I HAVE TO admit: the COVID pandemic of 2019 and beyond shook my confidence about the future, particularly as an educator. Over the years and without realizing it, I had slipped into the comfortable assumption that I would continue smoothly on my professorial path and ease gently into retirement. Oh, sure, I might dabble with some new things, and take on some creative projects. But there would be no major changes in routine. Online education? Nah. I’ll leave that to the young folks. I’ll just keep doing what I already know how to do.

And then the educational world turned upside down. Suddenly, like it or not, teachers and students were forced to adapt to new ways of doing things that were often glitchy, tedious, or poorly suited to the learning objectives of a class. I sometimes marveled that anybody learned anything.

I’m happy to say, though, that I’m not the skeptic I used to be. Having been forced to adapt to teaching methods I otherwise would have avoided, I’ve come to appreciate their potential, and have even advocated for various ways we might use them more. But I’ve lost any easy confidence that I can possibly know how things will be even just a year or two down the road.

Unexpected crises have a way of doing that. It’s easy to default to the expectation that things will stay as they are; why should we believe otherwise? But a global pandemic and all the threats and losses that come with it can undermine our confidence.

And something similar can be said, I think, about the aftermath of a church split.

IT WOULD HAVE been nice if John had given us more to go on in reconstructing the situation for which he wrote his letters. Perhaps the Holy Spirit could have prompted him: You know, John, a couple of thousand years from now, people are still going to be reading your letters, and they’re going to wonder what you’re talking about. So maybe just jot a few historical notes in the margins for posterity? But that’s not the Bible we have.

It’s pretty clear, though, that there was a schism in John’s community, that the disagreement was theological in nature, and that people left because of it. And as we’ve seen, much of what John writes in the letter suggests that the folks who remained were shaken by the experience, perhaps even doubting whether their own faith was valid. People were asking questions: Am I legitimately a believer? Do I believe the right things? How can I be sure? John’s letters are his pastoral response.

And now, as we approach the end of 1 John 4, we can hear the apostle again encouraging his readers, bolstering their confidence about their identity and their future:

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. (1 John 4:13-17, NIV)

“This is how we know,” John begins, using language similar to what he’s already said in the letter. In 1 John 2:3, for example, he says, “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.” Two verses later, he says, “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.”

Throughout the letter, therefore, and against the background of the disagreements that split the community, John has been giving his readers ways to distinguish true believers from the false. For example, those who genuinely believe in and follow Jesus hold to the teaching and testimony of the apostles. That’s the force of his saying here that “we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world,” and as he also asserts here, that testimony is backed by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.

Moreover, John returns to the idea that love is the truest mark of an authentic Christian life. He repeats the fundamental teaching that God is more than merely loving; God is love. It follows, then, that “Whoever lives in love lives in God.” Again, the word which the New International Version translates as “lives” is the verb “to remain” or “abide,” which John uses 5 times in this passage alone; one could translate John as saying “the one abiding in love abides in God, and God abides in them.”

All of this points forward to a believer’s confidence on the day Christ returns. How do we know if a person is abiding in Jesus? Because they live like Jesus; they live a life of love. “This is how love is made complete among us,” John says in verse 17, echoing what he said in verse 12: “if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

Remember what Jesus told his disciples in the Upper Room:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:9-12)

God is love. God the Father loved God the Son, and the Son loved the Father. The Son also loved his disciples, and commanded them to love one another in the same way. Jesus, in other words, both showed us the way in his life and made a way in his death. If in the midst of an unbelieving world we as believers love one another, we’re living like Jesus.

And that becomes the basis of our confidence as Judgment Day approaches. Why? It’s not because we’ve been loving enough to earn us a spot in heaven. Rather, as we’ll see, it’s because our love for one another is evidence that everything is going according to God’s plan.