Verse 15
Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God.
Confess that Jesus is the Son of God ... There is a form of metonymy (synecdoche) in a statement of this kind. The primary pre-requirements of salvation, the so-called "plan of salvation" is meant by this. The New Testament reveals that "obeying the gospel" as the New Testament writers called it, meant believing in Christ, repenting of one's sins, confessing the Son of God, and being baptized "into Christ." As a consequence of such primary obedience, and subsequently to it, the Holy Spirit was given, not to make men sons of God, but because upon such initial faith and obedience they became sons of God (Galatians 4:6). There are two possible meanings of John's words here, and both of them may be correct.
(1) He refers to the Christian's obedience of the gospel at the time he became a Christian, the confession of faith in Christ, of course, being a prominent part of conversion. If this is what was in the apostle's mind, the meaning of it is almost identical with Peter's words on Pentecost (Acts 2:38f), Peter's "gift of the Holy Spirit" meaning exactly the same thing in that passage that John meant by "God abideth in him" here. There can be no difference in these.
(2) If, as Roberts thought, John was speaking of a time in the lives of Christians long after their conversion, then he may be "saying that if this confession can be sincerely repeated by the believer, that God abides in him, and he in God."[41]
In either view, it is conversion itself, and primary obedience of the gospel to which this verse undoubtedly refers. This somewhat sudden mention of initial Christian obedience, after all John had been saying, and continued to say about "love," reminds us that:
With John, love always includes obedience to all God's commandments; and where obedience is not manifested, love is not. Even with God, love was not mere sympathy, but sending his Son to be the propitiation.[42]
[41] J. W. Roberts, op. cit., p. 119.
[42] William Hurte, Restoration of New Testament Christianity (Rosemead, California: Old Paths Publishing Company, 1964), p. 489.
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