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1 John 4: What the Passage Says

64 claims across 21 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 John 4 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter opens with a warning about false prophets and a test for telling spirits apart: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not is the spirit of antichrist, which is already in the world. It then turns to love, saying that love comes from God, that God showed his love by sending his only Son as the sacrifice for our sins, and that those who love one another have God living in them and his love brought to completion in them. It ends by saying anyone who claims to love God while hating his brother is a liar, and repeating the command received from God: whoever loves God must love his brother too.

Claim by Claim

  1. 4:1
    • The writer addresses his readers as beloved.
    • He commands them not to believe every spirit.
    • He commands them to test the spirits to see whether they are from God.
    • Many false prophets have gone out into the world.
  2. 4:2
    • By this test the readers know the Spirit of God.
    • Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
  3. 4:3
    • Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not from God.
    • Such a spirit is the spirit of antichrist.
    • The readers have heard that the spirit of antichrist was coming.
    • The spirit of antichrist is already in the world now.
  4. 4:4
    • The writer addresses his readers as little children.
    • The readers are from God.
    • The readers have overcome them.
    • The one who is in the readers is greater than the one who is in the world.
  5. 4:5
    • They are from the world.
    • Because they are from the world, they speak from the world.
    • The world listens to them.
  6. 4:6
    • We are from God.
    • The one who knows God listens to us.
    • The one who is not from God does not listen to us.
    • By this we distinguish the spirit of truth from the spirit of error.
  7. 4:7
    • The writer addresses his readers as beloved.
    • He urges that we love one another.
    • Love is from God.
    • Everyone who loves has been born of God.
    • Everyone who loves knows God.
  8. 4:8
    • The one who does not love has not known God.
    • God is love.
  9. 4:9
    • God's love was made manifest among us in this way.
    • God sent his only begotten Son into the world.
    • God sent his Son so that we might live through him.
  10. 4:10
    • Love consists in this.
    • Love is not that we loved God.
    • Love is that God loved us.
    • God sent his Son as the propitiation for our sins.
  11. 4:11
    • The writer addresses his readers as beloved.
    • If God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another.
  12. 4:12
    • No one has ever seen God at any time.
    • If we love one another, God remains in us.
    • If we love one another, his love is perfected in us.
  13. 4:13
    • By this we know that we remain in him and he remains in us.
    • He has given us of his Spirit.
  14. 4:14
    • We have seen.
    • We testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
  15. 4:15
    • Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God has God remaining in him.
    • Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God remains in God.
  16. 4:16
    • We have known the love that God has toward us.
    • We have believed the love that God has toward us.
    • God is love.
    • The one who remains in love remains in God.
    • God remains in the one who remains in love.
  17. 4:17
    • Our love is made perfect in this.
    • The purpose is that we may have boldness on the day of judgment.
    • As he is, so are we in this world.
  18. 4:18
    • There is no fear in love.
    • Perfect love casts fear out.
    • Fear has punishment with it.
    • The one who fears has not been made perfect in love.
  19. 4:19
    • We love him.
    • We love him because he loved us first.
  20. 4:20
    • If someone says he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar.
    • The one who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
  21. 4:21
    • We have this commandment from him.
    • The commandment is that the one who loves God must also love his brother.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1
"Try" in 1611 English meant to test or examine, the way metal was assayed for purity; it did not mean to attempt. A "spirit" here is a person speaking under a claimed inspiration, which is why the second half of the verse explains the warning in terms of false prophets: testing the spirits means testing the people who claim to speak for God. "Beloved" is a form of address to the whole group of readers, plural, meaning something like "you whom I love."
4:2
"Confess" in the King James does not mean owning up to wrongdoing. It renders a Greek word meaning to say the same thing openly that others say, that is, to declare an agreed position out loud and in public. "Come in the flesh" means arrived as an actual human being with a body, and the phrase is pointed: the teachers being tested denied exactly that.
4:3
"Antichrist" is a Greek compound meaning against Christ, or in place of Christ. In this letter it is not only a single figure expected in the future; the verse says the spirit behind it is already at work. The Greek manuscripts also differ here: the King James follows copies that repeat the full phrase "confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh," while the earliest copies read only "does not confess Jesus."
4:4
"Little children" is how an older teacher addresses the congregation he is writing to. The readers are adults; the phrase marks affection and seniority, not age.
4:5
"The world" in this letter does not mean the planet, or people in general. It means human society as it runs itself without reference to God. "The world heareth them" means it listens to them and takes them in, not merely that it hears a sound.
4:6
"Heareth" again means heeds or accepts, not simply perceives. "The spirit of error" translates a word for deception and leading astray: it is about actively misleading people, not about making an innocent mistake.
4:7
"Born of God" is a word picture. It means God has given that person new life, so they belong to his family the way a child belongs to a parent.
4:9
"Only begotten" renders a Greek word meaning one of a kind, the only one of its sort. "Begotten" was the 1611 way of saying "fathered," and the word was used of an only child, so the stress falls on there being no other. "Manifested" means made visible, brought out where it could be seen.
4:10
"Propitiation" is a technical word from the world of sacrifice, and the Greek behind it is genuinely disputed. It can mean the offering that turns away anger, which is what the English word "propitiation" says; or the offering that wipes away the sin and cleanses the person who brought it, which other translators render "expiation" or "atoning sacrifice." A related form of the same Greek word is used in the Greek Old Testament for the gold cover of the ark, where blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement.
4:12
"Dwelleth" translates a Greek verb meaning to stay, remain, or go on living somewhere. It is about continuing rather than about having an address, and the same verb runs through verses 12 to 16. "Perfected" does not mean made faultless; the Greek means brought to its intended completion, finished, arrived at what it was for.
4:13
"Given us of his Spirit" uses "of" in its older sense of "some of" or "a share of," not "belonging to."
4:14
"Testify" is courtroom language: to state publicly what one has seen, the way a witness does. It is deliberately paired here with "we have seen."
4:17
"Boldness" translates a Greek word that first meant the right of a free citizen to speak openly in the public assembly, and so came to mean confidence in someone's presence, without fear of being silenced or shamed. It does not mean daring or brashness. The last clause is compressed in the Greek and does not say in what respect "as he is, so are we," which is why translations word it differently.
4:18
"Torment" in 1611 could mean punishment in general, and it renders a Greek word for punishment or penalty. The line is saying that fear is bound up with expecting punishment, not that fear is an agonizing sensation. "Perfect love" again means love brought to completion, as in verse 12.
4:19
The oldest Greek manuscripts read simply "we love," with no object at all. Later copies supply one, some "him" as the King James has it, some "God." Modern translations divide along the same lines.
4:20
"Brother" renders a Greek word used for a fellow member of the community, male or female, which is why many modern versions read "brother or sister." It does not mean a blood relative here.
4:21
A "commandment" is an order meant to be obeyed, not a piece of friendly advice you can take or leave.

Read 1 John 4