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1Jn_3:24. After the apostle has mentioned the substance of the divine commandment, he describes the keeping of it as the condition of fellowship with God, and states the mark whereby the Christian knows that God is in him.
καί is the simple copula, not = itaque; τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ is a resumption of the ἡ ἐντολὴ αὐτοῦ of 1Jn_3:23; the plural is used because the commandment is described as containing two elements; αὐτοῦ = τοῦ Θεοῦ , not Χριστοῦ (Sander, Neander, Besser).
ἐν αὐτῷ μένει κ . τ . λ .] The mention of fellowship with God, which consists in this, that we abide in God and God abides in us,[251] is explained by the purpose of the Epistle.
ΚΑῚ ἘΝ ΤΟΎΤῼ ΓΙΝΏΣΚΟΜΕΝ ] ἘΝ ΤΟΎΤῼ is referred by Lücke and Ebrard to the preceding, namely to ΤΗΡΕῖΝ ΤᾺς ἘΝΤΟΛᾺς ΑὐΤΟῦ ; but thus there results a superfluous thought, for with the connection which according to the apostle exists between the keeping of God’s commandments and God’s abiding in us, and which he has expressed in the first half of the verse, it is plainly superfluous to say once more that we know the latter by the former; it is, besides, contradicted by the following ἘΚ ΤΟῦ ΠΝΕΎΜΑΤΟς , which has induced Lücke to assume a combination of two trains of thought and an ambiguity of ἘΝ ΤΟΎΤῼ ,[252] and Ebrard arbitrarily to supply with ἐκ τ . πνεύματος the words “we know;” Düsterdieck, de Wette, Erdmann, Braune, etc., refer ἐν τούτῳ to ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος , so that according to the apostle it is from the πνεῦμα which is given to us that we know that God is in us if we keep His commandments; comp. 1Jn_4:12-13, where the same connection of ideas occurs. The change of the prepositions ἐν and ἐκ is certainly strange, but does not render this interpretation “impossible” (Ebrard); for, on the one hand, the form: “ ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ,” is too familiar to the apostle not to have suggested itself to him here; and, on the other hand, by ἐκ the πνεῦμα is indicated as the source from which that γινώσκειν flows; besides, the construction with ἐκ appears also in chap. 1Jn_4:6.
By πνεῦμα is here to be understood, just as by χρῖσμα in chap. 1Jn_2:20, “the Holy Ghost,” who lives and works in the believer, but not, with Socinus, the disposition or the love produced by Him; or, with de Wette, “first of all the true knowledge and doctrine of the person of Jesus.” With this verse the apostle makes the transition to the following section, in which, with reference to the false teachers, the distinction is made between the πνεῦμα τοῦ Θεοῦ and the πνεῦμα which is not ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ .
[251] When Weiss defines the abiding or being of God in him who keeps His commandments, in this way, that God who is known, or the knowledge of God, is the determining principle of his spiritual life, this seems “to weaken the powerful realism of John’s conception;” yet Weiss guards himself against this when he says that he does not in any way diminish the divine causality in the act of regeneration, but only means thereby that God accomplishes this act by means of His revelation in Christ, which must be accepted into knowledge.
[252] The two thoughts which Lücke considers as combined here are—(1) that we in the keeping of God’s commandments know that we are in fellowship with Him, and (2) that the τηρεῖν τὰς ἐντολάς is nothing else than the expression and operation of the Divine Spirit.—It is plainly quite mistaken for Paulus to regard ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος as the subject belonging to μένει .