1 John 2:3-4
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
John moves from communion into obedience, and that is exactly where he should go. Because if a man says he knows God, but his life keeps resisting what God says, something is wrong somewhere. John will not let us build a version of intimacy with God that has no effect on the way we walk.
That second know carries the idea of intimacy. Not just information. Not just recognition. Not just being able to talk about God, define terms, quote verses, or say the right things in the right setting. John is talking about real nearness. Real relationship. Real familiarity with the Lord.
And he says there is a way to know if that intimacy is genuine.
If we keep His commandments.
That does not mean obedience makes us sons. It means obedience reveals that we are walking close to the Father. When a man is near the Lord, he begins to care about what the Lord cares about. His commands do not feel like cold interruptions. They become the pathway of fellowship.
Think about a husband who says he deeply loves his wife, knows her heart, and understands her ways, yet ignores everything that matters to her. After a while, those words start sounding thin. Why. Because intimacy always shows up somewhere. In the same way, a man may say he knows God, but if there is no desire to obey Him, John says the claim does not hold up.
That is strong language, but it is kind language too, because it keeps us from fooling ourselves. John is not trying to make tender believers miserable. He is trying to keep casual religion from masquerading as true relationship. There is a kind of Christianity that talks freely about knowing the Lord while treating His Word as optional. John says that kind of talk is empty.
Do not miss this. Obedience is not the price we pay to make God love us. It is the fruit that grows when we are walking in love with Him. A healthy tree does not strain to prove it is alive every morning. Fruit begins to show because life is in it. In the same way, when a man is growing in intimacy with God, obedience begins to appear more and more naturally.
That does not mean flawlessly.
It means directionally. It means there is a new desire. A new tenderness. A new willingness to say, Lord, if this matters to You, I want it to matter to me too. The believer may stumble. He may need correction. He may fail and need the advocacy John has already talked about. But deep down, he does not want to live at odds with the Lord he loves.
So this is a searching verse. It asks whether my Christianity is merely verbal or truly relational. It asks whether I want God Himself or merely the comfort of religious language. It asks whether the truth is in me, shaping me, bending me, softening me into obedience.
Beloved, intimacy with God is never less than affection, but it is never separate from obedience. The man who truly knows the Lord will increasingly want to walk in the ways of the Lord. Not to earn nearness, but because nearness is already becoming precious to him.