Pillar NT or Tyndale (Whole Bible)

Tyndale is a much less academic commentary than Pillar. Pillar is the best of scholarship, while Tyndale is pitched at the less trained, but demonstrates consistent orthodoxy and clarity of prose. The volume on the letters to John is considered one of the best in both sets, so this probably makes a particularly nice comparison (although Tyndale is, in my opinion, less consistent), but I picked the passage at random. If there is a section you would like to see, let me know. They are really different tools for different occasions. Generally, I would suggest Pillar. But if the commentaries mentioned are all you have, I would go with Tyndale, to have acceptably good coverage of the whole Bible, and excellent coverage of parts.

5. THIRD APPLICATION OF THE TESTS (4:7–5:5)

a. A further elaboration of the social test: love (4:7–12)

In 3:23 John summarized God’s commands in terms of believing in Christ and loving one another. He has unfolded in 4:1–6 some of the implications of believing in Christ; he now turns abruptly to the subject of mutual love. In Tyndale’s words, ‘John singeth his old song again.’ For it is the third time in the letter that he takes up and applies the supreme test of love. (See also 2:7–11 and 3:11–18.) Each time the test is more searching. In this third treatment John is concerned to relate the love which should be in us not to the true light which is already shining (2:8, 10), nor to the eternal life of which it is the evidence (3:14–15) but to God’s very nature of love and to his loving activity in Christ and in us. ‘Here the epistle rises to the summit of all revelation’ (Law).
The refrain of the paragraph is the reflexive love one another. It occurs three times—as an exhortation (7, ‘let us love one another’), as a statement of duty (11, ‘we also ought to love one another’; cf. 2:6; 3:16), and as a hypothesis (12, ‘if we love each other …’). What John is at pains to demonstrate is the ground of this imperative obligation. Why is reciprocal love the plain duty of Christians? It is, as he began to say in 3:16, that God has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ as self-sacrificial love. God is love in himself (8, 16); God has loved us in Christ (10–11); and God continues to love in and through us (12–13); these are the reasons why we must love each other.
7–8. The Greek sentence in verse 7 opens with a striking assonance: agapētoi agapōmen (‘Beloved, let us love’, RSV). Here and in v. 11 (cf. 2:7) the author practises what he preaches. In urging them to love each other, he begins by assuring them of his own love for them. He then continues by developing his first argument for brotherly love, which is based on God’s eternal nature. He states it twice, first, for love comes from God (7) and secondly, because God is love (8). Since God is the source and origin (ek) of love and all true love derives from him, it stands to reason that everyone who loves, that is, loves either God or neighbour with that selfless devotion which alone is true love according to John’s teaching, has been born of God and knows God (7). Not only is God the source of all true love; he is love in his inmost being. There are three other statements in the New Testament concerning what God is in substance and nature: he is ‘spirit’ (John 4:24), ‘light’ (1 John 1:5) and ‘a consuming fire’ (Heb. 12:29 from Deut. 4:24). The Gnostics believed that God is immaterial spirit and light, but they never taught that God is love. It is the most comprehensive and sublime of all biblical affirmations about God’s being, and is repeated here twice (8, 16). Nevertheless, it is important to hold the biblical assertions about God together. It is true that the words God is love mean not that loving is ‘only one of God’s many activities’ (Alexander) but rather that ‘all his activity is loving activity’ and that, therefore, ‘if He judges, He judges in love’ (Dodd). Yet, if his judging is in love, his loving is also in justice. He who is love is light and fire as well. Far from condoning sin, his love has found a way to expose it (because he is light) and to consume it (because he is fire) without destroying the sinner, but rather saving him.
From the truth that God is love John draws a further deduction, not now positive and inclusive like that of verse 7, but negative and exclusive: whoever does not love does not know God. The argument is plain and compelling. For the loveless Christian to profess to know God and to have been born of God is like claiming to be intimate with a foreigner whose language we cannot speak, or to have been born of parents whom we do not in any way resemble. It is to fail to manifest the nature of him whom we claim as our Father (born of God) and our Friend (knows God). Love is as much a sign of Christian authenticity as is righteousness (2:29).
If John grounds his first argument for mutual love on God’s eternal nature, he bases his second (9–11) on his historical gift. The God who is love (8) ‘loved us’ (10) and expressed his love by sending his Son to earth. While the origin of love is in the being of God, the manifestation of love is in the coming of Christ. And, John writes, ‘since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another’ (11). This time the duty of reciprocal love is enforced not merely by the abstract truth that God is love, but by the concrete fact that he ‘showed his love among us’ by sending ‘his one and only Son into the world’ for us (9). It should be added that the concept of God ‘sending’ his Son (9–10, 14) ‘involves the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence and divinity’ (Ebrard) in addition to the doctrine of the love of God. John is already hinting at the organic relation between his doctrinal and social tests which he elaborates later.

John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 19, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 160–162.

4:7–5:4A CLAIMS TO LOVE GOD TESTED BY LOVE FOR FELLOW BELIEVERS

Following 4:1–6, in which the author provided criteria that his readers could use to ‘test the spirits’, he returns to the theme of loving one another expounded in 3:11–24 and develops it further in 4:7–21. The structure of this passage and the progression of thought within it are difficult to explain, even though the smaller units which make it up are easy to identify: (i) 4:7a: the exhortation to love one another; (ii) 4:7b–8: the assertion that those who practise love know God, while those who do not practise love do not know God; (iii) 4:9–11: the demonstration of God’s love in the sending of his Son as an atoning sacrifice, and the resulting obligation on the part of believers to love one another; (iv) 4:12–13: love for fellow believers is evidence that people dwell in (the unseen) God and God in them; (v) 4:14–15: belief in Jesus as the Son of God and Saviour is also evidence of this mutual indwelling; (vi) 4:16: believers know the love God has for them, and dwelling in love themselves is evidence that they dwell in God and God in them; (vii) 4:17–18: believers who are perfected in love have confidence and experience no fear as they face the day of judgement; (viii) 4:19–20: we love God because he loved us, but to say that we love God without loving one another means we are liars; (ix) 4:21: a reiteration of the obligation that those who say they love God should love one another also.173
4:7a Returning to the theme he was addressing before the digression concerning testing the spirits (4:1–6), the author now says, Dear friends, let us love one another. He addresses his readers as ‘dear friends’ (agapētoi), expressing something of his affection for them and introducing a matter for which he wants their special attention, as he frequently does in this letter (2:7; 3:2, 21; 4:1, 7, 11).174 The author not only exhorts his readers to love one another, but he also provides a reason for them to do so: for love comes from God. The significance of this statement is teased out in 4:9–10, where the historical expression of God’s love is explained.
4:7b–8 Before the author explains the nature of the love that comes from God (vv. 9–10), he draws an important conclusion from the fact of that love: Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. His point is that love for one another is evidence that a person ‘has been born of God and knows God’ because such love comes from God. The converse is also true: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. The point here is that the absence of love for one another is evidence that a person does not know God, because God is love, and there can be no real knowledge of God which is not expressed in love for fellow believers.
As indicated in the commentary on 2:29 above, the meaning of the expression ‘born of God’ is best explained by reference to the Fourth Gospel. John 1:12–13 emphasises that people become children of God, not by natural birth, but by being born of God. In John 3 Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born ‘from above’, and this is equivalent to being ‘born of the Spirit’. Being born of God, then, is quite distinct from natural human procreation. It is brought about by God through his Spirit, in conjunction with faith in Christ on the part of those concerned.
When the author says that ‘God is love’, he is not making an ontological statement describing what God is in his essence; rather, he is, as the following verses (4:9–10) reveal, speaking about the loving nature of God revealed in saving action on behalf of humankind.175 Verse 9 speaks of God showing his love by sending his Son so that people might have life through him, and verse 10 explains that this involved sending his Son as an atoning sacrifice for people’s sins.

Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans Pub.; Apollos, 2000), 156–157.