Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
No One Has Seen God
1 John 4:11-12
11 Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. · WEB
The letter that opened by insisting its writer had seen and handled now says no one has ever seen God, and the resolution is in what love makes visible.
Verse 11 draws the obligation from the previous paragraph, and the conditional is not doubtful: if God so loved us — since he did — we also ought to love one another. The debt word again, and the pattern is consistent throughout the letter: what God has done first is the ground of what is asked second.
Verse 12 opens with a statement that sits oddly beside the letter's first sentence. No one has seen God at any time — from a writer who began by claiming to have seen with his eyes and handled with his hands 1 John 1:1.
The two are not in conflict, and the letter has already supplied the resolution: what was seen and handled was the Son, in whom the life was revealed. God in himself remains unseen; the Son is how he was made visible.
What the verse then adds is the surprise. Given that no one has seen God, one might expect an appeal to faith, or to the Son, or to a future vision. Instead: if we love one another, God remains in us. The invisible God becomes evident in the way a congregation treats its members, which is a startling thing to say to people whose congregation has just fractured.
And his love is perfected in them — brought to its intended end, the same verb used earlier 1 John 2:5. Love that stops before it reaches other people has not arrived where it was going.
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