5. Keepeth His word (tp adtod tov Adyov). 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 Adyos word, and évtorn precept, in John xiv. 21-24.
Is the love of God perfected () aydirn tov Ocov teredNciw- tat). 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 4 dydirn tod Oeod 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 mani- fested 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 iii. 16; iv. 9, in the un- doubted sense of the love of God to men. The same sense is intended in iii. 1, 9, 16, though differently expressed. The sense is doubtful in ii. 5; iii. 17; iv. 12. Men’s love to God is clearly meant in ii. 15; v. 3. The phrase occurs only twice in the Gospels (Luke xi.42; John v. 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 ex- pounded by John is the love which God has made known and which answers to His nature. In favor of this is the general