John 3:16-18. Nothing in the whole Epistle is more impressive or more affecting than the point of juncture in the following words. Against the hate and the murder is set the supreme example of self-sacrificing love. But behind this there is the transition from the principle that the life of sonship must be a life of charity to the thought of that love which gave us the life in the gift of the Son. We may here resume the words, ‘Behold, what manner of love!' Here we have the standard of the charity which we must set before us as our aim.

Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us. Not ‘the love of God ‘or' of the Father' as yet, though that will come; but love in its eternal essence and solitary manifestation, as the last expression and first source of all charity. ‘Because He' there is only One to be thought of here ‘sacrificed His life for our advantage:' this expression, occurring only in St. John, is chosen out of many that might have been used in order to combine His pattern in men with our imitation. ‘Which thing is true in Him and in us.' And we ought refers not merely to our duty of imitation, but to the obligation resulting from the fellowship of the love common to Him and to His people. The essence of love is the impartation of self to others; towards those who need it, it is self-sacrifice: in Christ there was the laying down or pledging His soul as an expiatory sacrifice or ransom price; but these last ideas are not expressed here, because the apostle is hastening to our imitation, which must simply be the ‘having laid down our individual lives' in will and intention for the brethren, the consummate act of self-devotion being left to the will of God.

Then follow two clauses, one of contrast, the other of exhortation. ‘How abideth the love of God, thus shown in Christ, as a proof of regeneration in him who, having the world's sustenance of life, shutteth his heart against his brother's need which he beholds sensibly appealing to him?' The strength of the terms must not be overlooked. So far from giving himself, he will not give his mere earthly goods; and he closes his heart instead of opening it for the sacrifice of life. This betokens the utter absence of the ideal life. But the exhortation is a warning to those who have it.

Let us not love in word, neither with the tongue, but in deed and truth: Christ loved in both, and so must we love. But more than that: the word may be a sound theory, uttered only in idle language, without reality; therefore ‘let us not love in tongue only, but in truth.'