In saying “we have come to know and to believe” God’s love for us, John reminds us that our theological convictions are proven and deepened by living experience. Just as a good marriage takes seriously the vows made on the wedding day, each spouse learning to daily rely on the other’s love, so in our relationship with God do we learn to rely on His love. In Christ’s economy, trials and tests come if for no other reason than that we might learn to rely on God’s love for us.

Doubt isn’t unusual for the Christian. If we take a brief inventory of our spiritual pilgrimages, many of us will recall times when we’ve faced uncertainty, wrestling with whether our faith is genuine. Aware of this, John said that he wrote his first epistle “that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).

The basis of our certainty isn’t merely that we’re religious, that we joined a Christian club, or that we subscribe to the Ten Commandments. Believers know God personally and experientially. Central to the Christian claim is that God lives in us, and we abide in Him (John 1:12; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 John 2). Indeed, we may summarize the message of 1 John in a statement: we are God’s children, and our Christian experience is real.

In 1 John 4:13–16, the apostle expounds this claim, providing three evidences of God’s presence in our lives.

We Are Given God’s Spirit

We can say that God lives in us, first, because He gives us His Spirit:

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” (1 John 4:13)

While it’s impossible for us to have only a portion of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for Him to have less than all of us.

A number of things happen to us when we’re born again of God’s Spirit. Not only does God wipe the record clear of our sins and adopt us into His family; He also unites us with Christ in His death and resurrection. United to Christ, we become God’s sons and daughters (Rom. 8:15–16). And, as John reminds us, we receive the Holy Spirit.

The fact that we receive the Holy Spirit at conversion is a biblical reality, though certain groups deny it. Some teach that we receive the Spirit at conversion, but not in full; they assert that He’s given progressively in installments, so to speak. But the Bible teaches the very reverse of that. When we receive the Spirit, we receive all of Him. It isn’t possible for us to have Him at 60 percent, for He’s an indivisible unity. The Spirit is one divine person.

Now, while it’s impossible for us to have only a portion of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for Him to have less than all of us. That’s why Paul warns against Christians grieving God’s Spirit (Eph 4:30). Instead, we are to “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18). By this Paul means not that we receive more of what we don’t already possess but that we experience a constant renewing and directing of God’s Spirit in our lives. And the degree to which the Spirit has fullness in our lives is the degree to which we may experience assurance that God lives in us.

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