God Is Love
1 John 4:1BH-21, the testing of spirits and the shortest definition of God in the Bible, as the early church read it
Twenty letters on this site lean on 1 John 4, usually on four words from verse eight. The Fathers spend most of their time somewhere else. Augustine, preaching through the whole letter, admits that the famous test of the spirits does not help nearly as much as it looks like it will. And when he reaches “love is of God,” he is not being lyrical, he is winning an argument, and the argument is the one this site cares about most.
The Fathers' words are verbatim and attributed (Augustine's Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John, On the Holy Trinity and the anti-Pelagian treatises; Irenaeus, Against Heresies; public domain). The box marked “In plain terms” is our own restatement, never theirs.
1 John 4:1-3 · KJVBeloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.
“And again does he say in the Epistle: ‘Many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit which separates Jesus Christ is not of God, but is of antichrist.’ These words agree with what was said in the Gospel, that ‘the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’”
Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies III · c. 180Irenaeus reads the test as a single question about the incarnation, and hears John's letter saying exactly what John's Gospel said. The measure is not fervour, or power, or how much truth a teaching contains. It is whether the Word actually became flesh. Everything else in the letter hangs off that.
“Our ears, so to say, are on the alert for discerning of the spirits; and we have been told something, such that thereby we discern not a whit the more.”
St. Augustine, Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John VI · c. 407This is the most honest sentence written about the passage, and it is Augustine's. The test looks decisive until you try to use it. Everyone in the room will say the words. He does not resolve it by sharpening the doctrinal test; he resolves it, over the next several homilies, by going to the other mark John gives, which is love of the brother. That is the move the chapter itself makes, and it is why verses one and seven belong to one argument rather than two.
1 John 4:7-8 · KJVBeloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
“Let, then, the Apostle John sit in judgment between us; and let him say to us, ‘Beloved, let us love one another.’… Now, when they begin to extol themselves on these words of John, and to ask why this precept is addressed to us at all if we have not of our own selves to love one another, the same apostle proceeds at once, to their confusion, to add, ‘For love is of God.’ It is not of ourselves, therefore, but it is of God.”
St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Will · c. 426Read that in its own setting and it stops being sentimental. Augustine is arguing with the Pelagians, and the verse is his evidence. John gives a command, let us love one another, which sounds like something we supply, and then in the same breath says where the supply comes from. The command and the gift sit in one sentence. That is the site's own position on grace and the will, stated by the apostle before anyone had a word for the argument. The longer weighing is at Predestination & Free Will.
“For since ‘God is love,’ he who loves love certainly loves God; but he must needs love love, who loves his brother. And so a little after he says, ‘For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen’? because the reason that he does not see God is, that he does not love his brother.”
St. Augustine, On the Holy Trinity · c. 416The last clause reverses the order most people assume. We tend to read John as saying that failing to love your brother proves you do not know God. Augustine hears something stronger: not loving your brother is why you cannot see God. The failure is not the symptom. It is the blindfold.
1 John 4:13,16 · KJVHereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit… And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
“Lastly, a little after, when he had repeated the same thing, and had said ‘God is love,’ he immediately subjoined, ‘And he who abideth in love, abideth in God, and God abideth in him’… Therefore God the Holy Spirit, who proceedeth from the Father, when He has been given to man, inflames him to the love of God and of his neighbor, and is Himself love. For man has not whence to love God, unless from God; and therefore he says a little after, ‘Let us love Him, because He first loved us.’”
St. Augustine, On the Holy Trinity · c. 416Augustine ties the two halves of the chapter together with the Spirit. The abiding is not a mood we work up and not a standard we meet; the love we are commanded to have is the same love that was given to us, which is why verse thirteen makes the Spirit the proof of the dwelling. Man has not whence to love God, unless from God. See The Holy Spirit and Love.
1 John 4:18 · KJVThere is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
“John, in fact, exhorts us to lay down our lives even for our brethren, affirming that there is no fear in love: ‘For perfect love casteth out fear, since fear has punishment; and he who fears is not perfect in love.’”
Tertullian, Scorpiace · c. 213Tertullian is writing to Christians deciding whether to deny Christ under threat, so he reads the verse where it bites. The fear being cast out is not nervousness; it is the fear that makes a man save himself. And notice that he sets it beside laying down your life for the brethren, which is the same chapter's other command. Perfect love is not measured by feeling calm. It is measured by what you will not do to stay safe.
Where this stands among the traditions
Nothing in this chapter is contested between the traditions, which is itself worth noticing about a book so much of the site is spent arguing over. The reading in dispute is narrower: whether “love is of God” means the love is given whole and irresistibly, as the later Augustine pressed it, or given first and then answered, which is where the church itself landed at the Council of Orange in 529 and where this site stands. John Cassian, arguing with Augustine while he was still alive, kept both halves, and that exchange is set out on Augustine: The Restless Heart.
Patristic text from Augustine's Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John, On the Holy Trinity and On Grace and Free Will; Irenaeus, Against Heresies III; Tertullian, Scorpiace (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, public domain), selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. Related: Love, The Holy Spirit, Testing What You Are Taught. This passage in the Study Bible; 1 John 4 at BibleHub.