1 John 4:20

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.

If people have any proper knowledge at all of God, they cannot fail, at the same time, to be aware of God-like qualities manifested in all human life, even in the unregenerated; for all people were made in God's image, irrespective of the eroding and defacing influence of sin. Failure to see this, with its consequent inclination to love people, is proof that the one so blind knows nothing of God and therefore does not love God. Loving God in some abstract sense is not the kind of love the apostle enjoined; and such a truth has many corollaries. In all times, people have found it easier to love mankind "away over there" in some foreign situation, than to love neighbors close to home. This truth reveals that if we do not love the man on our doorstep, we do not love any man who is unknown to us in any personal sense; and the same thing is true with loving God. The true test is found in the way we respond to people whom we know and with whom we associate, and whom, in many cases, we see every day.

In this verse, it is clear why John so boldly introduced the proposition in 1 John 4:12 that, "No man hath seen God at any time." He was leading up to the argument here.

In struggling to understand and walk in the light of a verse like this, many will encounter problems. One wrote to F. F. Bruce the following question:

I have a difficulty; it is not easy to love some of our brothers and sisters ... their inconsistencies which we cannot help seeing ... It seems much easier to love God, knowing how much He has done for us.[48]

Who has not encountered the same difficulty? Bruce's answer pointed out: (1) that love in the sense intended here is not sentimentality, or feeling, but a conscious recognition of our necessity to do all that is consistent with the true welfare of others, also (2) this attitude does not come automatically, but that it is developed and grows in hearts attuned to God's will. (3) It is also aided by the Christian's realization that he himself has "inconsistencies" and much worse; and that he has been forgiven; and that we who have lost such an intolerable burden of guilt in the love of Christ can best show our appreciation of so great a boon by forgiving and loving others.

<MONO> If what one is contradicts what one says, he is a liar.

One who claims to know God and walks in darkness is a liar.

One who "knows God" but denies the Son of God is a liar.

One who pretends to love God and hates his brother is a liar.MONO>

The last three of the above statements are really phases of the first proposition stated; and Stott called these "the three black lies of 1John, in the aggregate contradicting the (1) moral; (2) doctrinal; and (3) social basics of Christianity."[49]

[48] F. F. Bruce, Answers to Questions (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1972), p. 133.

[49] John R. W. Stott, op. cit., p. 170.