¹⁵Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. ¹⁶We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Confessing and abiding exist in a reciprocal relationship. Those who confess Jesus, abide in Him; equally, we can say that those who abide in Christ, confess Him. Which comes first? John isn’t concerned about this in the same way as the apostle Paul, who in the book of Romans discussed salvation from a Jewish, cause-and-effect framework:

[I]f you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. (Rom. 10:9–10)

In that context, the term “Lord” refers to Yahweh of the OT, so the confession has to do with acknowledging the deity of Christ as the Messiah, the one who came as Yahweh in the flesh. The content of our faith is a heart-level acknowledgment of Jesus’ resurrection. The direct result of this confession and belief is spiritual salvation.

Here, the apostle John uses similar wording (“Whoever confesses . . .”), but a different framework: instead of speaking of “salvation,” per se, he writes of the relationship of confessing and abiding. The mutual and interactive abiding between God and the believer is catalyzed by God’s love for us, then reciprocated by our confessing the sonship of Jesus and our belief in God’s perfect character of love for us. This love is explicitly and indivisibly expressed in the person of Jesus. God is love, John writes, and Jesus is His Son; therefore, Jesus Christ is love as well. This truth is wrapped up in our confessing Jesus.

The apostle Paul presents conversion as a one-off event. Indeed, salvation by grace, through faith, alters our eternity from the moment of belief forward (Eph. 2:8–9). We become new creatures in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17); we pass from death into life. We are regenerated and transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the realm of life (Col. 1:13).

As true as that is, John is looking at it from a different angle. He focuses not on what scholars call the forensic or legal aspect of the situation but on the relational aspect. Salvation is not just a legal construct but an intimate relationship with the God of the universe—what John calls abiding.

Lord, I am committed to growing in my relationship with You, not just in head-knowledge. I want to know Your love more deeply.