Parent carry with it love for His children on earth that we can say, by this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God. It is as impossible to love the chil dren of God (as such) without lov ing God as it is to love God without loving His children (4:20, 21). A family relationship unites the two loves. Love for God has a second in escapable consequence, namely obe dience. If we truly love God, we not only love His children, but also keep His commandments. In verse 3 John goes further. So inexorable is the connection between the two that love for God, which in one sense issues in obedience, in another sense may be identified with it. Love for God is not an emotional experience so much as moral obedience. Indeed, whether shown to God or man, agwpe is practical and active. Love for the brethren expresses itself “in deed and in truth,” in sacrificial service (3:17, 18); love for God in keeping
nal Son, also involves us in a loving relationship with the Father and His other children. He who has been be gotten of God naturally loves Him who begat him (this is to be under stood in the sentence), and “every one who loves the parent loves the child” (RSV). Here is a universal, self-evident principle. And John im plies that “what is true of the human family is also true of the Divine So ciety” (Brooke). But the clumsier AV sentence retains more obviously the truth that it is “the begetting" and the experience of being “begot ten” which establish an affinity and therefore an affection not only be tween parent and child but also be tween children and children. The ex pression “him . . . that is begotten of him” can hardly in this context be made to refer to the only begot ten Son (as Augustine thought), but rather to every child of God. 2, 3. Indeed, so surely and un avoidably does love for the heavenly
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