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Selected Verse: 1 John 4:20 - King James

Verse         Translation Text
1Jo 4:20 King James 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, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

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A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882]
loveth not . . . brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen--It is easier for us, influenced as we are here by sense, to direct love towards one within the range of our senses than towards One unseen, appreciable only by faith. "Nature is prior to grace; and we by nature love things seen, before we love things unseen" [ESTIUS]. The eyes are our leaders in love. "Seeing is an incentive to love" [Å“CUMENIUS]. If we do not love the brethren, the visible representatives of God, how can we love God, the invisible One, whose children they are? The true ideal of man, lost in Adam, is realized in Christ, in whom God is revealed as He is, and man as he ought to be. Thus, by faith in Christ, we learn to love both the true God, and the true man, and so to love the brethren as bearing His image.

hath seen--and continually sees.
 
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17 But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
19 We love him, because he first loved us.