No one has ever seen God. Except 74 ancient Hebrews.

Most of the reason we Christians are pretty sure John bar Zavdi wrote both the gospel with his name on it, and the letters with his name on them, is ’cause the same ideas and themes (and wording, and vocabulary) come up in them. Including today’s bible difficulty, the idea nobody’s ever seen God. John wrote it in both his gospel and his first letter.

John 1.18 NET

No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.

1 John 4.12 NET

No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

The reason it’s a difficulty? Because people have seen God. In Exodus 24, we have this interesting little story:

Exodus 24.9-11 NET

9Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up, 10and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear like the sky itself. 11But he did not lay a hand on the leaders of the Israelites, so they saw God, and they ate and they drank.

Wait, what?

Yeah, nobody bothers to read their Old Testament, so it stands to reason they’d utterly miss this one. Or any of the other God-appearances in the scriptures.

In the OT, on a regular basis, humans freak out when there was any possibility they’d see God. Jg 13.22 ’Cause a common ancient rumor was if a mortal looked upon the actual face of one of the gods, they’d die. God’s pure, holy awesomeness would consume them like a volcano taking out stupid tourists. Although you do get the occasional dark Christian claim that God would be unreasonably pissed about it, and destroy them for daring to approach his majesty. Pretty sure that second idea only reflects their twisted secret wishes about how they’d like their subordinates to approach them. God’s cool with his kids approaching him. Ep 3.12, He 4.16 But I digress.

Yeah, it was a rumor. And sometimes rumors are true. The LORD himself warned Moses he’d only get to see God’s back, because his front was much too much for the prophet.

Exodus 33.20 NET

But he added, “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.”

Yet we have this story in the middle of Exodus, where apparently 74 people saw God, had lunch with him, and lived to tell of it.

And it’s not the only instance! Abraham had lunch with God too. Ge 18.1-7 Well, more like served him lunch. Isaiah and Ezekiel saw God on his throne. Jeremiah even experienced God touching him. Jr 1.9

Whenever I point out this rather vast discrepancy, Christians flinch, then usually respond one of two ways. Either they dismiss the passages where people got to see God, or they dismiss the passages where seeing God should get you struck down. The authors of the bible must not really have meant what the text clearly says.

So John didn’t literally mean nobody’s ever seen God. What he meant was nobody’s ever known God; at least not to the level Jesus knows God, ’cause Jesus is God; “The only one, himself God, who is in closest relationship with the Father” and all that. After all, since Jesus is God and humans have seen Jesus, logically people have seen God. Jn 14.9 But have they known God?—there’s the quandary.

Or nobody has literally seen God: The 74 Hebrew elders didn’t really see him. They saw the pavement beneath his feet, and that’s all. Somehow they knew his bronze feet Rv 1.15 were on this pavement, but didn’t really see the feet; maybe he had really nice boots on, though that’s unlikely because you don’t wear shoes on holy ground. Ex 3.5 Anyway, not actually seeing God is why the Exodus passage emphasizes the sapphire pavement—it’s the only thing they could see. But they never saw his face.

So if Christians were taught to believe in inerrancy, this is how they achieve inerrancy: One of these passages must be wrong must not be literal. Which idea would you rather was true? Embrace that one, and put aside t’other.

Interacting with God’s love.

1 John 4.11-16.

If we’re gonna call ourselves Christians or Christ-followers, naturally we need to do as Jesus teaches, and follow his example. And since Jesus loves us with God’s love, naturally we need to practice God’s love—his gracious, indiscriminate, compassionate love. Especially towards one another, since Jesus told us to love one another.

In today’s passage John brings up another way we know God’s in us: We practice God’s love. His love can be seen in the world because Christians are actually, visibly loving people. God may be invisible, but when his love is visible, he’s technically visible. It’s our job—really our duty—to make him visible.

1 John 4.11-16 KWL

11Beloved, if this is how much God loves us,

we’re obligated to love one another.

12Nobody had ever seen God;

when we love one another,

God remains in us

and his love is brought to completion by us.

13This is how we know we remain in God

and he in us:

By God’s Spirit

whom he gave us.

14We saw, and still witness

that the Father sent the Son

as savior of the world.

15Whoever confesses Jesus is God’s son,

God remains in them¹ and they¹ in God.

16We knew and believed the love

which God has in us.

God is love,

and one who remains in love

remains in God,

and God remains in them.¹

True, John is practicing some circular reasoning in this passage. In verse 13 he states, “This is how we know we remain in him and he and us: By his Spirit whom he gave us.” How do we know God’s in us? Because he’s in us. Yeah, I can’t help that John’s not really following the dictates of Aristotelian logic like westerners would prefer. But John’s not giving us a logic lesson; he’s explaining what authentic, lived-out Christianity looks like. The only way we can know God’s in us is when he’s in us; the only way we can know God’s love remains in us is when we remain in God’s love. We gotta do this stuff. Once we do, we recognize God’s in it.

How God shows us his love.

1 John 4.7-10.

You might’ve noticed when I translate bible, I split it into clauses and format it like poetry. Largely it is poetry; the Hebrew sort, which repeats ideas instead of sounds.

I actually got the idea from Peter Marshall. (The Senate chaplain, not the game show host.) In his wife Catherine’s biography of him, she included some of his sermons. He wrote them out by clauses—likely so they’d be much easier for him to follow while preaching. She noted it made them look more poetic. I thought so too, and started writing out my own sermons the same way. And whenever I quoted bible verses, I wrote them out the same way too.

I noticed other bible translators, like Everett Fox, doing that with scripture, and figured I should just do it too. So I do. Again, much easier to follow.

Now, in today’s passage, the editors of the UBS Greek New Testament already put John’s lines into this format. So I’m just following along with how they did it. (Although I’d break up verse 9 a little differently.) Here it is:

1 John 4.7-10 KWL

7Beloved, we should love one another,

for love is from God,

and everyone who loves was fathered by God,

and knows God.

8One who doesn’t love, doesn’t know God,

for God is love.

9This is how God’s love is revealed in us,

for God sent his only-begotten Son

into the world so we might live through him.

10This is how love is—

not that we loved God,

but that he loved us,

and sent his Son

as a sin-offering for our sins.

Now, what John meant by it.

Personally, I consider this a significant scripture, because God’s love is the lens I use to understand both Christianity and the scriptures. God and love are so interconnected, one can legitimately say, as John does in verse 8, God is love. Our definition of love comes from a proper understanding of God, and a proper understanding of God requires us to recognize nothing he does lacks love.

Admittedly this makes some parts of the bible really hard to understand.

Lying evil spirits, and society.

1 John 4.4-6.

In the previous passage I mentioned how evil spirits like to feed us false information to drive us away from God’s kingdom. And thus far, John points out, his audience has overcome these evil spirits, and overcome the fake prophets they encouraged to proclaim false things. His audience does know Jesus, and knows better than to fall for the false teachings of people who claim Jesus isn’t human, isn’t Messiah, isn’t Lord.

1 John 4.4-6 KWL

4Children, you’re² from God.

You overcame the fake prophets,

for the Lord among you² is greater

than anyone in the world.

5They’re from society;

this is why they speak of society

and society listens to them.

6You’re² from God.

Anyone who knows God, listens to us.

Whoever isn’t from God, doesn’t listen to us.

From this, we know the spirit of truth

and the spirit of error.

The second half of verse 4, which the KJV renders, “because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world,” gets quoted a lot. And commonly misinterpreted: Christians figure “he that is in you” is Jesus, who lives inside our hearts; and “he that is in the world” is of course the devil, who got thrown down to earth after it fought Michael and lost, Rv 12.9 and ever since has been harassing Christians. Rv 12.17

I translated it a little differently. There’s no “he” in these verses; there’s the determiner ὁ/o, which usually indicates a subject noun. But when there actually is no subject noun—like we have here—it becomes the subject noun, and now it means “the one.” Which one? Well, you gotta figure that part out from context. The writers of the KJV decided to not figure it out, and go with “he,” since o is after all a masculine-form word. And like I said, Christians figured “he” refers in the first instance to Jesus, and in the second to Satan.

I have to keep reminding Christians that the person of the trinity who actually does indwell us is the Holy Spirit. “I have Jesus in my heart” is a metaphor representing how Jesus has my allegiance, obedience, trust, and love, but Jesus isn’t physically in me; he’s at the right hand of the Father. Ac 2.33 Meanwhile the Spirit is actually within us, working on us; and we Christians are collectively his temple. But rather than pedantically insert “Holy Spirit” into verse 4, I figured “Lord”—because the Spirit is Lord, same as Jesus; they’re coequal with the Father—works too.

As for the devil being the other o, I don’t know that it is. Really the other o could be anybody in the world; any malevolent person, whether evil spirit or evil human. Does it matter? The Holy Spirit can overcome them all.

Test spirits. See whether they’re antichrists.

1 John 4.1-3.

Years ago, a pagan who believes in angels asked me, “Do you talk to your angels?”

I don’t, actually. I talk to the Holy Spirit. Nothing against my angels—assuming I have angels specifically assigned to me like Secret Service agents. The jury’s still out on whether the bible teaches such a thing, although Christians who believe in guardian angels seem to believe really hard in ’em. And some of ’em do pray to them. Michael and Gabriel probably get tons of prayers from Roman Catholics. But since they’re not infinite like God, I’m not sure how many of those prayers they hear.

Besides, I pointed out to the pagan, how do I know the angels I’m talking to, are even good angels? They might be evil.

She was kinda stunned by this idea. Evil angels?

Well yeah. A lot of pagans have a massive blindspot when it comes to evil spirits. Most assume, same as Plato and the ancient Greeks did, that if you’re pure spirit you’re beyond good and evil; that those things are either the inventions of our society, but these spirits live on a higher plane than mortal human society. Or that all our evils are tied to being material, and as spirits they’re not material, and any evil which used to be in ’em is gone now. So if the ghost of Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest appears to you and offers advice, don’t worry about him being a vile, treasonous domestic terrorist; he’s on a higher plane now! (Though I’m fairly sure he’s on a much, much lower one.)

But outside of Greco-Roman paganism, most religions recognized there were such things as evil spirits. Ancient Hebrews and Christians did too. The devil has some angels on its side. Mt 25.41, Rv 12.7, 9 Devil’s evil; its angels are evil. Angels are likely spirits, and evil spirits often come up in the bible; Jesus kept having to throw ’em out of people. Once a whole legion of them.

So I’m not gonna be so naïve as to presume any angel who appears to me, is gonna be one of the good ones. (Especially if it encourages me to start a new religion. That’s happened once or twice that we know of.)

Just after John, in his first letter, told his audience 'we know God remains in us because he gave us his Spirit, 1Jn 3.24 he immediately points out we need to test those spirits which claim they’re from God. Certainly not all of ’em are!

1 John 4.1-3 KWL

1Beloved, don’t trust every spirit!

Instead test the spirits—

whether it’s from God.

For many fake prophets went out into the world.

2This is how you² know God’s spirit:

Every spirit which confesses

Christ Jesus came from God in the flesh.

3Every spirit which won’t confess Jesus—

which says he’s not from God—

this is a spirit of antichrist.

You² heard it’s coming,

and it’s in the world right now.

A legitimate spirit from God is gonna be orthodox in its theology. It’s gonna know God, and gonna correctly describe him. Whereas a phony spirit, an evil spirit, is gonna mess with our understanding of God, and lead us astray. Partly to drive us away from God, and render us as useless as possible to God’s kingdom… and partly because it’s such evil fun to mess with people.

Hence John’s really simple test. Is the spirit orthodox? Then it’s likely from God. Is it heretic? Then don’t trust it.

How do you follow God? Obey him.

1 John 3.22-24.

The previous passage was about how we know whether we’re following God. Today’s passage relates to that: How do we even follow God? Duh; we obey him. We do as he told us. The LORD gave a bunch of commands to Moses, and Jesus taught his students a bunch of things as well. Do that.

1 John 3.22-24 KWL

22Whatever we might ask,

we should receive from God,

for we keep his commands

and we do pleasing things before him.

23This is God’s command:

We should trust the name of Christ Jesus his son,

and we should love one another,

just as he gave the command to us.

24One who keeps God’s commands

remains in him,

and he in them.¹

This is how we know he remains in us:

By the Spirit whom he gives us.

Problem is, whenever Christians talk about God’s will for our lives, we nearly always don’t talk about God’s commands or Jesus’s teachings. Nor the prophets’ exhortations, nor the apostles’ instructions, nor the sages’ wisdom. We talk about “God’s special plan for my life.” We wanna know that. Phooey on all that other noise.

Which, once you’ve read the bible and think about that a bit, is insane. Noise? Didja read how important the prophets and apostles and Jesus and his Father considered those commands? Didja read how upset the LORD got when the Hebrews not only ignored the commands, but defied them? Even deliberately did the opposite of them, just to give the LORD the finger? Didja notice Jesus had to die a horrifying bloody death just so he could atone for all that sin, and restore our relationship with himself? God’s revealed will for humanity, in those commands, is not noise.

“But we’ve been freed from the burden of the Law!” True, but I don’t think the people who raise that objection, understand what the “burden” actually is. It’s not the burden of obeying it. It’s the burden of suffering the consequences when we don’t obey it. It’s the burden of having to pathetically attempt to atone for ourselves, through inadequate ritual sacrifices. It’s the burden of a fractured relationship with God because we’ve been taking him for granted and treating him as irrelevant—until we need something from him, and then we try to make deals, and promise to be good from now on, and usually break those promises same as (and about as fast as) our New Year resolutions.

Christians act as if the “burden of the Law” is the Law of Moses itself, and forget: Y’all wanted to know what God’s will is. Well, here it is. Right there in black, white, and red if you want Jesus’s spin on it. But the average Christian response is, “Eww, I don’t mean that. I mean what his plans are for me personally. Me specifically. What does he want me to do?”

Again, it’s already been revealed in the bible! But when they say, “What does he want me to do?” they’re not at all talking about a godly lifestyle to adopt. They want a walkthrough to life.

Gamers know what a walkthrough is: It’s how to work your way through a video game so you can win. When you’re wandering a deserted castle, don’t go into this room or that room, or some bad guy will smite or kill you. Instead, go into that room and this room, where you’ll find treasure and potions, and weapons so you can more easily defeat the unexpected bad guys in future rooms.

Aren’t walkthroughs a type of cheating? When you’ve not played the game before, and haven’t learned this stuff on your own, yes they absolutely are. But people who want walkthroughs don’t wanna play the game; they wanna win the game.

And that’s what these Christians want from God: They don’t want to go through life, depending on God day by day. They wanna win. They don’t see inheriting God’s kingdom as the win; they see wealth and success, as defined by the very society God doesn’t want us to love, as the win. A personal relationship with God isn’t the goal; wealth and success is. They don’t wanna be Christians; they wanna be Mammonists.

We gotta rebuke that self-seeking attitude, and steer ’em back to the proper goal: That relationship with God. And if you legitimately do wanna remain in God, and he in you… do as he said!

How do you know you’re following God? Use your brain.

1 John 3.19-22.

More than once, the apostles talk about how we gotta follow our personal convictions. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Ro 14.5 KJV Don’t just follow the crowd; or in the context of 1 John, don’t just follow the dictates of society; don’t just succumb to peer pressure. Decide for yourself.

Skeptical pagans like to claim that’s the very opposite of what Christians do. Unfortunately these pagans ain’t wrong. There is so much conformity in Christendom. It’s even encouraged.

Peer pressure, as I discovered back when I was teaching middle school, is such a useful way to get the kids to behave! Get the popular kids to do as you want, and most of the rest will fall in line, which is way easier than working on all of ’em individually. Thing is, are the kids who are doing as I want, doing the right thing? I certainly hoped and believed so… but I know I’m hardly infallible; I know better than to not second-guess myself. Other Christians never second-guess themselves. Too many Christians in leadership never second-guess themselves. They could be—and occasionally are—woefully wrong. But, like me, they’re trying to use peer pressure to make their flocks behave as they want, and the sheep are following right along.

And that’s actually not what God wants in his kingdom. He wants us to follow Jesus, not some wolf in sheep’s clothing who’s manipulating us for fun and profit. And how do we know they’re secretly wolves? Well, if you talk to your average Christian, they’re gonna know better because they “felt a check in my spirit”—their gut told them something was amiss, and they know to follow their gut. But if you talk to Jesus, he’s gonna tell us to use our brains, and look at their fruit.

Matthew 7.16-20 KJV

16Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Following your gut isn’t as effective as you imagine. Your gut usually consists of your emotions, and your emotions are easily manipulated. If an unscrupulous church leader realizes you’re getting wise to him, he’ll quickly pivot to things that’ll trigger your emotions. Fear, usually. Fear’s easy to invoke, and automatically shuts most people down, ’cause they’re too afraid to think, and run on instinct instead—either fight, flight, or freeze, and an unscrupulous leader prefers any of those things to an actual reckoning.

In any event, God didn’t give us our guts so we’d be led by them. He gave us an organ to actually think with. We know it as our brain, though in biblical times people believed it was the heart, which is why I sometimes gotta translate καρδία/kardía, “heart,” as “mind.” He expects us to use our minds—to be wise—and figure out whether something’s legitimately a God-thing, or isn’t. Is it fruitful? Then it’s probably God. Is it fleshly? Then it’s likely not. Does it feel good? Doesn’t matter; that’s your gut, and your gut’s part of your flesh, and stop following your flesh and pretending it’s your spirit. Or worse, the Holy Spirit—you realize that’s skirting blasphemy, right?

John advises likewise. Are you not sure you’re actually following God? Well, use your head. That is why God put a brain in your body. It’s not just to memorize pop songs.

1 John 3.19-22 KWL

19This is how we’ll know

we’re acting out of truth;

how we’ll be persuaded in our mind

before God:

20When the mind condemns us.

God is greater than our mind,

and knows everything.

21Beloved, when our mind doesn’t condemn us,

we should be bold for God.

22Whatever we might ask,

we should receive from God,

for we keep his commands

and we do pleasing things before him.