3:24 “And the one who is keeping His commands is remaining in Him, and He in him. And in this we know that He is remaining in us, through the Spirit which He gave to us.”
When we keep these commandments, we are having mutual fellowship with God where we remain in Him and He remains in us. And that’s not the only promised result of keeping these commands;
we “abide forever” (2:17), we “know Him” (2:3), “love is perfected in us” (2:5), we are “born of God” (2:29), “God abides in us” (4:5), we have “confidence before Him and whatever we ask, we receive” (3:22ff), we “love God” (5:3), we “love the children of God” (5:2), and we have assurance of salvation (5:10ff). All are direct results stated in I John of keeping these two commands! Now, are you convinced they’re worth keeping?!
John goes on to tell us the form in which God remains in us: the Holy Spirit. The Spirit lives in our bodies and He lets us know that He is there. John uses the preposition “out of,” saying literally “that He is remaining in us, out of the spirit” indicating that “the Holy Spirit is the SOURCE of our knowledge (out of), not a PROOF of our knowledge (because)” (Clark 121).
“Many of today’s social problems that affect the general well-being of the body could be alleviated if we only took care of it with thoughts of who is living inside… we allow our bodies to be cluttered up with fat, drugs (nicotine, alcohol, etc.) and just general poor condition. We have divine guests within and ought to treat the premises as such” (Sublett 91). Are we living as though our bodies are a temple of the living God?
Here’s another interesting parallel. The same Greek word “he gave” us used of both “commandment” in v.23 and of “the spirit” at the end of v.24. God/Jesus “gave,” as a singular act, the law to be obeyed just as He “gave” the Holy Spirit.
They have both been already given; there no need to go seeking after another word to tell you what to do and there is no need to beg the Holy Spirit to come, for both have already been definitely given! Praise God for telling us clearly how to please Him and for enabling us to obey Him by the inner empowerment of His Spirit within us!
As the next few verses indicate, the “spirit” might not necessarily be a personal entity (The Holy Spirit), but may be an influence or mindset, such as “the Spirit of ’76.” In either case, the spirit is of God, is bigger than us, and influences us in a particular way towards righteousness and love.
By Nate Wilson.
