71 - 1Jn 5:2
Ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἀγαπῶμεν τὰ τέκνα τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὅταν τὸν Θεὸν ἀγαπῶμεν, καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ τηρῶμεν. But it is not the apostle’s purpose to show that love to God and love to the brethren must go hand in hand; this is only the basis of the subsequent exposition, that our relation to God must lay down the standard for our love to the brethren. The two verses, therefore, are connected as the more general and the more particular. The thought presented by the new verse is, however, in itself very striking. If it said that brotherly love rests upon the divine love, and that the latter is the causa essendi of the former, this would be perfectly clear. But what of the causa cognoscendi? Has not St. John at the close of the former explained simply that brotherly love is the token of the love of God, indeed the only evidence of it? First, it is to be observed that not the love of God in itself is the approving mark of brotherly love, but as connected with the addition καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ τηρῶμεν [“and we keep his commandments”], while the relation between this love to God and obedience to His commandments is laid down in the first clause of the third verse: herein consists the love of God; there is no other than that which approves itself in obedience. The same relation between love and practical obedience we find in Joh 14:31: ἵνα γνῷ ὁ κόσμος ὅτι ἀγαπῶ τὸν πατέρα, καὶ καθὼς ἐνετείλατό μοι ὁ πατὴρ, οὕτω ποιῶ [“so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do just as the Father commanded me.”], where certainly the clause with ὅτι [“because”] shows how the world is to recognise the love of Christ to His Father. Compare also Joh 14:15: ἐὰν ἀγαπᾶτέ με, τὰς ἐντολὰς τὰς ἐμὰς τηρήσατε [“If you love me, you will keep my commandments”]. But what does this mean, what the commandments which are here spoken of? Do they mean brotherly love? Impossible, for then the sense would be pure tautology: we know our brotherly love by this, that we keep the commandment of loving the brethren; or, in other words, he that hath brotherly love hath it. It is the following verse, rather, which specifies the contents of the ἐντολαὶΘεοῦ [“commandments of God”], that is, in the νικᾶντὸνκόσμον [“victory over the world”]. As the world is vanquished, the kingdom of God is built up; these two are not separate and distinct factors; they are inseparably bound up with each other. Accordingly, the ἐντολαὶΘεοῦ [“commandments of God”] are no other than what St. John had laid down in chapter 3 as the ποιεῖντὴνδικαιοσύνην [“to practice righteousness”]. And now we may take complete survey of the apostle’s thought. Besides the genuine Christian brotherly love there is another, a purely natural love, which, however, is in fact only a sublimated egoism, and concerning which in its various forms the word of St. James holds good, that it is in its gradation ἐπίγειος [“earthly”], ψυχική [“natural”], δαιμονιώδης [“demonic”] [cf. Jas 3:15]. These may in their most amiable and seductive aspects easily enough suggest the erroneous idea that in them the commandment of the apostle is fulfilled. Now, whether the love is a thoroughly Christian sentiment, a love towards the τέκνα Θεοῦ [“children of God”], flowing from the γεγεννημένος ἐκτοῦΘεοῦ [“to be born of God”], we may surely judge by the answer to the question whether we practise the δικαιοσύνη [“righteousness”], or, negatively, whether we overcome the world. Every imaginable exhibition of brotherly love approves itself as Christian, and therefore genuine, by this, that it is a stone contributed to the house or kingdom of God, a blow dealt to the kingdom of darkness; only as we are the performers of the divine will and conscious of divine ends, can we recognize ourselves as ἀγαπῶμεντὰτέκνατοῦΘεοῦ [“we love the children of God”]; for only then has our deportment any reference to men as they are children of God. At the close of the previous chapter it was said that brotherly love alone was the test by which we must try our love to God; because, as we saw in 1Jn 4:21, there is no obedience towards God possible which should not be at the same time and equally a working and striving and living for the brethren. Here we have the converse. If we build up the kingdom of God, the same thing as laying low the kingdom of the world, then we give a plain token of true brotherly love; for there is no genuine love to God’s children which has not in itself this mark or this tendency. In sum, the love of God and charity to our fellow-Christians confirm, corroborate, and approve each other reciprocally: the one idea cannot be considered perfect without the supplement of the other. And here, then, we have found the most absolute synthesis between the two leading thoughts or aspects of truth which govern the whole Epistle, the κοινωνίαμετὰ τοῦΘεοῦ [“fellowship with God”] and the κοινωνίαμετὰτῶνἀδελφῶν [“fellowship with the brothers”]. As objects of thought, or ideas in the mind, we may hold these apart; but in the reality of life they cannot be disjoined. And, looked at from this point of view, our exposition of 1Jn 2:3 ff. receives a confirmatory light. We perceived there, regarding only the context, that all the commandments of God in the end are gathered up in that one focus of brotherly love; and the point we have just been establishing must make that appear perfectly natural: in fact, all other precepts are summed up in this; as, on the other hand, the presence of obedience towards God in any other supposable respects must in the long run react upon or lead up to brotherly love. But the form of the sentence in our verse demands some further consideration. The construction ἐντούτῳ γινώσκομεν . . . ἐὰν [“by this we know . . . if”] is common enough both in the Gospel and in our Epistle; but we never find ἐντούτῳ γινώσκομενὅταν [“by this we know when”] save in this place. That ὅταν [“when”] is never elsewhere used by St. John with a conditional meaning, will make us hesitate about taking it so here. Ὅταν [“when”] is primarily, just as ὅτι [“because”], a particle of time; the ἄνfn added to this certainly introduces a conditional element, without interfering with the idea of time in it: either its force is to define the action as indefinite and often recurring, on each recurrence, however, having a specific result (whenever); or it means that the time of its recurrence is to be expected in the future (when once). Here the former is the case: in every such supposed case (ἄνfn) there must concur simultaneously (ὅτι [“because”]) with brotherly love obedience also; and it is precisely in the fact of the latter (ἐν τούτῳ [“by this”]) that we are confident in discerning the former. Whether we are to read at the close of the verb ποιῶμεν [“we practice”] or τηρῶμεν [“we keep”] is essentially matter of indifference; yet the circumstance that Codex A omits the next line down to the second τηρῶμεν [“we keep”], seems to indicate that the eye of the transcriber might easily go astray and wander to the following clause, and thus the τηρῶμεν [“we keep”] of the third verse was wrongly brought forward into the second, in which originally the unusual ἐντολὰςποιεῖν [“to keep commandments”] stood.