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From: 1 John 4:19-5:4

God is Love. Brotherly Love, the Mark of Christians (Continuation)

[19] We love, because he first loved us. [20] If anyone says, “I love God,” and
hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has
seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. [21] And this commandment we
have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.

Everyone Who Believes in Jesus Overcomes the World

[1] Every one who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God, and every
one who loves the parent loves the child. [2] By this we know that we love the
children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. [3] For this is
the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are
not burdensome. [4] For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this
is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.

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Commentary:

19. Commenting on this passage, St Augustine exclaims: “How could we have
loved him if he had not first loved us? By loving him, we become his friends; but
he loved us when we were his enemies, in order to make us his friends. He loved
us first and gave us the boon of loving him. We did not yet love him, but on loving
him we become beautiful. What is a misshapen and deformed man doing, loving
a beautiful woman? [...] Can he, by loving, change and become beautiful? [...].
Our soul, my brethren, is ugly due to iniquity; loving God makes it beautiful. What
kind of love is this which makes the lover beautiful? God is always beautiful, never
deformed, never changeable. He, who is ever beautiful, first loved us” (”In Epist.
loann. ad Parthos”, 9, 9).

“We love”: this can also be translated as “we should love one another”, repeating
4:11. But here it seems to have an emphatic meaning: we are capable of loving.

20-21. “He is a liar”: this is a very harsh statement (cf. 1:6-10; 2:4): being a liar
means being on the devil’s side, for the devil is the father of lies (cf. Jn 8:44).
Loving God means keeping all the commandments (cf. Jn 14:15; 15:10), and the
principal commandment is that of charity; therefore, it is not possible to love God
without loving one’s neighbor. Clement of Alexandria records a beautiful phrase
of Christian tradition on this point when he says, “Seeing your brother is seeing
God” (”Stromata”, 1, 19; 2, 15).

St John concludes this exhortation to charity by giving a new format to Christ’s
commandment, which makes it quite clear that love of neighbor is inseparable
from love of God: true charity is a current that runs from God to the Christian and
from the Christian to his fellow men. “The true disciple of Christ is marked by love
both of God and of his neighbor” (Vatican II, “Lumen Gentium”, 42).

1-5. The fifth chapter is a summary of the entire letter, focusing on faith in Jesus
Christ (vv. 6-12) and the confidence that faith gives (vv. 13-21).

In the opening verses (vv.1-5) St John points to some consequences of faith: he
who believes in Christ is a child of God (v. 1); he loves God and men, his brothers
(v. 2); he keeps the commandments (v. 3) and shares in Christ’s victory over the
world (vv. 4-5).

1. “He who loves the parent...”: it is axiomatic that one who loves his father also
loves his brothers and sisters, because they share the same parent. The New
Vulgate clarifies the scope of this maxim in this letter by adding the word “Deum”:
“He who loves God his father...” loves him who is born of God; Christian fraternity
is a consequence of divine filiation.

4. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith”: faith in Jesus Christ is
of crucial importance because through it every baptized person is given a share
in Christ’s victory. Jesus has overcome the world (cf. Jn 16:33) by his death and
resurrection, and the Christian (who through faith becomes a member of Christ)
has access to all the graces necessary for coping with temptations and sharing
in Christ’s own glory. In this passage the word “world” has the pejorative meaning
of everything opposed to the redemptive work of Christ and the salvation of man
that flows from It.

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.