1 John 4:8

1Jn_4:8

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love

The love of God: the God of love

Is God knowable?

The answer is no--and yes. No, He is not knowable to the intellect, with its prying and searching; provable, perhaps, but not knowable. Yes, He is knowable indeed to the heart. It is a poor kind of love that depends for its proof upon the skill of the logician. The love is lost by default that must hire counsel to take up its case and eloquently contend for its existence. Love must tell its own story, and carry its own proof. This loftiest knowledge dwells not with intellectual strength. See how the Lord Jesus Christ recognises this truth, and bases all prayer upon it. Our Father which art in heaven. The relationship which is the strongest possible claim upon help and love is to be transferred to God. Our Father--what does it mean but that He is bending over us to pity us and to help us; to teach us and to make us good; glad indeed when we do well? This is the first step and beginning of the know ledge of God. Let us try to think how otherwise we can know God. Tell me of Him as the Omniscient--the All-wise. How can I know what that means? I know only by what I am conscious of in myself, or by what I see about me. But within me or about me what is there that can teach me of the All-wise? I am only bewildered as I hear of such an One--I know Him not. I hear of the Almighty, but what does it mean? I judge of strength by my own arm, or by the winds and angry seas; or by the power of human mechanism. In all these I can see only matter overcoming matter. I have nothing by which to know the Omnipotent. I hear of the Self-existent, the Independent. What is that? I see all things depending alike for their source and their sustenance upon others. What then can I know of Him whose name is I Am? And if I turn from these aspects to the moral character of God, I am yet more bewildered. Tell me of the righteousness of God. Sin has put out the eyes by which I can see true righteousness; and perhaps as much in mercy as in punishment. But think again. If I did know all this about God, I should not know Him. Vastness, immensity, knowledge, power, leave me as utterly as ever a stranger to God. But tell me that He is love--that what love is, that is God--then I know Him. I know now how He feels and thinks and acts. I know now how to come to Him, and to speak to Him. Now do I know Himself when I know that He is love. He that loveth knoweth God--look at this faculty within us by which we know God. Love is ours as nothing else is ours. The slow and irksome toil of learning is not needful for love. The dullest scholar may be a very master of this art, and the most unlettered may read aright the signs and mysteries of love. (Mark Guy Pearse.)

The loving heart the faculty for knowing God

I. The loving heart, not the inquiring intellect.

II. The loving heart, not the creative imagination. Imagination has swept the universe, and yet failed to discover God.

III. The loving heart, not the excited conscience. The excited conscience has formulated a God, but it has been a God of vengeance, wrath, and fury. God is only known to the loving. If I know the controlling feelings of a being, I know him, though I may be ignorant of his person and his history. Profoundly philosophical, therefore, is the statement that He that loveth not, knoweth not God. (Homilist.)

The love of God manifested by the sending of His Son

There is singular force in the expression God is love. He does not say that God is benevolent, or kind, or merciful, or compassionate, or affectionate: he does not say that God is a Being of infinite goodness, or mercy, or loving kindness: but, as if he intended to magnify above measure this most adorable of the Divine attributes, he pronounces Him to be the quality in the abstract, and thus, as it were, identifies the Godhead with love.

I. With respect to that Being whom we call God, infinite as He is in all His perfections, our limited understandings can comprehend only a very small portion of His excellence. The heaven of heavens cannot contain Him: still less can His nature be compassed by the little span of the human mind. Yet of this much we are assured, that His power is such, as to be incapable of being controlled, and that His happiness is such, that nothing can enhance or augment it. And these are two of the Divine attributes which, when we reflect on the Godhead by Himself, tend most satisfactorily to prove His benevolence in condescending to interfere for the salvation of mankind.

II. From the Sender, let us turn our thoughts to Him who was sent. God sent His only begotten Son. The greatest trial which human nature can sustain is perhaps the loss of a son, of an only son.

III. And whither was He sent? He was sent into a world which was altogether lying in wickedness. How unbounded, in this respect again, how great, how disinterested appears the love of God!

IV. Let us not forget the purpose for which He was sent, as a farther testimony that God is love. He was sent that we might live through Him: for us men, and for our salvation He came down from heaven. And as the love of God is thus manifested, in that we were His enemies, for whose salvation His Son was sent, so is it, more over, manifested by the greatness of the salvation, which was wrought by His coming: a salvation great in every particular respect; great in respect to its extent; great in respect of the deliverance which it affords; great in respect to the means of grace which it now affords us, and of the all-sufficient aid of Christs Holy Spirit to overcome our natural weakness and corruption; and great in respect of the hope of everlasting glory which it reveals to those who shall hereafter be admitted into His presence. (Bp. Mant.)

Our salvation intelligible in the light of Gods love

I. In the sight of God man is a being of unspeakable worth. And the fact is only intelligible in the light of this first fact, God is love. It is very easy to prove the insignificance of man. The scientist, for instance, traces him to the ape, and says, This is where he came from; or he dissects his brain, and says, Thought, emotion, love, imagination, poetry, worship--see the marks of every one of them upon this material tablet, which we call the brain. And this gospel story the cynic indulges in cheap sneers at it, and asks if you are going to make an angel out of this sorry being with his vulgar appetites and animal lusts. The sober-minded Deist, out of pure reverence for God, he thinks, refuses to believe the story. That the infinite God should concern Himself with man and his paltry destiny is incredible. And it is incredible. Man is so small, mean, ignoble, unworthy, until you read his story with the eyes of love; until you remember this--God is love. But every mother will waste the wealth of her brave heart upon the boy in whom no one but herself can see one sign of grace or virtue. But it is a luxury to her to serve him. The man who believes in no prophet but the political economist thinks that Christian philanthropy is sheer infatuation, sheer waste of human energy. And so it is to everything but love. Love sees worth in what to every other eye is contemptible. The poorest, most sin-sodden is to God a mirror in which He sees Himself. Beautiful, of infinite worth to Him! Divine in Him, for God is love.

II. God seeks for every man the most perfect destiny; the most perfect good.

1. The good of man includes the whole man. It includes the body. To preach the gospel of health is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. God intended us to die as the ripe fruit falls from the tree. The physician is Gods servant, as well as the preacher. It includes the mind. God claims every pure-minded writer as His workman. It includes the sunniest as well as the gloomiest sides of human life. The frosts of winter work for the harvest.

2. But these things are preliminaries. They exist merely for the sake of a greater thing than themselves. Beyond these there is something still sacreder and more precious--the spirit. Here man finds his most perfect good, and God works through every other good to this. There lies the difference between Divine love and human love. We ignore the highest for the sake of the lowest. We ruin our children in the name of the vulgarest and ignoblest thing in them, and we imagine that to be love. The childs native indolence grumbles against the drill and what he calls the hard work of the school. Poor overtaxed boy! says the mother; I must not permit it; and he grows up with a flabby mind that is not fit for such a world as this. I often saw in Upper Egypt an ancient temple pulled to pieces to build a village of hovels. I have seen a band of roving gypsies tear down the exquisitely carved panels of an old palace to light a fire to boil their kettle with. And I have seen young people take the studies in which they had been long immersed, and with them light the fires of sordid pleasures and the many foolishnesses of fashionable life. We Use the highest to light the lowest. Not so God. God also has His fire; and the fire is your religious life. And God uses your whole soul, your whole nature, to supply fuel for that fire. Your intellectual life; you read, you think; but you read and think that you may have fuel for the fire. You go through the drill of your daily work, you wrestle with temptations; it is fuel for the fire. You join hands with others in the joy of worship. The Word of God feeds you, the common hymn and the common prayer thrill you; it is all fuel for the fire. This is mans highest good as God reads it; this God feeds, for God is love.

III. God has made sufficient provision to secure every mans highest good. There is a very famous English poem--of course you know who wrote it--it is called Pictor Ignotus, the painter who chose to remain unknown; the man of genius, the born painter, who refused to paint because men would not understand, would not properly appreciate his work. He would never degrade the genius that was in him by pandering to vulgar wealth. But that is not the noblest genius. Real genius must express itself, even for its own sake. Forgive the illustration. God must express Himself for His own sake. God has poured out the wealth of His redemption. We may reject it or receive it: God must give it. He has been telling it unweariedly through the ages. Men have rejected it, treated it with contempt. It matters not: to God to tell Himself was a necessity, for God is love.

1. In the redemption of man God has found a work by which He manfully express Himself. Men talk of the wonders of nature. They often become so absorbed in nature that they have no wish to look beyond it. But these were the mere trifles of Gods works. God had never been able to tell Himself in these. But Christ came; Calvary came. This is God; this was the solution of the worlds problem: God had told Himself at last. Pardon, hope, life, for all the world; the break of the eternal day. This is God.

2. The love of God makes it all credible. It would be impossible to believe it did we not know that God is love. Everyone believes the Bible to be a marvellous book. It is when you speak of the Cross, when you speak of the Lamb of God, of the sins of the world being laid upon Him, that men begin to hesitate and stammer. No, no; that is incredible; that can never be, they say. But love--the love of God--makes even that--makes every item of the story credible. I have seen the miracles that love works. The Cross shall be forever the symbol of loves perfect triumph. It was love, it was love that did it. God is love.

IV. God will work out the provisions that He has made so that they shall not miss what they aim at. Set it down as a certainty that Gods love will win, that the gospel of love will tell. This love often uses terrible means to secure its purpose. Do not miss that. Not terrible means for the sake of using them, but terrible means because it will not submit to be beaten. Terrible disasters require terrible remedies; but he who can use terrible remedies, loves. So is it with some of you. You have been sore tried; hut God set so much store upon the design He is cutting into you, that He may set you in the fire even yet. He will not miss His aim; for God is love. (J. Morlais Jones.)

Affections essential to the moral perfection of the Deity

God is perfect love, all His affections are pure and clear as the crystal stream.

1. Benevolent affections form the moral beauty of the Divine character. God is love. His independence, almighty power, and unerring wisdom are mere natural perfections; but His benevolent feelings are moral beauties.

2. Men are required to imitate their heavenly Father. Power, wisdom, and all the natural perfections of the Deity are above imitation. There is nothing in the nature of God which any of His creatures can imitate, except His benevolent feelings.

3. The Scriptures ascribe affections to God in the most plain and unequivocal terms.

(1) It may be said that the passages which ascribe affections to God are figurative, and ought not to be taken in a literal sense. We are never to depart from the literal sense of Scripture, without some apparent necessity.

(2) It may be said that affections are painful, and consequently cannot belong to God, who is perfectly happy. It is true, affections are always painful when they cannot be gratified; and this is often the case among mankind. But since all the affections of the Deity are only different modifications of pure, disinterested benevolence, they admit of a constant and perfect gratification, and always afford him a source of complete and permanent felicity.

(3) It may be asked, How is this notion of Divine affections compatible with that perfect immutability and simplicity which all divines ascribed to the Deity? We may observe here that there is a plain distinction between such a mutability as does, and such a mutability as does not, imply imperfection. If a man who was a sinner yesterday becomes a saint today, it implies no imperfection in God to change His affections towards that person.

Improvement:--

1. This subject may give us some faint conceptions of the strength and ardency of the Divine affections.

2. In the view of this subject we may discover what it was which moved God to the work of creation.

3. It appears from what has been said that God is pleased with the existence of everything which takes place in the universe. His heart is in all His works.

4. This subject suggests matter of great consolation to those who are interested in the Divine favour.

5. This subject warns sinners to flee from the wrath to come. (N. Emmons, D. D.)

God and love

I. In the first place, I think we should take this text as it stands--as being literally and completely true. It needs no qualification, admits of no complement. That God is love is not one side of the truth, but the whole truth, about God. No addition is possible. The leaf, we are told, is the stem expanded--the stem is the leaf closed. This text is theology closed. All theology is this text expanded.

II. We are to take it as true of God at all times and in all places. Nothing but love has ever reigned on the throne of creation; nothing but love ever will reign. Christ did not create, He revealed, the love of God. The love of God has no shallows. It is equally deep everywhere--Calvary deep Wherever you try it.

III. God is love. When? Always. God is love! Where? Everywhere. Love built heaven. Love made earth. Love made hell; and its pains are the measure of Gods love for goodness--its flames are love on fire.

IV. Now, one word as to the effect this revelation ought to have on us. One effect is joy. This text, if we believe it, will assuage our sorrow, lighten our hearts, and brighten our lives. God is love, I say. Of course! you say. How commonplace! But look into old creeds, look into modern philosophy, where God is Force without heart, and Law without pity. Look at your own lives, at the records on the pages of memory. Are you not glad for your own sakes that God is love? (J. M. Gibbon.)

The love of the eternal

I. Love the dominant quality.

II. Mans presumptuous criticism. St. Johns statement does not imply that loves activities are necessarily in accordance with human conceptions of love. Who art thou, O man, with thy limited perception, blind to all the future--who art thou, that thou darest to say what infinite, omniscient, eternal love ought to do? As well expect the fly that crawls on the dome of this majestic cathedral to interpret the purposes and methods, the disposition and attributes of the architect. Do not expect that because God is love you are going to understand all that God is doing around you and for you. It may be a token of the greatest love that you know nothing of it.

III. Indulgence not love. It is the office of love to seek the final good of its object; to bless the object rather than pamper it; to raise and ennoble and glorify it rather than minister to its passing whims and caprices. Does not this thought interpret some of the mysteries of life to us? Does it not let in daylight and sunlight upon the dark experiences of this sorrowing earth? (W. J. Hocking.)

Originating love

God has many attributes, and we see Him and adore Him under many aspects; but the essence of Deity is single, and His being is love! Other things He does, but this He is. And observe the power of the present tense. It is not, God was, or God will be, but now,--in an eternal and unchanging now,--yesterday, today, and forever,--God is love! Take the sweetest moment of your whole life,--take the moment of the greatest manifestation of Gods goodness that has ever been seen in this world, and it is the very same now, unshaded, undimmed; no sins of yours will alter it. Doubtless there are difficulties. The brightest lights throw the deepest shadows. But the mists which cloud the summer morning are only made to melt into the sweeter noonday brightness. Was it love, a man says, to make man, and then let him fall into sin and misery? The answer is two-fold. First, man was made a free agent. This was a first principle in the creation of this world. Secondly, man, the whole race of man, is better for the fall. Had man not fallen, Christ would not have come to this world. But another objects:--See all the suffering and wretchedness there is now in this world--how is that consistent with the Divine government of love? First, all the suffering, in the main, is mans own fault. The suffering is the result, directly, or indirectly, of voluntary sin, which might have been avoided. But secondly, this world, having fallen, is now passing under discipline and training for another and better world; and the suffering is the discipline essential to the educating processes of the present life. Thirdly, if there are degrees in glory, the degree of the glory must depend on the degree of the grace; and, to a great extent, the degree of the grace is dependent on the degree of the schooling. But I hear it said again, Why has God left such a vast proportion of the inhabitants of this earth ignorant of Christ, and of the way of salvation? God has not left them ignorant. He willed and provided that all should know Him. He commanded His people from the very first, to Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Had we done our duty, all would have been right, and this whole world have been evangelised. And we believe that the heathen who have not known God will not be judged as we shall be. Everyone will be judged according to his knowledge and his conscience. But, leaving all these cavils, let us look at this matter very practically. At this moment there is not a person--whatever his past might have been, or whatever his present is--who might not, this very day, be freely and perfectly forgiven, and be quite happy. He might have the sweetest peace, and perfect assurance in his mind. He might be quite confident of the love, the infinite love of God. He has a Father, a tender, loving Father in heaven. Treat God as Love, and you will find Him Love. But remember love is sensitive. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way/ If you wish a picture of God in your mind, study the father in the parable of the prodigal. If God is love, may I not say, Love is God? The highest characteristic of our religion is love. If you have no love, you have no God! The measure of the love is the measure of the God. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

The love of God

I. This emphatic description refers to the nature, as well as to the operations of God.

II. The truth of the assertion, that God is love, appears in His providential dealings with the children of men.

III. In the redemption of mankind our Lord has displayed the full glories of His love.

IV. The truth of the assertion appears with peculiar evidence, by tracing the dealings and methods of His grace towards every individual who has interest in the Saviour. Conclusion:

1. Let me address careless sinners in the language of warning and reproof.

2. Let me address those who, drawn by the attractions of Divine love and redeeming grace, are saying in sincerity, Whatever others do, we will serve the Lord.

(1) Submit, without murmuring, to the various dispensations of His providence.

(2) Love this God with supreme regard and gratitude.

(3) Imitate this God of love, and seek, through grace, to resemble your heavenly Father.

(4) Is that glorious Jehovah, to whom you have devoted your hearts and lives, indeed the God of love? Then recommend Him as such to your friends and families while you are on earth, and long to be with Him in the heaven of heavens. (A. Bonar.)

God is love

A briefer sentence it would be difficult to find; yet how infinitely vast and wonderful is the truth which lies within its compass! The very centre and source of all things. Although this is the one truth about God which we can know, yet it is the last truth which we accept. Most men believe in the existence of God, in His power, in His wisdom. There are others who vaguely believe that He is good and kind. But there are few men who really think of God as love. And very many spend their time in putting up fences and limits to the love of God, as if it were beset with statutes, and thoughts of precedents, and dread of presumption. Would that we believed it as God has taught it in His Word! The great power in the world to redeem men, to uplift, to ennoble men, is the power of love. To love, to be loved, is a restraint, a constraint, a transformation. Love is the true salvation. And yet what can it avail to tell of love? Words may do for some things, but to hold love they are too little, too shallow, too coarse, too cold. And even if words could tell of it, who were the richer for hearing them? What avails to tell a hungry man of a banquet? To see and not to have may be an agony. A sermon about the love of God, if it be a sermon only, is a stone that mocks ones hunger. The love of God is ours not in words only, but ours in deed and in truth; ours to accept it; to rest in it; to delight in it. How then may we make it ours? Well, take the words and brood over them until the very Spirit of God speaks them to the heart. God is His own interpreter--and only love can tell of love. To its anointed eye all things are revelations and emblems, and to its tuned heart every breath is music. Love is not to a crowd; compassion, pity there may be for a multitude, but love is separate; it is personal; it is distinct and peculiar. Gods love is like His sunlight, diffused throughout the heaven, catching the heights of the hills and crowning them with ruddy gold and clothing them in purple. So it seems to us an easy and a natural thing for God to love some people; outstanding men and women whose goodness might make them dear to Him. But this is not all that the sun does. It climbs higher that it may creep lower--down the hillsides further and further, until it lifts the mists of the valley and covers the meadows with its glory; and kisses the daisy and fills its cup with gold, and puts energy and strength into its very heart. God loves the good, the true, the pure, but His love rises higher that it may come down lower; and He loves me--me. Do not grieve Him any longer by doubting it. God is love. Is--eternity lies within the compass of that little word. (M. G. Pearse.)

Gods love unfathomable

I know what it means to love; but I have no conception what love is when it rolls in the bosom of an infinite God. I know what light is as it shines from my candle, but do I know what the sun is from that? I know what water is when I take a drop of it in my tumbler, but do I know the thunder of the ocean from that? I know that when I see God He will be wise; but how little do I know of the wisdom of God? I know that He will be a God of love, but oh! how little do I know of the extent and grandeur of that love! How imperfect are my slender ideas as means by which to fashion this supremest attribute of the infinite and eternal God. It is by these qualities that I know my God; but I know Him only by specimens--by small samples. My conceptions of Him are imperfect. (H. W. Beecher.)

God always love

God is love, was the motto on a weathercock. The owner on being asked if he meant to imply that the love of God was as fickle as the wind? replied, No, I mean which ever way the wind blows, God is love; if cold from the north, or biting from the east, still God is love as much as when the warm south, or genial west wind refreshes our fields and flocks. Yes, so it is; our God is always love.

Gods love changeless

You have seen the stream that in summer was broad and flowing, in winter covered with a thick coating of ice; but Gods love is a stream that never freezes. You have seen the fountains that in winter, when the springs were active, had an abundant supply of water, but when summer came with its drought, were dry; Gods love, however, is a fountain that never becomes dry. You have seen the sun pour a flood of golden beams upon the earth through the live long day, and set in darkness as night approached; but Gods love is a sun that never sets. You shall see the world burning, and the stars drop from their orbits, and the heavens be rolled up like a scroll; but Gods love lasts forever and ever. (W. G. Pascoe.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

4:8 God is love, the source and embodiment of all love. This concept and the concept that “God is light” (1:5) form the foundation on which John writes this letter.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Jn 4:8. Οὐκ ἔγνω, knoweth not) Is not born of God, and knoweth not God.—ὁ Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστὶν, God is love) ἀγάπη, without the article, as in 1Jn 4:16. This brief sentence imparted to John, even during the mere time which he took in writing it, more delight than the whole world can impart.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn 4:8 . Conversely, a stranger to love is a stranger to God. οὐκ ἔγνω , “did not get to know,” i.e. , at the initial crisis of conversion. On μὴ see note on 1Jn 2:4 .

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

In that he called God, Love he saith more than if he had said that he loveth us infinitely.

A confirmation: For it is the nature of God to love men, whereof we have a most manifest proof above all others: in that that of his only free and infinite goodwill towards us his enemies, he delivered unto death not a common man, but his own Son, yea, his only begotten Son, to the end that we being reconciled through his blood, might be made partakers of his everlasting glory.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

knoweth not--Greek aorist: not only knoweth not now, but never knew, has not once for all known God.

God is love--There is no Greek article to love, but to God; therefore we cannot translate, Love is God. God is fundamentally and essentially LOVE: not merely is loving, for then John's argument would not stand; for the conclusion from the premises then would be this, This man is not loving: God is loving; therefore he knoweth not God IN SO FAR AS GOD IS LOVING; still he might know Him in His other attributes. But when we take love as God's essence, the argument is sound: This man doth not love, and therefore knows not love: God is essentially love, therefore he knows not God.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 8. He that loveth not] As already described, knoweth not God-has no experimental knowledge of him.

God is love.] An infinite fountain of benevolence and beneficence to every human being. He hates no thing that he has made. He cannot hate, because he is love. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends his rain on the just and the unjust. He has made no human being for perdition, nor ever rendered it impossible, by any necessitating decree, for any fallen soul to find mercy. He has given the fullest proof of his love to the whole human race by the incarnation of his Son, who tasted death for every man. How can a decree of absolute, unconditional reprobation, of the greater part or any part of the human race, stand in the presence of such a text as this? It has been well observed that, although God is holy, just, righteous, &c., he is never called holiness, justice, &c., in the abstract, as he is here called LOVE. This seems to be the essence of the Divine nature, and all other attributes to be only modifications of this.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

He also sets in opposition to this, according to his usual manner, the contrary clause, that there is no knowledge of God where there is no love. And he takes as granted a general principle or truth, that God is love, that is, that his nature is to love men. I know that many reason more refinedly, and that the ancients especially have perverted this passage in order to prove the divinity of the Spirit. But the meaning of the Apostle is simply this, — that as God is the fountain of love, this effect flows from him, and is diffused wherever the knowledge of him comes, as he had at the beginning called him light, because there is nothing dark in him, but on the contrary he illuminates all things by his own brightness. Here then he does not speak of the essence of God, but only shews what he is found to be by us.

But two things in the Apostle’s words ought to be noticed, — that the true knowledge of God is that which regenerates and renews us, so that we become new creatures; and that hence it cannot be but that it must conform us to the image of God. Away, then, with that foolish gloss respecting unformed faith. For when any one separates faith from love, it is the same as though he attempted to take away heat from the sun.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

8. knoweth not God] Literally, knew not God, i.e. never attained to a knowledge of Him. This is a remarkable instance of S. John’s habit of not making the second part of an antithesis the exact counterpart of the first, but an advance beyond it. Instead of saying ‘is not born of God’ he says ‘never knew God’, which is much stronger. Not to have known love is not, to have known God.

God is love] This is the third of S. John’s great statements respecting the Nature of God: ‘God is Spirit’ (Joh_4:24); ‘God is light’ (1Jn_1:5), and ‘God is love’. See on 1Jn_1:5. Here, as in the other cases, the predicate has no article, and expresses not a quality which He possesses, but one which embraces all that He is. This is clear from S. John’s argument. It does not follow, because God is full of love, that one who does not love cannot have known God: all that follows from this is that his knowledge of God is very incomplete. Only if God is love, i.e. if love is Himself, is the statement true, that to have no personal knowledge of love is to have no personal knowledge of God. And here we may remark that to attain by experience to a knowledge of God (γινώσκειν τὸν Θεόν) is a very different thing from knowing something about Him (εἰδέναι τι περὶ αὐτοῦ). The Gnostics knew a good deal about God, but they did not know Him, for instead of loving those brethren who did not share their intellectual attainments, they had an arrogant contempt for them. They had recognised that ‘God is spirit’, and to some extent that ‘God is light’; for they knew Him to be an immaterial Being and the highest Intelligence: but they had wholly failed to appreciate that ‘God is love’. And yet of the three great truths this is the chief. The other two are incomplete without it. The first, ‘God is spirit’, is almost more negative than positive: God is not material; He ‘dwelleth not in temples made with hands’. The second might seem in making our idea of Him more definite to remove Him further away from us: God is perfect intelligence, perfect purity, perfect holiness. The third not only makes His Nature far more clearly known, but brings Him very close to us. The spirit is shewn to be personal, the light to have warmth and life.

If no previous religion, not even the Jewish, had attained to the truth that ‘God is light’, still less had any attained to the truth that ‘God is love’. To the heathen world God is a powerful, a terrible, and often a cruel being; one whose fierce wrath needs to be deprecated and whose ill-will needs to be propitiated, rather than one on whose love men may rely. To the Jews He was a just and a jealous, if also a merciful God, of whose inmost being all that was known was I AM THAT I AM. To the Christian alone He is known as LOVE.

As already stated, this truth, God is love, dominates the second main division of the Epistle. In no Book in N. T. does the substantive ‘love’ (ἀγάπη) occur so often as in these two and a half chapters (1Jn_3:1 to 1Jn_5:12); and in no Book in N. T., excepting the Fourth Gospel, does the verb ‘to love’ (ἀγαπᾷν) occur half so many times as here. No wonder that the writer of this Epistle has been known in the Church as ‘the Apostle of Love’. “If nothing were said in praise of love throughout the pages of this Epistle, if nothing whatever throughout the other pages of the Scriptures, and this one thing only were all we were told by the voice of the Spirit of God, For God is Love; nothing more ought we to require” (S. Augustine).

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He that loveth not, knoweth not God,.... If a man loves not the children of God, those that are born of him, he does not know, so as to love God, the Father of them; for to pretend love to God, the begetter of them, whom he sees not, and not love those who are begotten by him, and are visible objects of respect, is a contradiction, and cannot be reconciled: see Jo1 4:20. This clause is left out in the Ethiopic version, and is transposed in the Syriac version, which reads the text thus, "for God, is love, and whoever loveth not, knoweth not God". By which reading, the following reason stands in close connection with Jo1 4:7.

For God is love; he loves himself; there is an entire love between the three divine Persons, who are in the strictest, and in the most inconceivable and inexpressible manner affected to each other; their love is natural and essential: God loves all his creatures as such, nor does he hate any of them, as so considered; and he bears an everlasting, unchangeable, and invariable love to his elect in Christ Jesus; of which an instance is given in the following verses, and is a reason why the saints should love one another; that they might be like their heavenly Father, by whom they are begotten, and of whom they are born, and whose children they are; seeing he is love itself, and in his breast is nothing else but love. So the Shekinah is, by the Cabalistic Jews (t), called "love".

(t) Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 15. 1. & Lex. Cabal. p. 43, 44.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

Ver. 8. Knoweth not God] If moral virtue could be seen with mortal eyes, saith Plato, it would draw all hearts unto it. If God were well known, he could not but be best beloved, and all that are his, for his sake.

For God is love] Not formally, but causally, say schoolmen; he is the fountain of love, and draws all hearts that have any knowledge of him. See 1Jn 4:16; Son 1:3. {See Trapp on "1Jn 4:16"} {See Trapp on "Son 1:3"}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He that loveth not, knoweth not God - Has no true acquaintance with God; has no just views of him, and no right feelings toward him. The reason for this is implied in what is immediately stated, that “God is love,” and of course if they have no love reigning in their hearts, they cannot pretend to be like him.

For God is love - He is not merely benevolent, he is benevolence itself. Compare the notes at 2Co 13:11. Never was a more important declaration made than this; never was more meaning crowded into a few words than in this short sentence - “God is love.” In the darkness of this world of sin - in all the sorrows that come now upon the race, and that will come upon the wicked hereafter - we have the assurance that a God of infinite benevolence rules over all; and though we may not be able to reconcile all that occurs with this declaration, or see how the things which he has permitted to take place are consistent with it, yet in the exercise of faith on his own declarations we may find consolation in “believing” that it is so, and may look forward to a period when all his universe shall see it to be so. In the midst of all that occurs on the earth of sadness, sin, and sorrow, there are abundant evidences that God is love.

In the original structure of things before sin entered, when all was pronounced “good;” in the things designed to promote happiness, where the only thing contemplated is happiness, and where it would have been as easy to have caused pain; in the preservation of a guilty race, and in granting that race the opportunity of another trial; in the ceaseless provision which God is making in his providence for the wants of unnumbered millions of his creatures; in the arrangements made to alleviate sorrow, and to put an end to it; in the gift of a Saviour more than all, and in the offer of eternal life on terms simple and easy to be complied with - in all these things, which are the mere expressions of love, not one of which would have been found under the government of a malignant being, we see illustrations of the sublime and glorious sentiment before us, that “God is love.” Even in this world of confusion, disorder, and darkness, we have evidence sufficient to prove that he is benevolent, but the full glory and meaning of that truth will be seen only in heaven. Meantime, let us hold on to the truth that he is love. Let us believe that he sincerely desires our good, and that what seems dark to us may be designed for our welfare; and amidst all the sorrows and disappointments of the present life, let us feel that our interests and our destiny are in the hands of the God of love.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Yea, since love is his very nature, and that God is love, those that love (upon the account and in the way above expressed) are born of him, partake from him that excellent and most delectable nature, know him by a transformative knowledge: but they that love not, they are mere strangers to him, and never had to do with him.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

8. Loveth not, knoweth not God—It is the true heart that truly knoweth God. Without that blessed medium he is, after all, an “unknown God.” It is the pure in heart that “see God.”

God is love—This blessed truth truly realized delivers from all atheism, all pessimism, all despondency at the evil in the world. When our hearts are right all is right.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

In giving the opposite, St. John again varies the thought, this time very remarkably. Instead of "love is of God" (verse 7), we have "God is Love a far deeper thought; and instead of "knoweth not God," we have "knew not God," or, as we should say in English, "hath not known" or "never knew God." The man"s not loving his brother shows that in no real sense has he ever in the past known God: he is of the world (chapter 3:1), not of God. We must beware of watering down "God is Love" into "God is loving," or even "God of all beings is the most loving." Love is not a mere attribute of God; like light, it is his very nature. As "God is Light" sums up the Being of God intellectually considered, so "God is Love" sums up the same on the moral side. Only when this strong meaning is given to the statement does St. John"s argument hold, that "he that loveth not knoweth not God." A man who has no idea of any one of the attributes of God, as order, or beauty, or power, or justice, has an imperfect knowledge of God. But he who has no idea of love has no knowledge of God, for love is himself. God alone loves in the fullest and highest sense of the word; for he alone loves with perfect disinterestedness. It is love which alone can explain creation. Why should a Being perfectly blessed in himself create other beings, but to bestow a blessing upon them?

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

God is love - This little sentence brought St. John more sweetness, even in the time he was writing it, than the whole world can bring. God is often styled holy, righteous, wise; but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom in the abstract, as he is said to be love; intimating that this is his darling, his reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

8. ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν. For the μἡ comp. 1Jn 3:10; 1Jn 3:14; 1Jn 2:4. οὐκ ἔγνω. Literally, knew not God, i.e. never attained to a knowledge of Him. Comp. 1Jn 3:1; Joh 16:3. We have here a remarkable instance of S. John’s habit of not making the second part of an antithesis the exact counterpart of the first, but an advance beyond. Instead of saying ‘is not born of God’ he says ‘never knew God’, which is much stronger. Not to have known love is not to have known God.

ὁ Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν. This is the third of S. John’s great statements respecting the Nature of God: ‘God is Spirit’ (Joh 4:24); ‘God is light’ (1Jn 1:5), and ‘God is love’. See on 1Jn 1:5. Here, as in the other cases, the predicate has no article, and expresses not a quality which He possesses, but one which embraces all He is. This is clear from S. John’s argument. It does not follow, because God is full of love, that one who does not love cannot have known God: all that follows from this is that his knowledge of God is very incomplete. Only if God is love, i.e. if love is Himself, is the statement true, that to have no personal knowledge of love is to have no personal knowledge of God. And here we may remark that to attain by experience to a knowledge of God (γινώσκειν τὸν Θεόν) is a very different thing from knowing something about Him (εἰδέναι τι περὶ αὐτοῦ). The Gnostics knew a good deal about God, but they did not know Him; for instead of loving those brethren who did not share their intellectual attainments, they had an arrogant contempt for them. They had recognized that ‘God is spirit’, and to some extent that ‘God is light’; for they knew Him to be an immaterial Being and the highest Intelligence: but they had wholly failed to appreciate that ‘God is love’. And yet of the three great truths this is the chief. The other two are incomplete without it. The first, ‘God is spirit’, is almost more negative than positive: God is not material; ‘He dwelleth not in temples made with hands’. The second might seem in making our idea of Him more definite to remove Him further away from us: God is perfect intelligence, perfect purity, perfect holiness. The third not only makes His Nature far more clearly known, but brings Him very close to us. The spirit is shewn to be personal, the light to have warmth and life.

If no previous religion, not even the Jewish, had attained to the truth that ‘God is light’, still less had any attained to the truth that ‘God is love’. To the heathen world God is a powerful, a terrible, and often a cruel being; one whose fierce wrath needs to be deprecated and whose ill-will needs to be propitiated, rather than one on whose love men may rely. To the Jews He is a just and a jealous, if also a merciful God, of whose inmost being all that was known was I AM THAT I AM. To the Christian alone He is known as LOVE.

As already stated, this truth, God is love, dominates the second main division of the Epistle. In no Book in N.T. does the substantive ‘love’ (ἀγάπη) occur so often as in these two and a half chapters (1Jn 3:1 to 1Jn 5:12); and in no Book in N.T., excepting the Fourth Gospel, does the verb ‘to love’ (ἀγαπᾷν) occur half so many times as here. No wonder that the writer of this Epistle has been known in the Church as ‘the Apostle of Love’. “If nothing were said in praise of love throughout the pages of this Epistle, if nothing whatever throughout the other pages of the Scriptures, and this one thing only were all we were told by the voice of the Spirit of God, For God is Love; nothing more ought we to require” (S. Augustine).

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

8.] Beloved (as before, marks the fervency and affection of the Apostle turning to his readers with another solemn exhortation. Here the word is especially appropriate, seeing that his own heart is full of that love which he is enjoining), let us love one another: because (he at once rests the exhortation on the deepest ground) love (ἡ ἀγάπη, abstract, in the widest sense, as the following words shew) is from God (has its origin and source in God: He is the wellspring and centre of all love. No such weakening as “Deo maxime placet” (Grot.) must be thought of. It is remarkable that Didymus understood ἀγάπη here of Christ,—ἥντινα οὐκ ἄλλην εἶναι νομιστέον ἢ τὸν μονογενῆ, ὥσπερ θεὸν ἐκ θεοῦ, οὕτω καὶ ἀγάπην ἐξ ἀγάπης ὄντα:—and Augustine, fitting together “Dilectio est ex Deo,” and “Dilectio est Deus,” infers that “Dilectio est Deus ex Deo,” which comparing with Rom 5:5, he infers that love is the Holy Spirit: Tract, vii. 6, vol. iii. p. 2032): and every one that loveth (there is no need to supply an object after ἀγαπῶν, as τὸν θεόν in A, “his brother” as some latt., and Lücke: indeed to do so would be to narrow the general sense of the Apostle’s saying: all love is from God: every one that loveth, taking the word of course in its pure ideal sense in which the assertion follows from the former), hath been begotten of God (has truly received within him that new spiritual life which is of God: see note on ch. 2:29), and knoweth (pres.: in his daily walk and habit, recognizes and is acquainted with God: by virtue of that his divine birth and life) God:

8.] (Contrast, but with some remarkable variations) he that loveth not (general, as before: no object: he that hath not love in him) hath never known God (aor.: hath not once known: has never had in him even the beginnings of knowledge of God: as Lücke, “noch gar nicht kennen gelernt hat.” So that the aorist makes a far stronger contrast than the present οὐ γινώσκει would. That is excluded, and much more); because (reason why he who loveth not can never have known God. ὅτι cannot well be “that,” dependent on ἔγνω, as e. g. Tirinus (cited by Düsterd.) seems to make it: “non novit, saltem practice non ostendit se nosse et agnoscere, Deum esse … caritatem:” in that case it would be either οὐκ ἔγνω, ὅτι ὁ θεός … or οὐκ ἔγνω τὸν θεόν, ὅτι ἀγ. ἐστίν) God is love (ἀγάπη, not ἡ ἀγάπη: love is the very essence, not merely an attribute, of God. It is co-essential with Him: He is all love, love is all of Him: he who has not love, has not God.

It is not the place here to enter on the theological import of this weighty and wonderful sentence. It will be found set forth in Augustine, de Trinitate, ix. 2 ff., vol. viii. p. 961 ff.: in Sartorius, die Lehre von der heiligen Liebe, i. 1, and in the first of my Sermons on Divine Love, which are founded on Sartorius’s work. Düsterd. refers also to Nitzsch, über die wesentliche Dreieinigkeit Gottes, in the Studien u. Kritiken for 1841, 2, p. 337: and Liebner, Christologie, p. 135.

But it may be necessary to put in a caution against all inadequate and shallow explanations of the saying: such as that of Grotius (after Socinus), “Deus est plenus caritate,”—Benson, “God is the most benevolent of all beings: full of love to all His creatures,”—Whitby, “The Apostle intends not to express what God is in his essence … but what He is demonstrativè, ἐνεργητικῶς, shewing great philanthropy to men:”—Hammond, “God is made up of love and kindness to mankind:”—Calvin, “hoc est quod ejus natura sit, homines diligere … de essentia Dei non loquitur, sed tantum docet qualis a nobis sentiatur:” &c. &c. In all these,—in the two last by supplying an object, “homines,” which is not in the sacred text,—the whole force of the axiom as it stands in the Apostle’s argument is lost. Unless he is speaking of the essential being of God, quorsum pertineat, to say that he that loveth not never knew God, because “God is love?” Put for these last words, “God is loving,” and we get at once a fallacy of an undistributed middle: He that loveth not never knew what love is: God is loving: but what would follow? that in as far as God is loving, he never knew Him: but he may have known Him in as far as He is just, or powerful. But take ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν of God’s essential being,—as a strict definition of God, and the argumentation will be strict: He that loveth not never knew love: God is love (the terms are co-essential and co-extensive): therefore he who loveth not never knew God).

9,

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

8. The negative counterpart of ver. 7, the statement being made, as usual, with a slight difference.

οὐκ ἔγνω] He shows by his want of love that the process of knowledge never even began in him.

ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν] Love is not merely an attribute of God, it is His very Nature and Being; or rather, the word expresses the highest conception which we can form of that Nature. Holtzmann’s note is worth quoting. “Even the false gnosis realized that God is light and spirit. But when here and in ver. 16 love is put forward as the truest presentation of God, this is the highest expression of the conception of God. It passes entirely beyond the limitations of natural religion. It does not come within the category of Substance, but only those of Power and Activity. It opens the way for an altogether new presentation of religion based on the facts of moral life.”

͂ 1o—θεον] post εστιν syrsch: om. א*192 dscr arm-cdd. aeth.: ο μη αγαπων ουκ εγνωκεν אc.

ο1o pr. οτιIc 174 (252): + δεIc 258 (56).

ουκ εγνω] om. εγνωκεν אc 31: ου γινωσκειA 3. 5. 13 Rev_4 arm. Or. cf. Lcif. Did. Fulg.: non cognoscit sah.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Knoweth not [ουκ εγνω] . The aroist tense : did not know, from the beginning. He never knew.

Is love [αγαπη εστι. ν] . See on God is light (i. 5), and the truth (i. 6); also God is spirit (Joh 4:24). Spirit and light are expressions of God 's essential nature. Love is the expression of His personality corresponding to His nature. See on love of God (ii. 5). Truth and love stand related to each other. Loving is the condition of knowing.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.