And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
All Commentaries on 1 John 4:3 Go To 1 John 4
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
So is this world to all the faithful seeking their own country, as was the desert to the people Israel. They wandered indeed as yet, and were seeking their own country: but with God for their guide they could not wander astray. Their way was God's bidding. For where they went about during forty years, the journey itself is made up of a very few stations, and is known to all. They were retarded because they were in training, not because they were forsaken. That therefore which God promises us is ineffable sweetness and a good, Isaiah 64:4 as the Scripture says, and as you have often heard by us rehearsed, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man. 1 Corinthians 2:9 But by temporal labors we are exercised, and by temptations of this present life are trained. Howbeit, if you would not die of thirst in this wilderness, drink charity. It is the fountain which God has been pleased to place here that we faint not in the way: and we shall more abundantly drink thereof, when we have come to our own land. The Gospel has just been read; now to speak of the very words with which the lesson ended, what other thing heard ye but concerning charity? For we have made an agreement with our God in prayer, that if we would that He should forgive us our sins, we also should forgive the sins which may have been committed against us. Matthew 6:12 Now that which forgives is none other than charity. Take away charity from the heart; hatred possesses it, it knows not how to forgive. Let charity be there, and she fearlessly forgives, not being straitened. And this whole epistle which we have undertaken to expound to you, see whether it commends anything else than this one thing, charity. Nor need we fear lest by much speaking thereof it come to be hateful. For what is there to love, if charity come to be hateful? It is by charity that other things come to be rightly loved; then how must itself be loved! Let not that then which ought never to depart from the heart, depart from the tongue.
