Please Help Us Keep These Thousands of Blog Posts Growing and Free for All

$5.00

1 John 4:13 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
¹³By this we know that we are remaining in him and he in us, because he has given his Spirit to us.

By this we know that we are remaining in him and he in us. Here is another, or additional evidence of it.

Because he has given his Spirit to us. He has imparted the influences of that Spirit to our souls, producing ‘love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,’ &c., Gal. 5:22, 23. It was one of the promises which the Lord Jesus made to his disciples that he would send the Holy Spirit to be with them after he should be withdrawn from them, (John 14:16, 17, 26; 15:26; 16:7.) and one of the clearest evidences which we can have that we are the children of God, is derived from the influences of that Spirit on our hearts. See this sentiment illustrated in Rom. 8:16.

By Albert Barnes and Edward D. Andrews

4:13 John now provides a criterion that confirms that one has come to know personally God’s love: the gift of his Spirit. We know (ginōskomen) with a personal knowledge that we abide in him. Believers (note the plural) should be conscious of the indwelling Spirit. With a continuous and ongoing awareness, there is an intimate communion with God by his Spirit. It is the knowledge of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit that gives the believer assurance of his membership in the family of God. In harmony with what the apostle Paul asserts, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (Rom 8:16). “Has given” is in the perfect tense. It “denotes the resultant indwelling of the Spirit imparted at regeneration.”[1] We receive the Spirit as gift, not obligation.[2]^8[3]

[1] Hiebert, “An Exposition of 1 John 4:7–21,” 79. Marshall argues that the use of the perfect δέδωκεν as opposed to the aorist ἔδωκεν used in 1 John 3:24 is of no significance (Epistles of John, 219). The main emphasis remains the continuing presence of the Spirit in the Christian.

[2] The phrase ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος can be a genitive of source (see Lenski, Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude, 507 or Westcott, Epistles of John, 153). It can also be a partitive genitive, i.e., no source implied (see Brown, Epistles of John, 522). Marshall claims that this is a partitive genitive and asserts that it is referencing the charismatic gifts (Epistles of John, 219). Burdick argues that this passage is simply a reference to the presence of the Holy Spirit in the child of God (Letters of John, 328), which would seem to be the better understanding.^[2]

^[3] Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 182–183.