1 John 4:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Now he again raises the discourse to the same point and says: since the duty lies upon us to love our brother, according to the example of God’s love for us, and since by returning love to God we fulfill this duty, we must necessarily love our brother as the more perfect proof of love for God.

If this is absent, our love for God will not be preserved, because the duty toward our neighbors will be violated, a duty that flows from love for God.

He also adds an even stronger word to rebuke those who wish to distort divine love. The Apostle speaks as it were in this way: love is plainly formed through association with one another.

He who does not love his brother does not abide in love, and he who does not abide in love does not abide in God, because God is love.

Why does he not see God? Because he does not have that very love. He does not see God because he does not have love. He does not have love because he does not love his brother.

Therefore he does not see God for this reason: he does not have love. For if he had love, he would see God, because God is love.

This eye is purified more and more by love, so that it begins to see that unchanging Essence Whose presence always gives joy. From this it is filled with blessedness, being joined forever with the angels.

The realization and clear proof of love for God is a sincere disposition toward one's neighbor, attained through voluntary good will. For the divine apostle John says: “He who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see?” Love is the way of truth, and the Word of God calls Himself by this name. Through it He presents to God the Father those who walk this way, purified from every passion. It is the door (cf. Jn 10:9), and the one who enters through it goes into the Holy of Holies. He becomes a worthy beholder of the unapproachable beauty of the royal and Holy Trinity.

He who loves God keeps His commandments, for love for one's brother is the fulfillment of the divine commandments. He who does not love his brother has not kept the commandment, and one who has not kept it does not love God. For the liar is not the one who does not love, but the one who says that he loves.

The same love of God exhorts us to love our neighbor, that is, every human being. "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 Jn 4:11).

Will you, Christian, want to hate the one whom God has so loved? Will you want to do evil to the one to whom God, out of love, does good? Will you want to harm the one for whom Christ, the Son of God, came into the world, suffered, and died?

Will you want to deceive, seduce, slander, or dishonor the one whom Christ, the Son of God, has so honored? Will you want to steal, seize, or take away any good from the one for whom Christ, the Son of God, shed His Blood?

In instilling true love for God, the Apostle again shows the necessity of love for one’s neighbor. He says that without this love one cannot love God, and whoever says that he loves God while at the same time nourishing hatred for his neighbor speaks untruth.

“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.” Why is he a liar? “For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God Whom he does not see?”

Earlier St. John said: “No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us” (1 Jn 4:12).

Each of our neighbors bears within himself the image of God. Looking upon this image and remembering the commandment of love for neighbor, can one who nourishes love for God fail to love him?

The Ladder compares the man who says that he loves God while hating his brother to someone dreaming in sleep that he is running, or flying, while he lies motionless on his bed. Therefore let Jacob's ladder teach you, O Christian, to build that spiritual ladder of virtues, at whose summit love is established.

“He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God Whom he has not seen?” “Love,” says blessed Theophylact, “is formed through association with one another.

Association presupposes that a man sees his brother, and through association with him becomes still more attached to him by love. For sight strongly draws one toward love.

If this is so, then how can one who counts as nothing what far more powerfully draws to love, and who does not love the brother whom he has seen, be recognized as truthful when he says that he loves God Whom he has not seen, and Who neither lives in association with him nor is embraced by any sense?”

“If someone says,” and so forth. We must love God, but to love Him truly is possible only when we love one another.

Therefore, whoever says by word or tongue, or even in his heart while deceiving himself in conscience, that he loves God in his heart, and considers himself a Christian fulfilling God’s and Christ’s commandment, yet hates his brother (1 Jn 2:9, 11; 1 Jn 3:15 and note) in his heart and shows this by deeds, is a liar.

He thinks and says one thing, and shows another in deed (1 Jn 2:4). It is clear that he is a liar, because one who does not love his brother, or hates him (1 Jn 2:9), even if he were his enemy (1 Jn 3:15), cannot love God.

The impulse and foundation of our love for God and its visible power (1 Jn 4:19-21). The grateful sacrifice of our love for God must follow from that divine love of His by which He anticipated us.

Yet our love must be inseparable from love for our neighbor, as is clearly expressed in the commandment of love: “Let us love Him, because He first loved us. If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God Whom he does not see? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God should love his brother also” (1 Jn 4:19-21).

Concluding his general teaching on love, the apostle exhorts us to love God, since He has obligated us to love Him by His own love, even according to the simple feeling of reciprocity and gratitude.

Then, having in mind the close connection in which Jesus Christ placed Himself with those who believe in Him and with all men in general, the apostle exhorts us also to love our neighbors.

He proves that it is easier to love visible brothers than the invisible God. From this it naturally follows that one who does not do the easier thing, and does not love his brother, cannot accomplish the harder thing, which is to love the invisible God (cf. 1 Pet 1:8-9).

That love is formed through association, and that sight attracts one to love, is evident from many experiences, especially from the experiences of friendship among companions and of familial love.

True love for God has a necessary connection with love for neighbors. Where there is no love for one’s neighbor, there is no love for God.

Our neighbor is the visible bearer of the image of God. Even the unregenerate natural man preserves this dignity (Gen 9:6). All the more does it belong to one regenerated by the grace of baptism.

But what we see is easier for us to love than what we do not see. So too, it is easier to believe when the object of faith is before one’s eyes than if it were not visible (Jn 20:29).

Through bodily sight the object of love makes an immediate impression on the soul and takes hold of it more vividly than through spiritual contemplation.