Saints Translation

By Vincent Melli

1 John — Greek text and reception

PastorPerfected love

1 John 4 — Greek text and reception

Saints Translation: 1 John [V2 Working Draft]

Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.

Chapter 4

Testing the spirits and abiding in love

Testing the spirits

Verse 4:1

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The command is testing, not indiscriminate acceptance or rejection; the reason concerns false prophets. Reception [A6] (Homily VI.11–12): Augustine applies the test of charity to discerning spirits.

Verse 4:2

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh is from God,

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The perfect participle having come is preserved, distinct from the present participle in 2 John 1:7. Reception [A6] (Homily VI.12–13): Augustine says confession of the incarnation must extend to deeds of charity.

Verse 4:3

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and is already in the world now.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Source G has the shorter does not confess Jesus clause; the flesh phrase is not imported from 4:2. Reception [A6] (Homily VI.13–14): Augustine applies the same practical test; his English presentation renders the Latin qui solvit Christum as “does away with Christ,” not G’s shorter confession clause.

Verse 4:4

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

You are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Them is plural in G. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.2): Augustine directs confidence toward God’s action rather than personal strength; his English quotation has “him,” whereas G has “them.”

Verse 4:5

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

They are from the world; for this reason they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The threefold world and the direction of listening are retained. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.3): Augustine contrasts worldly speech that commends retaliation with the demand to forgive.

Verse 4:6

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

We are from God. The one who knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The author’s we/us claim and both discerned spirits are preserved without assigning them to a modern institution. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.4–6): In this block exposition, Augustine identifies receiving the apostolic teaching with receiving its demand for charity.

God’s love and mutual love

Verse 4:7

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Love’s source, birth, and knowledge are distinct claims. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.4): Augustine reads mutual love as the practical apostolic teaching that the hearers must receive.

Verse 4:8

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

The one who does not love has not come to know God, because God is love.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The predicate is God is love; the English does not reverse it into a universal identification of every affection with God. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.4–6): Augustine connects knowing God with charity given through the Spirit; his theological development should not reverse the Greek predicate mechanically. [LEW] (The Four Loves I, opening and “I must now explain”): Lewis invokes the formula shared with 4:16, warning against treating natural human love as God.

Verse 4:9

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

In this the love of God was manifested among us: God has sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Monogenēs is rendered only, marking the Son’s unique relation; only-begotten is a traditional rendering. Among us translates en hēmin. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.7): Augustine distinguishes the loving intention of the Father’s sending and the Son’s self-giving from Judas’s betrayal.

Verse 4:10

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The source places God’s love first; propitiation consistently renders hilasmos, as at 2:2. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.9): Augustine stresses divine initiative: God loved first and the Son offered Himself for sins. [LEW] (The Four Loves VI, “God is love. Again”): Lewis explicitly cites this verse for divine initiative and self-giving love.

Verse 4:11

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The obligation follows the stated divine example; in this way is retained. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.9): Augustine makes received divine love the reason for loving a brother.

Verse 4:12

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

No one has ever beheld God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been brought to completion in us.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The unseen God and His abiding are both stated. Completion concerns love in the community, not an added claim about God’s deficiency. Reception [A7] (Homily VII.10): Augustine directs the search for the unseen God toward a purified heart and active charity.

Verse 4:13

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Of His Spirit preserves ek tou pneumatos; no division of the Spirit into material portions is implied. Reception [A8] (Homily VIII.12): Augustine connects recognition of the Spirit’s gift with the presence of love.

Verse 4:14

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Past beholding and present testimony are distinguished; Father, Son, and world remain explicit. Reception [A8] (Homily VIII.13): Augustine presents the apostolic witness to the Saviour as hope for the healing of sinners.

Verse 4:15

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in that person, and that person in God.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The reciprocal abiding is translated with explicit human references to avoid confusing the pronouns. Reception [A8] (Homily VIII.14): Augustine demands that confession be enacted in conduct, within his exposition of 4:15–16.

Verse 4:16

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

And we have come to know and have believed the love that God has among us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in that person.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Know and believe are both retained; the repeated abides includes the final verb present in G. Reception [A8] (Homily VIII.14): Augustine explains reciprocal indwelling without making God dependent on the creature whom He sustains. [LEW] (The Four Loves I, opening): Lewis’s opening uses the formula shared with 4:8; it does not distinguish the two verse locations. [RUYS] (The Book of Supreme Truth VIII): Ruysbroeck explicitly uses reciprocal indwelling for union in love while preserving Creator–creature distinction.

Verse 4:17

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

In this love has been brought to completion with us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment: because just as He is, so are we in this world.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The confidence concerns judgment; the comparison with He is retained without an expanded theory of likeness. Reception [A9] (Homily IX.2–3): Augustine describes mature charity as looking forward to judgment with confidence; likeness to Christ is not equality.

Verse 4:18

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

There is no fear in love, but complete love casts fear out, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears has not been brought to completion in love.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Punishment renders kolasis. The text’s particular relation of love and fear is not generalized into a medical claim about anxiety. Reception [A9] (Homily IX.4–6): Augustine distinguishes fear of punishment, displaced by charity, from a loving fear of separation from God.

Verse 4:19

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

We love because He first loved us.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Source G has no explicit object after we love; Him is not supplied. Reception [A9] (Homily IX.9): Augustine says God’s prior love transforms enemies into friends and makes the unlovely lovely.

Verse 4:20

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Source G states cannot love God; the seen/unseen contrast and the negative force are retained. Reception [A9] (Homily IX.10): Augustine argues that love of the visible brother and love of God cannot be separated. [LEW] (The Four Loves VI, “I believe that the most lawless”): Lewis alludes to the seen/unseen contrast to reject self-protective withdrawal from earthly love.

Verse 4:21

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

And this commandment we have from Him: the one who loves God must love his brother also.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The linked love of God and brother completes the argument without introducing a new commandment source. Reception [A9] (Homily IX.11): Augustine makes obedience to the brother-love command inseparable from loving its divine giver.