1 John 4:16 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

Inasmuch as the transformative efficacy of God's love upon us depends upon our certain apprehension of it, he doubles the expression of that certainty: We have known and believed, i.e. we are assured of it, both by experimented effects, and by faith; implying, that by having this conception of God thoroughly settled in our souls, that he is love, (as was also said, 1 John 4:8), we shall be so thoroughly changed into his very nature and image, as to dwell in love, as in our own element, or a thing now become wholly con-natural to us. Which will indeed be (by consequence) to be so intimately united with God, that he and we may truly (though in a sense most remote from identification, or being made the same, a horrid notion! Not only not inferred by what is here said, but inconsistent with it and refused by it, for things united are thereby implied to be distinct) be said to indwell one another.

1 John 4:16

16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.