Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
He Has Given Us of His Spirit
1 John 4:13-14
13 By this we know that we remain in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. · WEB
The third test returns, and beside it the letter sets the eyewitness claim once more — this time with the widest object it uses.
Verse 13 repeats a sentence the letter has already made 1 John 3:24, with one addition. By this we know that we remain in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. The partitive is worth noticing: a share, not the whole, which fits a letter that also warns its readers to test spirits rather than assume every impulse is that one 1 John 4:1.
This is the third of the letter's evidences, and putting the three side by side shows what the letter is doing. Obedience 1 John 2:3, love of fellow believers 1 John 3:14, and the Spirit given — one from conduct, one from relationships, one from God's side. A reader anxious about any single test has two others, and none of them requires the special knowledge the departed teachers claimed.
Verse 14 then returns to the letter's opening posture: we have seen and testify. The same two verbs from the first sentence 1 John 1:1–2, set down again as the letter's last appeal to eyewitness.
What is testified is stated at maximum reach. The Father sent the Son as Savior of the world. Given who is being written to — a congregation shrunk by a departure, tempted to think of itself as the surviving few — the choice of scope is deliberate, and it matches the earlier refusal to keep the covering narrow 1 John 2:2.
settled What this mark means