1 John 4:16

And we know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.

Know and have believed the love which God hath in us ... As Morris declared, "Believing and knowing the love is certainly a very unusual expression."[43] It is perhaps John's way of referring to one's knowing and believing the whole thesis and system of Christianity, which might be summed up, really, as "knowing and believing the love of God." What a beautiful way to express it!

Abideth in love ... is in this verse equated to "abideth in God," making the expressions synonymous. It is an exercise in futility to attempt to make some kind of distinction between those and a dozen other similar expressions in the word of God. Note: It is undeniable that the New Testament teaches that Christians are in God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and in love (in the sense of abiding in love); and at the same time the New Testament reveals that each of these: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and love all abide, indwell, or reside in Christians. There are other significant additions to this list, such as "the mind of Christ" (Philippians 2:5), and "the word of Christ" (Colossians 3:16), both of which are flatly represented as dwelling "in Christians." It is the conviction repeated several times in this series of commentaries, that it is absolutely impossible to distinguish such expressions as indicating different states or conditions of the soul; on the other hand, they are clearly multiple designations of a single condition, that is, the saved condition, that which belongs to every Christian.