1 John 4:13 Commentary and Bible Study

The first of the two results of our loving one another is that we abide in God and he abides in us. It is of the nature of spiritual fellowship that it can be true at one and the same time that we dwell in God and he in us, for the closeness of our spirit to his Spirit can only be described in this way, even though it strains the normal use of language about the physical world. There is a sharing of thought and a celebration of commonly-held truth that means that we have the mind of Christ and by his Spirit we think his thoughts, and at the same time he who reads our hearts approves of our thoughts.John is not telling us how we know we have the Spirit for he has dealt with this at the start of the chapter, but he shows us how we know that God abides in us: by the presence of the Spirit in our hearts. Assurance is the privilege and should be the expectation of every one of God’s children, but it is sometimes delayed because Satan sets a maze of uncertainties before us. John sweeps these aside.