Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 John 2:4
He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
4. The previous statement is enforced by denying the opposite of it. The construction, ‘he that saith,’ ‘he that loveth,’ &c. now takes the place of ‘if we say,’ ‘if we walk,’ &c., but without change of meaning; and this continues down to 1Jn 2:11, after which both constructions cease and a new division begins. Comp. 1Jn 1:6, which is exactly parallel to this: ‘to know Him’ = ‘to have fellowship with Him,’ and ‘not to keep His commandments’ = ‘to walk in darkness.’
and keepeth not ] By the negative which he uses ( ) S. John states the case as gently as possible, without asserting that any such person exists (see on 1Jn 2:10).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
He that saith, I know Him – He who professes to be acquainted with the Saviour, or who professes to be a Christian.
And keepeth not his commandments – What he has appointed to be observed by his people; that is, he who does not obey him.
Is a liar – Makes a false profession; professes to have that which he really has not. Such a profession is a falsehood, because there can be no true religion where one does not obey the law of God.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 4. He that saith, I know him] This is a severe blow against those false teachers, and against all pretenders to religious knowledge, who live under the power of their sins; and against all Antinomians, and false boasters in the righteousness of Christ as a covering for their personal unholiness. They are all liars, and no truth of God is in them.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
A liar; a false, hypocritical pretender, as 1Jo 1:6.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4. I knowGreek, “Ihave knowledge of (perfect) Him.” Compare with this verse1Jo 1:8.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
He that saith I know him,…. God or Christ, as the Gnostics did, who pretended to great, even perfect, knowledge of divine things:
and keepeth not his commandments; which the above persons had no regard to, and as many who profess great light and knowledge in our days show no concern for:
is a liar; he contradicts what he says, and gives the lie to it; for though in words he professes to know God, in works he denies him, and which betrays his ignorance of him:
and the truth is not in him; there is no true knowledge of God and Christ in him; nor is the truth of the Gospel in his heart, however it may be in his head; nor is the truth of grace in him, for each of these lead persons to obedience. The Ethiopic version renders it, “the truth of God is not with him”; [See comments on 1Jo 1:8].
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
I know him ( ). Perfect active indicative with recitative like quotation marks just before it. This is one of the pious platitudes, cheap claptrap of the Gnostics, who would bob up in meetings with such explosions. John punctures such bubbles with the sharp addition “and keepeth not” ( , present active linear participle). “The one who keeps on saying: ‘I have come to know him,’ and keeps on not keeping his commandments is a liar” (, just like Satan, Joh 8:44 and like 1John 1:8; 1John 1:10), followed by the negative statement as in 1John 1:8; 1John 1:10. There is a whip-cracker effect in John’s words.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
A liar. Compare we lie, 1Jo 1:6.
In him [ ] . Emphatic. Lit., in this one the truth is not. See on 1 8. Keepeth His word [ ] . Note the changed phrase : word for commandments. The word is the revelation regarded as a whole, which includes all the separate commandments or injunctions. See the use of logov word, and ejntolh precept, in Joh 14:21 – 24.
Is the love of God perfected [ ] . Rev., rendering the perfect tense more closely, hath the love of God been perfected. The change in the form of this antithetic clause is striking. He who claims to know God, yet lives in disobedience, is a liar. We should expect as an offset to this : He that keepeth His commandments is of the truth; or, the truth is in him. Instead we have, “In him has the love of God been perfected.” In other words, the obedient child of God is characterized, not by any representative trait or quality of his own personality, but merely as the subject of the work of divine love : as the sphere in which that love accomplishes its perfect work.
The phrase hJ ajgaph tou Qeou the love of God, may mean either the love which God shows, or the love of which God is the object, or the love which is characteristic of God whether manifested by Himself or by His obedient child through His Spirit. John’s usage is not decisive like Paul ‘s, according to which the love of God habitually means the love which proceeds from and is manifested by God. The exact phrase, the love of God or the love of the Father, is found in 1Jo 3:16; 1Jo 4:9, in the undoubted sense of the love of God to men. The same sense is intended in 1Jo 3:1, 9, 16, though differently expressed. The sense is doubtful in 1Jo 2:5; 1Jo 3:17; 1Jo 4:12. Men’s love to God is clearly meant in 1Jo 2:15; 1Jo 5:3. The phrase occurs only twice in the Gospels (Luk 6:42; Joh 5:42), and in both cases the sense is doubtful. Some, as Ebrard, combine the two, and explain the love of God as the mutual relation of love between God and men.
It is not possible to settle the point decisively, but I incline to the view that the fundamental idea of the love of God as expounded by John is the love which God has made known and which answers to His nature. In favor of this is the general usage of ajgaph love, in the New Testament, with the subjective genitive. 64 The object is more commonly expressed by eijv towards, or to. See 1Th 3:12; Col 1:4; 1Pe 4:8. Still stronger is John’s treatment of the subject in ch. 4. Here we have, ver. 9, the manifestation of the love of God in us [ ] By our life in Christ and our love to God we are a manifestation of God ‘s love. Directly following this is a definition of the essential nature of love. “In this is love; i e., herein consists love : not that we have loved God, but that He loved us” (ver. 10). Our mutual love is a proof that God dwells in us. God dwelling in us, His love is perfected in us (ver. 12). The latter clause, it would seem, must be explained according to ver. 10. Then (ver. 16), “We have known and believed the love that God hath in us” (see on Joh 16:22, on the phrase have love). “God is love;” that is His nature, and He imparts this nature to be the sphere in which His children dwell. “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.” Finally, our love is engendered by His love to us. “We love Him because He first loved us” (ver. 19).
In harmony with this is Joh 14:9. “As the Father loved me, I also loved you. Continue ye in my love.” My love must be explained by I loved you. This is the same idea of divine love as the sphere or element of renewed being; and this idea is placed, as in the passage we are considering, in direct connection with the keeping of the divine commandments. “If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love.”
This interpretation does not exclude man’s love to God. On the contrary, it includes it. The love which God has, is revealed as the love of God in the love of His children towards Him, no less than in His manifestations of love to them. The idea of divine love is thus complex. Love, in its very essence, is reciprocal. Its perfect ideal requires two parties. It is not enough to tell us, as a bare, abstract truth, that God is love. The truth must be rounded and filled out for us by the appreciable exertion of divine love upon an object, and by the response of the object. The love of God is perfected or completed by the perfect establishment of the relation of love between God and man. When man loves perfectly, his love is the love of God shed abroad in his heart. His love owes both its origin and its nature to the love of God.
The word verily [] is never used by John as a mere formula of affirmation, but has the meaning of a qualitative adverb, expressing not merely the actual existence of a thing, but its existence in a manner most absolutely corresponding to ajlhqeia truth. Compare Joh 1:48; Joh 8:31. Hath been perfected. John is presenting the ideal of life in God. “This is the love of God that we keep His commandments.” Therefore whosoever keepeth God ‘s word, His message in its entirety, realizes the perfect relation of love.
We are in Him. Compare Act 17:28. See note on 2 15.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “He that saith, I know him”. The one (legon) saying, claiming, (Greek egnoka auton), I have known Him – laying claim to have been saved, Joh 17:3; to have eternal life.
2) “And keepeth not his commandments”, (Greek tas entolas autou) the commandments of him – (me teron) not respecting, guarding or keeping living contradictory to his claim.
3) “Is a liar” (Greek pseustes estin) a liar, perverter of truth, or prevaricator he is.
4) “And the truth is not in him”. (Kai en touto) and in this (this claim) (he aletheia) the truth, (ouk estin) exists not or is not. The keeping of God’s commandments is external, visible evidence that one is saved, to be desired. Mat 7:17-20; Eph 2:10.
FRUIT DESIRABLE
There is a counterfeit olive-tree in Palestine, called the wild-olive, or the “oleaster.” It is like the genuine olive tree, except it bears no fruit. Alas! how many wild olives (oleaster trees) there are in each church -taking up large space in God’s orchard, absorbing His sunshine, rain, and soil but bearing no fruit.
-Bowes
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
4 He that saith, I know him How does he prove that they are liars who boast that they have faith without piety? even by the contrary effect; for he has already said, that the knowledge of God is efficacious. For God is not known by a naked imagination, since he reveals himself inwardly to our hearts by the Spirit. Besides, as many hypocrites vainly boast that they have faith, the Apostle charges all such with falsehood; for what he says would be superfluous, were there no false and vain profession of Christianity made by man.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
4. He that saith Note on 1Jn 1:6. John has the antagonist, as usual, in view. He affirms the positive truth, and negatives the counter untruth.
I know him And know that I am safe in transgression either through him or without him.
A liar A guilty falsifier of the very foundation of redemption, that he may indulge in breaking the divine commandments.
The truth Note on 1Jn 1:8.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Jn 2:4 . Inference from 1Jn 2:3 , expressing the antithetical side.
. . .] is used in the same sense as , chap. 1Jn 1:6 . Without reason, Braune considers that “in the singular there lies a progress in the development of the thought.” The statement that is used “with manifest regard to the Gnostics ” (Ebrard), is not to be accepted; is rather to be taken in a quite general sense, comp. 1Jn 2:6 , at the same time referring to the appearance of such a moral indifferentism among the churches, , as in 1Jn 2:3 = .
] = , chap. 1Jn 1:6 ; but in such a way that the idea is more sharply brought out by it (Braune).
. . .] as in chap. 1Jn 1:8 .
From the connection between the knowledge of God and the observance of His commandments, it follows that he who boasts of the former, but is wanting in the latter, has not the truth in him, but is a liar.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
Living Liars
1Jn 2:4-9
We say that the Apostle John was all for love. In so far he was true to his own loving nature. He was above all things affectionate. Some souls have no affection. They are not wholly to blame. “That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.” They do not mean to be wanting in affection; they do not know that they are wanting in affection. It is impossible to live with them; you may be compelled to live beside them, but “with” is a larger word than “beside”; it implies indentification, unity, sympathy, oneness. You did not know that there was any want of love; you could only make that disastrous discovery after long experience: hence we have so many shattered, ruined lives, where there is absolutely no cruelty of any kind that can be expressed in words. Homes are made unhappy not by cruelty only, some overt and infernal act of shameless cruelty; but in one heart or the other there is a great gap, an awful vacancy, a piece of leather where there ought to be a living, sensitive, all-answering heart. John was, on the contrary, affectionate, loving, clinging, caressing, always wanting something else to complete the measure of his heart-satisfaction. Yet the fourth verse gives a totally different aspect of the man. In that verse there is no flowery sentiment. A soldier could not be more concise, and soldiers must not indulge in rhetoric before the battle. Here we have the stern disciplinarian. John comes to the Church and rouses everybody: Move on! is the cry of this monitor. Where he finds a man with a whole gobletful of religious liquid, and finds that gospel-bibber drinking it, and saying how good it is, and how delightful a thing it is to be released from the grip of law, John says, You are a liar: that is your name, that is your nature; you are not a Christian man at all, you have no right to any of the promises, comforts, assurances of the Christian sanctuary: we only know that you are good in heart when you are industrious and faithful in service: to keep the commandments is the certificate of a renewed soul. Yet it is difficult for a man to change his whole nature even under some gust of holy excitement
Up to this time John had been speaking in the first person plural very much: “We have heard,” “We have seen,” “If we say,” “If we walk in the light,” “If we confess,” “Hereby we do know”: why not continue the first person plural? it is a cordial utterance; it is a kind of masonic word; it keeps us near to one another, as if we belonged to the same household and brotherhood: why change the grammar? Yet the grammar is changed in this very verse; suddenly the Apostle goes into another direction, speaking in the third person “He that saith.” How could that great, warm, ardent heart say, “If we say we know him, and keep not his commandments, we are liars”? Some possibilites cannot be entertained; they distress the imagination, they even defy the fancy: only in some hideous nightmare could we perpetrate the madness of supposing that a Christian professor could do certain things. Better put the case abstractly; better indicate some anonymous stranger a “he” without an address. Here is delicacy, here is exquisite spiritual taste, keeping the man right even in his grammar. With how fine a delicacy are some men gifted! They did not learn it in the schools, they brought it with them from eternity, it is part of heaven’s dower. Other men seem fated to hurt everybody; they are all elbows, they are all angles. They do not mean to get wrong, but they never happen to be right. When they are told that they have offended or tried or distressed some person, they are really amazed to hear that they have been guilty of such an offence. When men are amazed in that way you can do nothing with them; there is nothing to work upon: even a bog has been concreted into strength, but the bog of the heart swallows up all the concrete of exhortation and civilisation, and is more a bog than ever. You bray a fool in the mortar, and he comes out just as he went in. Here is a lesson in literature, a lesson in manners; here is more than Chesterfield, no pedantic letter-writing here, but the sweet and easy and graceful expression of the very quality of the man’s soul. When we are quite sure that every time we open our mouth we may offend somebody, the best thing we can do is not to open our mouth.
How stands the case in the estimation of this penetrating and candid critic? “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” Did you ever meet a liar? Not often. We have often met men who told lies, but men who tell lies may not be liars. A very subtle thing is this life of ours. A man may be better than his speech. I do not say that Peter was a profane and impious blasphemer even when he cursed and swore and denied his Lord. Man is dual. In every man there are two men. The lips are sometimes traitor to the soul. The soul has delivered a message to them which they have not delivered to those to whom they were called upon to communicate the message. Within us there goes on an incessant dialogue. When I do good, evil is present with me: the thing that I want to do I cannot do: the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and life is a continual conflict. But some men are without the truth “the truth is not in” them. They are false through and through. If you could take them to pieces fibre by fibre, you would find that every fibre is a separate lie. Nor are they to be judged by their method of looking at you. There is a short and easy method with liars, which is just as superficial as it is short. Men say, “He could not look you in the face.” The finest, sublimest, grandest liar I ever knew could look at you in the face all day long. He had no difficulty about looking you in the face. His fine blue eyes, in which the morning seemed to rest as if a native of those well-shaped orbs, looked at you with ineffable frankness and ineffable trustfulness; and the lies flowed over those soft young lips like water over some grassy torrent-bed. One of the most truthful men I ever knew never lifted his eyes from the ground when he could help it; the word “liar” seemed to be written all over his bent head. So we go with these superficial and false judgments of one another. To be a liar is to be lost. You can do nothing with a liar. You cannot make him a man of business, an accountant, a confidential servant, a friend; you cannot make him a teacher of your families, you can have no useful and profitable association with him. I do not know what is to be done with liars. They cannot pray, they cannot read the Bible, they cannot hear a sermon: we must leave them with God.
Here is a lesson which every man may learn. When a man is very anxious about his spiritual state, let him ask whether he is keeping God’s commandments. Many persons are very anxious about the matter of the unpardonable sin. Such people are always either too mad to be ministered to by pastors, or too self-conscious to receive any really wise instruction. I have sometimes ventured in the case of people who have come to me about the unpardonable sin to recommend them to take an ice-cold bath every morning at five o’clock till they get better. Do not allow your souls to be swindled by this continual morbidity of self-vivisection, taking yourselves to pieces to know whether you are right with God: judge your morality, your honesty, your behaviour: why make a metaphysical puzzle of a thing that could be settled by a reference to your own wife and children, and customers in your daily business? This is the severity that kills, that may afterwards melt into the gentleness that saves and heals.
The Apostle now puts the matter in another way, and yet not in another, saying, “But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected.” To keep God’s word is the object of the whole of this great Christian economy. Say it is an economy with a Cross at the centre; the object of that Cross is to create and sustain and perpetuate character. Is the love of God perfected in the monk, who hides himself from the world that he may read his sentimentalism and go through his ceremonial services? He knows nothing about the love of God. He does not know the love of God who runs away into some quiet resting-place, and sits down there, after having shut the door, and says to himself, Now we shut out all the world. Whoever shuts out all the world shuts out God. Whoever severs himself from his own flesh, from humanity, whoever ceases to take an interest in the evangelisation and education of the world, has not begun to pray, he has begun to blaspheme. This is very stern teaching on the part of the Apostle. James is blunter, but really not sterner. James’ sword is all blade; we are always afraid that he will cut himself when he lifts it that he may smite others. John’s sword is long-handled, velvet-covered, and the edge of that sword is every whit as keen as the edge of the sword of James. It is a mistake to suppose that one apostle takes care of the sentiment, and another apostle takes care of the doctrine: John takes care of them both, so does Paul, and so does James, when rightly read. Many persons are afraid of good works; they have a right to be; and good works have more right to be afraid of them. Some persons are afraid to do anything that is good, lest they might seem to be ostentatious. What self-delusion, what immoral phantasy is this! We must do one of two things; that is to say, we must either do good or do evil. To do nothing is to do wrong. How, then, is it to be? Some men will not let the left hand know what the right hand has done, or the right hand know what the left has done: very good: there is perhaps not much to communicate: who can tell? It would be a pity to annoy the right hand by the left going to it and saying, Brother, I have done nothing to-day: but I did not want to mention the matter to you. There is a school of theology which is very much afraid of morality, that is of keeping the Word of God; very much afraid of what is termed conscience; and extremely sensitive lest we should begin to count up our good deeds and make a virtue of them. I would rather belong to a thoroughly good moral school than to a questionable theological school. Sometimes men are trying to hammer their way into the inner kingdom by trying to do good to little children, to the poor, to the ignorant, and to others who are in need of help: interrogate these persons as to theology, and they know nothing about it blessed be God! Herein it is true that “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” If a man could be a theologian, in the real, deep, full sense of that term, there would be nothing more to be; but to suppose that we are theologians because we know certain phrases is to delude ourselves, and is to commit ourselves to a policy of wrong-doing and mischief-making.
“He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” So John would say to us, How do you walk? do you walk on both sides of the way at once? do you reel in the path? do you walk straightforwardly? do your eyes look straight on? do you walk as those who are walking in the light and are going about on useful business? In the Bible, religion is often described as “walking,” and walking is another term for conduct. We may often read a man by his walk. I never fail to do this. I do not want any certificate about the man, I want simply to see him walk down the road when he is unaware that I am looking at him, and I know all about him. “Walk” is a large word in the Christian vocabulary. You can tell by a man’s walk whether he is frivolous, or earnest, or solid, or self-conscious; whether he is capable of passion, enthusiasm, devotion; or whether he lolls and dawdles and fails to take grip of the earth he is walking on. So the Apostle John will not allow us to go behind carefully drawn and finely scented curtains that we may examine our souls; he says, You have no business to be examining your souls, your business is to be examining your lives, your character, your walk, your purpose in life; by these things shall all men know whether you are the disciples of Christ or not.
The Apostle will not have it that he is writing anything new. He resents the idea: “Brethren,” saith he in 1Jn 2:7 , “I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning.” God’s religion never changes. True religion may be a development, but it never shakes off its past in any sense of inflicting disgrace upon it. Truly developed religion never says, I have made mistakes, and now I apologise and take a new departure. The blossom does not apologise for the root, it tells in beauty what the root is all the time trying to say in darkness. But, saith John in 1Jn 2:8 , if you do want novelty, newness, real originality, then arise and be honest and true to your faith and your profession: “Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now” ( 1Jn 2:8-9 ). So the Apostle is not afraid of morality, he glories in it; he says, in effect, People who never can understand your metaphysics can always understand your conduct, and if they find you wrong at the point they can understand, they will not care to go much farther into points which lie beyond their intelligence. Brethren, it is in our power to stun the world by doing good!
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
Ver. 4. He that saith, I know him ] Here he disputeth against Verbalists and Solifidians. SeeJas 2:14Jas 2:14 . See Trapp on “ Jam 2:14 “
Is a liar ] i.e. A hypocrite; his spot is not the spot of God’s children, Deu 32:5 , for they are children that will not lie, Isa 63:8 . They all deserve that title of honour that was given of old to Arrianus the historian, viz. , A lover of truth. They know that the God whom they serve, desireth “truth in the inward parts,” Psa 51:6 , and that dicta factis deficientibus erubescant (as Tertullian hath it), words without deeds will not bear a man out in the end. It is a question whether the desire of being, or dislike of seeming, sincere, be greater in the good heart. Not so every loose and ungirt Christian, every profligate professor, that denieth that in deed what he affirmeth in word.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
4 .] Assertion , parallel with ch. 1Jn 1:8 , of the futility of pretending to the knowledge of God where this test is not fulfilled . The man saying ( answers to , ch. 1Jn 1:8 . recitantis cannot be expressed in English), I have the knowledge of Him (see above) and not keeping His commandments, is a liar (answers to ch. 1Jn 1:8 ), and in this man the truth is not (see above on ch. 1Jn 1:8 , where the words are the Same:
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
1Jn 2:4 . , in classical Greek a gentle hypothesis, merely suggesting a possible case; but in later Greek is the regular negative with participles. It was an actual error, else the Apostle would hardly have spoken so emphatically about it. , see note on 1Jn 1:6 . , see note on 1Jn 1:8 .
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
truth. See 1Jn 1:6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
4.] Assertion, parallel with ch. 1Jn 1:8, of the futility of pretending to the knowledge of God where this test is not fulfilled. The man saying ( answers to , ch. 1Jn 1:8. recitantis cannot be expressed in English), I have the knowledge of Him (see above) and not keeping His commandments, is a liar (answers to ch. 1Jn 1:8), and in this man the truth is not (see above on ch. 1Jn 1:8, where the words are the Same:
Fuente: The Greek Testament
that saith: 1Jo 2:9, 1Jo 1:6, 1Jo 1:8, 1Jo 1:10, 1Jo 4:20, Jam 2:14-16
I know: Hos 8:2, Hos 8:3, Tit 1:16
is a: 1Jo 1:6, 1Jo 1:8
Reciprocal: Psa 119:29 – Remove Psa 119:166 – and done Pro 7:2 – Keep Pro 19:16 – keepeth the Jer 22:16 – was not Dan 11:32 – the people Hos 5:4 – and Mat 28:20 – them Luk 6:49 – that heareth Joh 7:28 – whom Joh 8:55 – shall Joh 15:21 – because 1Co 7:19 – but Gal 4:9 – ye have Eph 1:17 – in the knowledge 1Jo 2:3 – hereby 1Jo 2:5 – whoso 1Jo 2:6 – that saith 1Jo 2:13 – because 1Jo 2:22 – Who 1Jo 3:6 – whosoever 1Jo 4:8 – knoweth
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Jn 2:4. A knowledge of having kept the commandments is necessary to a knowledge of Him (see preceding verse). Therefore if a man asserts that lie knows the Lord when he has not kept the commandments (and he may know whether lie has or not), he is rightly classed with liars as the apostle here states.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
1Jn 2:4. Hence he that saith, I know himthe we has become he, according to St. Johns habit of changing the phrase and making its force more keen and direct,
and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. We are sent back to chap. 1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 1:10; as he lied who said that he had no sin, and the truth of God was not in him, so he lies, and is without the indwelling truth, who, professing to know God in His Son, obeys Him not.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
4. He that says, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. This is a deadener against sinning religion.
No one can keep the commandments and sin. The conclusion from this verse is irresistible. The man who claims to be a sinning Christian is here anathematized as a liar, and the truth is not in him. There is no possible evasion of the conclusion.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
2:4 {3} He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
(3) Holiness, that is, a life ordered according to the prescript of God’s commandments, however weak we are, is of necessity joined with faith, that is, with the true knowledge of the Father in the Son.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The profession in view, in the light of the context (1Jn 1:6; 1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 1:10), is evidently another claim to having a close relationship with God, not a claim to being saved. [Note: See Zane C. Hodges, "Is God’s Truth in You? 1 John 2:4b," Grace Evangelical Society News 5:7 (July 1990):2-3.] If a person says he knows God intimately but is not obedient to the revealed will of God, he is a liar; he does not know God intimately, does not have a close relationship with God. Furthermore, God’s truth does not have a controlling influence over his life (cf. 1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 1:10).
"We may not like John’s verbal style [i.e., his hateful-sounding denunciation; cf. 1Jn 4:20], but he may simply be stating a fact in God’s sight as a pastoral messenger to God’s people who need a wakeup call." [Note: Yarbrough, p. 85.]
Jesus used similar language in Mat 23:13-33 and Joh 8:55, and John was one of two "sons of thunder" (Mar 3:17).
". . . who is not keeping God’s commands does not know God experientially no matter what he claims verbally." [Note: Robert N. Wilkin, "Knowing God By Our Works?" Grace Evangelical Society News 3:10 (October-November 1988):3.]
1Jn 2:4; 1Jn 2:6; 1Jn 2:9 contain three more claims (cf. 1Jn 1:6; 1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 1:10).
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Claim |
Condition |
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"I have come to know Him" (1Jn 2:4; cf. Joh 17:3) |
He "keeps His word" (1Jn 2:5) |
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"[I abide] in him" (1Jn 2:6; cf. Joh 15:4) |
He "walk[s] . . . as He walked" (1Jn 2:6) |
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"[I am] in the light" (1Jn 2:9; cf. Joh 12:46) |
He "loves his brother" (1Jn 2:10) |
"The three assertions about knowing God, abiding in him, and being in the light (as he himself is in the light, 1Jn 2:7), are parallel versions of a single claim to be in a right relationship with the Father through the Son." [Note: Smalley, p. 59.]