John Gill
John Gill (1697 - 1771). English Baptist pastor, theologian, and author born in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Self-educated after leaving grammar school at 11 due to nonconformist convictions, he mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and logic by his teens. Converted at 12, he was baptized at 19 and began preaching, becoming pastor of Horsleydown Church in London in 1719, serving 51 years. A leading Particular Baptist, he wrote A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity and a comprehensive Exposition of the Bible, covering every verse, still used by Reformed scholars. Gill published The Cause of God and Truth defended Calvinist theology against Arminianism. He edited Matthew Henry’s Commentary and published hymns. Married to Elizabeth Negus in 1721, they had one daughter. His library of 3,000 books aided his prolific writing, shaping Baptist doctrine. Gill’s works, online at ccel.org, remain influential in Reformed circles despite his hyper-Calvinist leanings.
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John Gill emphasizes that true knowledge of God is demonstrated through love for others, particularly for fellow believers. He argues that one cannot claim to love God, whom they cannot see, while failing to love those who are visible and born of God. Gill explains that God's essence is love, and this divine love should inspire believers to love one another, reflecting their relationship with their heavenly Father. He highlights the contradiction in claiming to love God without loving His children, urging the faithful to embody God's love in their interactions.
1 John 4:8
Ver. 8. He that loveth not, knoweth not God,.... If a man loves not the children of God, those that are born of him, he does not know, so as to love God, the Father of them; for to pretend love to God, the begetter of them, whom he sees not, and not love those who are begotten by him, and are visible objects of respect, is a contradiction, and cannot be reconciled: see 1Jo 4:20. This clause is left out in the Ethiopic version, and is transposed in the Syriac version, which reads the text thus, "for God, is love, and whoever loveth not, knoweth not God". By which reading, the following reason stands in close connection with 1Jo 4:7. For God is love; he loves himself; there is an entire love between the three divine Persons, who are in the strictest, and in the most inconceivable and inexpressible manner affected to each other; their love is natural and essential: God loves all his creatures as such, nor does he hate any of them, as so considered; and he bears an everlasting, unchangeable, and invariable love to his elect in Christ Jesus; of which an instance is given in the following verses, and is a reason why the saints should love one another; that they might be like their heavenly Father, by whom they are begotten, and of whom they are born, and whose children they are; seeing he is love itself, and in his breast is nothing else but love. So the Shekinah is, by the Cabalistic Jews {t}, called hbha, "love". {t} Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 15. 1. & Lex. Cabal. p. 43, 44.
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John Gill (1697 - 1771). English Baptist pastor, theologian, and author born in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Self-educated after leaving grammar school at 11 due to nonconformist convictions, he mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and logic by his teens. Converted at 12, he was baptized at 19 and began preaching, becoming pastor of Horsleydown Church in London in 1719, serving 51 years. A leading Particular Baptist, he wrote A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity and a comprehensive Exposition of the Bible, covering every verse, still used by Reformed scholars. Gill published The Cause of God and Truth defended Calvinist theology against Arminianism. He edited Matthew Henry’s Commentary and published hymns. Married to Elizabeth Negus in 1721, they had one daughter. His library of 3,000 books aided his prolific writing, shaping Baptist doctrine. Gill’s works, online at ccel.org, remain influential in Reformed circles despite his hyper-Calvinist leanings.