Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
Walking as He Walked
1 John 2:5-6
5 But God’s love has most certainly been perfected in whoever keeps his word. This is how we know that we are in him: · WEB
The positive case is stated in terms of love rather than obedience, and the standard offered is a way of walking rather than a rule.
Verse 5 answers verse 4 and shifts the noun while doing it. Where the negative case was about knowing, the positive case is about God's love perfected in whoever keeps his word. The letter treats obedience and love as the same thing seen from two sides, and it does this without argument, as though the identification needed none.
The verb is worth stating carefully. Perfected here means brought to its intended completion, not made flawless. Love that stops before it reaches conduct has not arrived where it was going; that is the claim, and it is a claim about love's destination rather than about a believer's performance.
Verse 6 then gives the measure, and it is a person. Whoever says he remains in him ought himself also to walk just as he walked. The word for obligation is a debt word, which is unusually strong for a letter this pastoral.
Two things keep this from crushing the reader. The standard is a walk, not a state — a direction of travel, which the cleansing of the previous chapter accompanies rather than follows 1 John 1:7. And the letter has already supplied an advocate for the days when the walking fails 1 John 2:1. The order matters: the advocate came first, and the standard second.
settled What this mark means