Abiding in God through the Spirit and Confession of the Son

John again brings together the Spirit, apostolic witness, confession, and mutual indwelling. Believers know that they dwell in God because he has given them of his Spirit. The witnesses testify that the Father sent the Son “to be the Saviour of the world,” the same striking title used of Jesus by the Samaritans in John 4:42. Confessing Jesus as the Son of God and trusting the love God has for us are not rival ways of describing faith; they are joined in the same reality of abiding. The repeated verb “dwelleth” or “abideth” echoes the Gospel’s language of remaining in Christ. Here the idea reaches its relational center: the believer abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in the believer.