In verses 17 and 18 John continues, “But whoever has the livelihood of the world and beholds his brother having need and shuts up his affections from him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed and truth.” The livelihood of the world in verse 17 refers to material things, to the necessities of life. In verse 18, deed is versus word, and truth versus tongue. Tongue denotes the play of vain talk. Truth denotes the reality of love. Truth denotes sincerity, in contrast with tongue, as deed with word. Truth here denotes the genuineness, the sincerity, of God as a divine virtue becoming a human virtue as an issue of the divine reality. Therefore, the truth in this verse is the reality of God becoming our virtue.
John says that we should not love the brothers merely in word or in tongue, not merely telling the saints that we love them. This is not love in truth, love in reality. To love the saints in truth or reality means to love them in the divine reality that becomes our virtue, something that is honest, faithful, sincere, and real. We should love the brothers in this way. Of course, this kind of love in truth includes a love that supplies the needy ones with material things or money when necessary. We should not love the brothers with vain words; we should love them in truth and even with our livelihood.
We should not think that to love in truth is simply to love in the human virtue of sincerity. No, here John is not speaking of the natural human virtue of sincerity. The truth here is more than human sincerity; it is the divine reality becoming our virtue. Thus, it is the expression of what God is. This means that in loving the saints we should express God.
In 3:19a John goes on to say, “In this we shall know that we are of the truth.” In this verse truth denotes the reality of the eternal life which we have received of God in our divine birth. Having received eternal life, we may now love the brothers by the divine love. By loving the brothers with the divine love, we know that we are of this reality.
The phrase “in this” refers to our loving the brothers in truth, in sincerity, as mentioned in verse 18. This truth is the issue of the experience of the Triune God as our reality. In this kind of love we shall know, shall have the assurance, that we are of the truth.
In verses 18 and 19 the word “truth” is used with two different denotations. In verse 18 truth denotes the human virtue of sincerity, a virtue that is the issue of the enjoyment of the Triune God as our reality. But in verse 19 truth denotes the reality of eternal life, which is something higher, deeper, and richer than our sincerity. This truth is the reality of the eternal life which we received from God in our divine birth so that we may love the brothers by this love.
In this Epistle John presents deep, divine, and mysterious things. All these things are related to the divine life. However, Christians often speak of the life of God or eternal life with a very limited understanding. They do not understand the divine life in a deep, rich, and profound way. Some believers do not even realize that eternal life is an organic matter. They regard eternal life merely as an eternal blessing or as everlasting life that we shall enjoy in eternity. But even though we may have a right understanding of eternal life as something organic, our understanding of it may still be rather shallow.
We have received eternal life through our divine birth. However, when many Christians talk about everlasting life, they do not realize that eternal life is the result, the issue, the fruit, of the divine birth. In the past, many of us did not realize that eternal life came into us as a result of the divine birth. In speaking about eternal life, we may not have had the concept that it is related to the divine birth. Therefore, it is important for us to realize that eternal life has come into us through the divine birth. Apart from the divine birth, we cannot have eternal life.
We have seen that in verse 19 truth, or reality, refers to the reality of the divine life which we received in our divine birth. Therefore, this reality involves the divine life and the divine birth. Now that we have received the divine life, we can love the brothers by the divine love. Here we have the divine birth, the divine life, and the divine love. By this we see that loving the brothers is not a shallow or simple matter. On the contrary, our love for the brothers is the issue of the divine birth and the divine life.
Because we have received the divine life through the divine birth, we have the divine love with which to love the brothers. We may say that we have the spiritual capital needed to love the brothers. The divine life is our ability to love the brothers. We are well able to love the brothers because we have been born of God. Through the divine birth we have received the divine life, and the essence of this life is love. Therefore, we can love the brothers with the divine love.
If we love the brothers in sincerity, which is the issue of our enjoyment of God as reality, this will be the evidence that we are in the divine reality. It will be a confirmation of the fact that we are in the reality of the divine life, which we have received through the divine birth. By loving the brothers with the divine love, we know that we are of the divine reality.