1 John 5:2Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

By believing that He is God, we receive the name of His children. As it is said in the Gospel, "to those who received Him He gave power to become children of God" (Jn 1:12). That is, those who believed in Him became His children.

If we were born of Him, then we must surely render what is due to the Begetter, that is, we must love Him who begot us. If all we who have believed were born of Him, then we must also love one another, both as brothers and as those born of Him.

In confirmation of this, the Apostle says that he who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. Then again he says that love for the brethren, or for the children of God, proves love for Him who begot them.

Above he said that he who loves God also loves his brother. Now he says that he who loves the children of God also loves God, and he sets love for one's brother as proof of love for God.

John immediately joined love with faith, because without love faith is vain. If they act according to love, this is the faith of Christians. Without love, it is the faith of demons. But those who do not believe are worse than demons.

This is because, the Theologian says, the essential property of love for God consists precisely in keeping God's commandments. Or, to put it otherwise, love for God necessarily requires the keeping of God's commandments as its essential expression.

Jesus Christ teaches, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me" (Jn 14:21). "He who does not love Me does not keep My words" (Jn 14:24). Whoever does not love God does not keep God's commandments.

"And His commandments are not burdensome." The Theologian says this to encourage the keeping of God's commandments.

How often people turn away from following Jesus Christ only because they think the fulfillment of Christ's commandments is burdensome and beyond their strength.

An unchanging testimony of love for our neighbors is love for God and the keeping of the Gospel commandments. This love is witnessed above all by living faith in His Son. Under its banners we appear as conquerors of the world and put to shame the wise of this age (1 Cor 1:27). We are established in piety and thereby testify to our love for Him.

“That we love the children of God,” and so forth. Love for God and the love of Christians for one another bear mutual witness to each other. He who loves God has in this very fact assurance, or testimony, that he also loves his brother. Likewise, he who loves his neighbor thereby testifies that he loves God. “And keep His commandments.” Only then can we testify before God, by our conscience and before our neighbors, when we keep God's commandments. That is, we must do the works of faith and love. Otherwise this will be love in word and with the tongue, not in deed and in truth (1 Jn 3:18).

This continues the thought concerning love for one's neighbor: it has an inward connection with rebirth from the Heavenly Father (1 Jn 5:1-5).

"Everyone who loves Him who begot," and this, according to the Apostle, is "everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ," also loves "him who is begotten of Him" (1 Jn 5:1). That is, he loves every brother of his by rebirth.

Besides this natural feeling of love for our fellow brethren by rebirth, there is also a positive commandment of the Heavenly Father concerning the same thing. The Apostle says that we prove our love for Him only when we keep His commandments. This therefore includes the commandment to love our fellow brethren.

Continuing to unfold his teaching on the closest bond between love for God and love for people, the Apostle points to our birth from God. Through it we enter into filial relation with God and mutually enter a brotherly, familial union.

In this union both the Father and all His children must be dear and beloved to us. They are our brothers, all reborn as we are, and therefore all, like us, have partaken of His being, that is, of love. For according to John's teaching, the being of God consists in love.

As God and people are mutually bound by the essence or nature of love, so too they are united in love's manifestation. Therefore whoever loves God also loves those beloved by Him.

Love for neighbors and love for God guarantee one another. On the one hand, love for neighbors bears witness to love for God, so that one who does not love his neighbor does not love God either.

On the other hand, love for God serves as a sign or testimony of love for neighbors as children of God. Thus whoever does not love God does not love his neighbors either.

This is because true love for God consists in keeping His commandments, in unquestioning obedience to His will, however difficult these commandments may seem to fulfill.

If this is the property of love for God, and if only such love is true, then whoever possesses it cannot fail to love his neighbors, whatever they may be.