1 John 3:21Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Therefore, beloved, let us dispose ourselves so that we may be uncondemned before ourselves. Let us walk in truth toward one another, and then we shall receive boldness before God.

While you remain in this life, for life is a road traveled by all men, listen to the exhortations of your conscience and do not try to deceive it. If you do deceive it as you hasten through life, conscience itself will act as accuser before the judge. It will accuse you, bring the case to judgment, and you will be handed over to inexhaustible punishments. You will not suffer this if, while on the way, you show goodwill toward the accuser and receive its reproofs as spoken with benevolence.

What does it mean that the heart will perceive faithfully? It will tell us the truth, because we love. Our love is true, not hypocritical, but sincere. It seeks the salvation of the brethren and expects from a brother no other benefit than his salvation.

The Apostle is speaking of true love for one another. Which passage of the Gospel is in view? The one where it is said: “As you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” Therefore, if we desire our neighbors to be sincerely and guilelessly disposed toward us, then we too must be disposed toward them in exactly the same way. But if this is the Lord’s commandment, then He Himself will entrust Himself to us, provided that we abide and are established in Him with still greater readiness. For He cannot refuse communion with Himself. That is, the effort to obtain Him Who gives us His commandments is not vain. He first confirmed their truth by His own example. If this is so, then, provided that we fulfill everything commanded, He also will fulfill everything we ask of Him, and His mercy will be assured to us.

The more a man remembers this rule, and the more he strives to bring his words into agreement with his feelings and deeds, the more rightly he may be called a true Christian. He may say of himself with David: “I foresaw the Lord always before me, for He is at my right hand” (Ps 14:8). But if a man’s state is such that his own conscience cries out against him, accusing his words and deeds, then he is wretched, for he is far from the path of salvation. Already condemned by his own conscience, he will be condemned sevenfold by Him before Whom all things are naked and exposed (Heb 4:13).

“Beloved” (1 Jn 3:2), “if our heart does not condemn us,” and so forth. This is a new fruit of true love for our neighbors: boldness toward God. If true love has such great power that, despite some reproach from our conscience, it calms us, mystically reconciling us with ourselves and with God, and making the joy of our life complete (1 Jn 1:4), then this is the strongest and surest testimony that we have boldness toward God. Boldness toward God is a spiritual state of the believer. In it, having unshakable confidence in his gracious justification before God, he turns to Him with full and childlike trust in all his spiritual needs and affairs.

The consequences of our sonship before God. The first consequence is peace of conscience (1 Jn 3:19-22). If we love not in word or tongue, but in deed and truth, as befits the children of God, then we are children not merely in name and Christian title, but in truth itself. Or, as the Apostle says, if “we are of the truth,” then “we shall assure our hearts before Him,” before God (1 Jn 3:19). By the word “hearts” the Apostle means the conscience (Theophylact). To explain the greatness of this great inward good of the children of God, the Apostle, as usual, uses a comparative contrast. He compares the judgment of our conscience with the judgment of God. If the first judgment is heavy, then the second is, of course, incomparably heavier.

Looking at the matter from another side, namely from the side of our conscience, the Apostle says that our conscience also condemns us for evil, but praises us for good. From this the Apostle concludes that God too will condemn us for evil and reward us for good. Therefore we may have firm confidence that our petitions to God will be fulfilled when we feel calm before Him and devoted to Him as children. Indeed, if our own heart, a judge not wholly impartial or sinless, condemns our sinfulness, then it is clear that God, the most righteous and most holy Judge, will condemn us for our sins. Conversely, if our conscience, that unceasing requiter of all our deeds, not only does not condemn us, but even approves us for works of love, then all the more will the good God not condemn us.

The discussion concerns the saving power of love for neighbors. True love for neighbors, as the Apostle said above (1 Jn 3:18), consists in loving not in word or tongue, but in deed and truth. Blessed is the man who has such love, whose heart or conscience does not accuse him of a discord between words and deeds. Blessed is he who, while assuring his neighbor of love with his tongue, proves the sincerity of his words by actual help in spiritual and bodily needs. If we have such love, then “we have boldness toward God.” God is the all-knowing Being. In the preceding verse (1 Jn 3:20), it is said that He is greater than our heart and knows all things. Seeing true and unfeigned love for the neighbor in Christians, He Himself looks upon them with fatherly love, as upon His own children. Therefore they always turn to Him in prayer with childlike boldness. They are confident that, as they love their brother in every neighbor, so He also loves them as children.