1 John 4:10 — Love as the origin of the sending

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

1 John 4:10 (ESV)

Context

1 John 4:7–21 is the great hymn of the letter to the love of God. Verses 7–8 set out the principle: ho theós agápê estín — “God is love.” Verse 9 unfolds how that love has become manifest (ephanerôthê): in the sending of the only-begotten Son, that we might live through him. Verse 10 sets the point: not our love for God was the beginning, but God's love for us; and this love took concrete shape in God's sending the Son as hilasmós.

Structurally, v. 10 grounds v. 9: the “in this” (en toutôi) shows wherein the love of God consists. So John lays down a definition: love is not return-payment but initiative. Whoever severs v. 10 from the first step of the saving movement and reads only the sending as penal payment ruptures the Johannine arc of grounding.

The broader context (vv. 11–21) draws ethical consequences from v. 10: because God has so loved us, we must love one another (v. 11); his love is perfected in us (v. 12); we confess Christ as Son of God (v. 15); and perfect love casts out fear (v. 18). This whole chain presupposes that God's love is beginning and measure of all further loving. A penal-substitutionary reading must break this chain of derivation open.

The whole fourth chapter is a rejoinder to teachings that denied Christ's true incarnation (vv. 1–3); against them John sets the reality of divine love in the concrete sending of the Son. God's love is therefore not an abstract attribute but a concrete, historical movement carried out in the Son. That forbids any reading which extracts hilasmós from this movement of love and turns it into an autonomous juridical transaction.

The Socinian core thesis

On the Socinian reading, 1 John 4:10 is the strongest textual refutation of the penal-substitutionary doctrine the New Testament contains. The verse orders the saving movement in an unsurpassably clear sequence: first the love of God (êgápêsen, aorist active), then the sending (apésteilen, aorist active), then the hilasmós as goal of the sending. Anyone teaching penal substitution must reverse this sequence and put “so that God may love” at the beginning.

The preposition peri in hilasmón peri tôn hamartiôn hêmôn is not juridical-substitutionary (“in place of”), but relational-causal: “concerning, in the matter of, our sins.” In his commentary on 1 John, Sozzini emphasizes precisely this: the preposition does not stand for a juridical pro (vicarious substitution), but for a topical de (in the matter of sins). With that the textual basis of penal substitution is philologically removed.

Hilasmós in New Testament usage and in its Septuagint background designates the effect by which sins are taken away — not an action upon God that would alter him from wrath to forgiveness. The word stands in parallel with 1 John 2:2 and, there as here, follows the Septuagint usage of käphar (“cover, take away”), not the classical Greek usage of hiláskomai (“to propitiate”).

The direction of salvation in 1 John 4:10 is therefore throughout from God outward: God loves, God sends, God effects through the Son the taking-away of sins, with the aim that we might live (v. 9). Penal substitution, on the other hand, has to reverse the direction: a substitute acts upon God so that God may forgive. Both cannot be true at once. John has decided clearly — and the Socinian reading is faithful to that finding.

Exegesis: key terms and word-field

Five key terms philologically decide the interpretation of 1 John 4:10:

en toutôi estín hê agápê — “in this is love”

The Johannine phrase en toutôi (“in this”) is a recurring structural device in 1 John (cf. 2:3, 5; 3:10, 16, 19, 24; 4:2, 13, 17). It always introduces a definition of what specific central terms (knowing, love, abiding, etc.) concretely mean. In 4:10, then, John is defining wherein love properly consists.

Thus v. 10 is not merely a statement about the historical act of the sending but a theological definition of love as such: love is not what we bring to God, but what God brings to us — and brings as initiative, undeserved, anticipatory love. This definitional weight makes any penal-substitutionary inversion of the saying impossible: one cannot simultaneously read the definition of love as a payment mechanism.

In the Johannine vocabulary the en toutôi is most often followed by a hoti clause (“in this, that”); so here. The hoti clause names that wherein the matter consists. What follows — “not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as hilasmós” — is the content of the definition, not a saving mechanism appended after the fact.

ouch hôti hêmeis êgapêsamen — “not that we have loved”

The negative phrase is emphatic: ouch hôti with aorist active indicative. John categorically denies that the initiative ever lay with us. With that he simultaneously denies any conception of salvation in which a human being — even Christ as man in our place — could by a prior act of loving or paying first bring in God's love.

In his commentary on 1 John, Sozzini remarks on v. 10: John here expressly denies that there had been anything in us (justice, holiness, or any other property) that could have moved God to love. But this also excludes every reading that makes a work in any form — whether the work of Christ in our place, or whether a penal payment — the condition of God's love.

The penal-substitutionary reading thereby faces a dilemma: either it accepts the ouch hôti as the categorical denial of every prior condition — then penal substitution as a condition of God's willingness to forgive collapses. Or it reintroduces the payment as a condition — then it stands in direct conflict with the Johannine sentence-logic. The two cannot stand together.

autos êgápêsen + apésteilen — “he loved and sent”

Both verbs stand in the aorist active indicative with God as grammatical subject. A logic of propitiation would have to reverse the subject: God would be the object of an action upon him (“he was propitiated, he was loved”). John has, however, consistently active and God as subject throughout. Grammatically the verse therefore makes clear: God acts, he is not acted upon.

The order of the aorists is not coincidental. Êgápêsen is temporally and logically prior to apésteilen; the sending is the consequence of love, not its ground. On the Socinian reading, therefore: the sending expresses the love, it does not produce it. Whoever reads the verse in penal-substitutionary terms must make the sending the condition of the love — and so turn the sentence upside down.

In the Johannine corpus as a whole, this corresponds precisely to the logic of John 3:16 (“for God so loved the world that he gave his Son”): love is ground, sending is effect. Whoever reverses the causal order undermines both 1 John 4:10 and John 3:16. In his commentary on v. 10, Sozzini formulates the express argument: God has loved out of his own goodness, not because something in us or in a substitute moved him to do so.

hilasmós — the working of atonement

Hilasmós is rare in the New Testament (only 1 John 2:2; 4:10) and derives from the Septuagint linguistic field, not from classical Greek. In the LXX the word most often renders the Hebrew root kpr (“cover, take away”), not a formula of appeasement. The theological weight lies, then, on the taking-away of sins, not on the appeasing of one who is angry.

In his commentary on 1 John 2:2 Sozzini remarks at length: “That Greek word and similar ones, whether verbs or nouns, have, especially in Holy Scripture, not the meaning of placating or of soothing one who is angered, but only the meaning of declaring that … the disposition of him who has to inflict the punishments is mild and peaceable, and of declaring that the sins will not pay their deserved penalties.” Christ is therefore hilasmós for our sins because he brings it about that our sins are not punished as they were committed — not because he acts upon God.

This reading is corroborated by the Septuagint (Lev 16; Num 5:8; Ps 130:4 LXX), where the hilasmós word-field is consistently related to cleansing and taking-away, not to a change of mood in God. That fits the Johannine theology: God is light and love (1 John 1:5; 4:8), not an angry one to be appeased. A penal-substitutionary reading of hilasmós presupposes a non-Johannine doctrine of God.

peri tôn hamartiôn hêmôn — “in the matter of our sins”

John uses the preposition peri, not hyper or anti. Peri with the genitive properly means “concerning, in the matter of, with regard to.” In Latin that corresponds far more closely to de (“about, concerning”) than to pro (“for, in place of”).

In his commentary on 2:2 Sozzini draws explicit attention to this: at all three places where the Latin reads pro (“for”), the Greek has the preposition peri, which properly corresponds to the Latin de (“about, concerning”). This text-critical and philological observation of sixteenth-century humanism still holds today.

The penal-substitutionary reading, however, needs precisely the stronger preposition anti (“in place of”) or at least hyper with the genitive (“on behalf of / in place of”). John, by contrast, chooses the weaker, topical preposition peri. This choice of word is not accidental: it signals a relational, topical effect, not a juridical-substitutionary transaction.

Comparison of readings

Fausto Sozzini on this passage

In his extensive Latin commentary on the First Epistle of John, Fausto Sozzini turns directly to v. 10. He reads the verse as the categorical denial of every prior condition of God's love and as the positive definition of the direction of salvation as proceeding from God outward.

“Since then anyone ignorant of divine matters might have supposed that there had been something in us which, beyond our wretchedness, could have moved God to love us so greatly …, the apostle denies it …: he rather affirms that God noticed nothing in us which could in any way have inspired in him so great a love for us. … The apostle, therefore, concludes that God's love for us was in no way aroused by our love for him, nor in any way proceeded from it. From which it is evident that the whole of that divine love must be ascribed to the simple goodness and love of God.”

Fausto Sozzini, Commentary on the First Epistle of John, on 4:10

Sozzini reads v. 10 in two steps: first, the verse categorically denies that anything in us would have triggered God's love; second, it traces the whole saving movement back to the “simple goodness and love of God” (simplici Dei bonitate et amori). The two steps together exclude any conception in which God's very will to love would still need to be generated by a prior performance — whether by us or by a substitute.

In his earlier work “On Jesus Christ the Saviour” (De Iesu Christo Servatore, 1578) Sozzini had already developed in detail the thesis that in Holy Scripture hilasmós does not have the meaning of appeasement but of the taking-away of sins. In the commentary on 1 John he reaffirms this expressly: “That this view [the appeasement reading] departs all too far from the truth, we have sufficiently shown in our treatise on Christ the Saviour.” Hilasmós means that the matter stands so that the deserved penalties are not exacted — not that God has been turned around.

Sozzini also emphasises that the Johannine choice of words peri tôn hamartiôn does not linguistically support the penal-substitutionary reading. Where the Latin reads pro (“for”), the Greek has peri, which properly corresponds to the Latin de (“concerning”). The humanist theologian brings this text-critical observation into his theological argument: the preposition itself shows that the issue is not vicarious substitution but a topical effect.

In the further commentary on vv. 9 and 10 Sozzini emphasises that the aim of the sending is explicitly the giving of life (hina zêsômen diá autou, v. 9), not a balancing of payments. Where the aim is life, the way to it is not juridical (a balancing of penalty) but soteriological (giving of life). Penal substitution is thus excluded from the very direction of the verse's aim.

Overview of Sozzini's writings

Logical arguments

From 1 John 4:10 the following textual, philological, and theological arguments against penal substitution follow:

1. Argument from the order of the verbs. Love (êgápêsen) stands before sending (apésteilen) and sending before hilasmós. Penal substitution must reverse this order and put “so that God may love” at the beginning. Exactly this reversal is blocked by Johannine grammar.
2. Argument from the grammatical role of God as subject. God is subject of all three acts: he loves, he sends, he effects atonement through the Son. A logic of propitiation would need God as the object of an action upon him. John, however, has active throughout with God as subject — a grammatical barrier against every penal-substitutionary reinterpretation.
3. Argument from the ouch hôti. The negative phrase categorically denies every prior condition. But if no condition is allowed to precede, then neither is the penal-substitutionary payment, as the condition of God's willingness to forgive. Both readings together are logically incompatible.
4. Argument from peri instead of anti. John chooses the topical preposition peri (“concerning, in the matter of”), not the substitutionary anti (“in place of”) or the stronger hyper. A penal-substitutionary theology, however, would need precisely the stronger preposition. The choice of word is itself a barrier against the penal-substitutionary reading.
5. Argument from the Johannine theology of hilasmós (1 John 2:2). Christ is hilasmós not only for us, but for the whole world. A penal-substitutionary reading would have to interpret this as a universal payment which in fact takes effect only partially — leading to the well-known Reformed aporias of limited atonement. The Socinian reading knows no such problem: Christ works as hilasmós universally, because his effect is open to all who cling to him.
6. Argument from v. 9. The aim of the sending is explicitly named: hina zêsômen diá autou — “that we might live through him.” The aim is the giving of life, not a balancing of penalty. Whoever reads the sending as penal performance distorts the soteriological aim into a juridical means.
7. Argument from v. 19. John explicitly closes the movement: “we love because he first loved us” (hêmeis agapômen, hóti autos prôtos êgápêsen hêmás). The prôtos (“first”) is absolute. It allows for no prior condition — neither human nor substitutionary.
8. Argument from the Johannine doctrine of God. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5); “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). A God who would first have to be moved to forgive by a penal performance has a different essence from the one of whom John speaks. The penal-substitutionary reading thus presupposes a non-Johannine doctrine of God — and so undermines the very verse it claims to support.
9. Argument from the Septuagint linguistic layer. Hilasmós in the LXX most often translates the Hebrew root kpr (“cover, take away”), not a formula of appeasement. The theological weight falls consistently on the taking-away of sin, not on the appeasing of one who is angry. Whoever reads John classical-Greek rather than Septuagint-Greek chooses the wrong frame of reference.
10. Argument from universal scope. If God's love is the beginning and not a consequence of the sending, then it must also independently of factual acceptance be universally upheld as love. The Socinian view is consistent with this: God loves universally; hilasmós works universally as offer of liberation from sin. Whoever reads this penal-substitutionarily lands in the familiar dilemma: either the payment is universal (then all are saved), or it is particular (then God's universal love is not universal). Both consequences are untenable within the Johannine framework.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages are essential for the proper understanding of 1 John 4:10 — partly within 1 John itself, partly in the broader Johannine and Pauline corpus:

1 John 4:8, 16 — “God is love”

John defines God twice as love (ho theós agápê estín). This definition is the dogmatic frame for 4:10: anyone setting out from a God whose essence is love cannot at the same time claim that this God must first be moved to love. The penal-substitutionary reading presupposes a doctrine of God that exceeds the Johannine frame.

1 John 4:9 — the aim of the sending

V. 9 names the aim of the sending explicitly: “that we might live through him” (hina zêsômen diá autou). The aim is life, not a balancing of penalty. A penal-substitutionary reading must shift the aim, from the giving of life to the satisfaction of debt — and so does violence to the text.

1 John 4:19 — “we love because he first loved us”

The prôtos (“first”) in v. 19 is the sharp point of v. 10. It is absolute, knows no exception, no prior condition. But if God's love for us is absolutely first, then it cannot be the consequence of a payment.

1 John 2:2 — hilasmós as a term of effect

John calls Christ hilasmós also in 2:2 — and not only for “our” sins, but for those of the whole world. Sozzini analyses this passage at length and shows: here hilasmós does not mean appeasement of God but the effect by which the deserved penalties are not exacted — provided one binds oneself to Christ.

John 3:16 — love as the ground of the sending

In the Gospel, John 3:16 plays the same role that 1 John 4:10 plays in the letter: it names love as the ground of the sending (hôtos gár êgápêsen ho theós ton kósmon, hôste ton hyión … edôken). Love is the ground, sending the consequence. Both Johannine texts together form the strongest New Testament double barrier against the penal-substitutionary reversal of order.

Romans 5:8–10 — the proof of love in death

Paul argues in parallel with John: God proves his love in this, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (v. 8) and even enemies (v. 10). God's love is therefore here too not consequence but ground. On the Socinian reading 1 John 4:10 and Rom 5:8 are the same statement in two styles: the saving movement comes from God, not toward God.

Titus 3:4–7 — not by our works

Paul to Titus formulates the Johannine point in his own idiom: “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us — not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.” Sozzini expressly cites Titus 3 in the commentary on 1 John 4:10 as a parallel confirmation.

Psalm 130:3–4 — forgiveness as an essential trait of God

“If you, YHWH, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” Forgiveness is an essential trait of God, not the consequence of a payment. This Old Testament language is the background for the Johannine claim that God loves without any prior performance being needed.

Hosea 11:8–9 — “my heart recoils within me”

The prophetic image of love in Hosea shows a God who rises up against his own penal claim because he loves: “I am God and not a man.” This picture is the Old Testament background of the Johannine definition. A God who decides against punishment because he loves is not a God who would first have to be moved to forgive through a payment.

Objections and Socinian replies

Objection 1: “But hilasmós lexically means sin-offering / appeasement!”

The assumption that the classical Greek semantic field is the primary frame of reference for the New Testament is methodologically wrong. For the NT — especially for the Septuagint-shaped Johannine writings — the LXX usage is the primary frame. In the LXX, hilasmós most often translates the Hebrew root kpr, whose basic meaning is “cover, take away.”

In the commentary on 1 John 2:2 Sozzini argues at length: “That Greek word and similar ones, whether verbs or nouns, have, especially in Holy Scripture, not the meaning of placating or of soothing one who is angered, but only the meaning of declaring … that the disposition of him who has to inflict the punishments is mild and peaceable, and of declaring that the sins will not pay their deserved penalties.”

In the Johannine context, the Septuagint reading is corroborated by the parallel imagery: Christ as amnós tou theou ho airôn tên hamartían tou kósmou (John 1:29) — “the one who takes away,” not the appeaser. The choice of word airón (“take away, lift off”) coincides exactly with the Septuagint weight of hilasmós.

Objection 2: “Love and payment do not exclude each other.”

Not logically tenable: whoever demands payment out of love does not give a gift. Love in the Johannine field is constitutively gift (cf. 1 John 4:9: ho theós ton hyión autou ton monogenê apéstalken — “God has sent his only Son”). Payment would dissolve the gift-structure. The two together do not work.

V. 10 says explicitly that the love of God does not consist in our having given (or a substitute having given for us). That excludes a logic of receiving — not only the human one but also the juridical one. Whoever introduces a vicarious payment as “giving” breaks the Johannine sentence at its point.

Finally: v. 19 (“he loved us first”) blocks every back door. If the “first” is absolute, no vicarious payment can be slipped in between either. Sozzini emphasises this in the commentary on v. 10: the whole love of God must be ascribed to the simple goodness and love of God himself — not to a mechanism imposed from outside.

Objection 3: “But v. 10 says the Son was sent for our sins — that is penal substitution.”

Linguistically false. John uses the preposition peri, not anti or hyper. Peri with the genitive means properly “concerning, in the matter of, with regard to” and corresponds in Latin to de, not to pro. Sozzini makes this explicit in the commentary on 2:2: at all three Johannine places where the Latin rendered pro, the Greek has peri — a preposition that does not bear the strong substitutionary sense.

In substance, peri tôn hamartiôn makes sense as “in the matter of sins”: Christ is sent in order to change something in the sin-situation — namely to take away sins (cf. John 1:29). This direction of effect is plain: Christ acts upon sin, not upon God. The penal-substitutionary reading has to reinterpret peri against its proper meaning as anti.

Johannine theology of sin-removal (John 1:29; 1 John 1:7, 9; 2:2; 3:5; 4:10) is, as a whole, a theology of cleansing and liberation, not of juridical substitution. Whoever reads a single verse in penal-substitutionary terms isolates it from this overall picture and misjudges Johannine soteriology as a whole.

Objection 4: “Without vicarious punishment God would be unjust if he simply forgave.”

This premise is unbiblical. In the Old Testament God repeatedly forgives without exacting a penalty on a substitute: David after Ps 51, Manasseh after 2 Chr 33:12–13, the people of Israel after Hos 11. In the New Testament the parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15) shows the father, who neither punishes nor demands payment — he embraces. Whoever claims that God cannot forgive without enforcing penalty contradicts the biblical history of forgiveness itself.

“Justice” (tsedeq / dikaiosyne) in biblical usage is not primarily penal justice but covenant-faithfulness, saving fidelity. Cf. the entry on Romans 3:25–26, where dikaiosyne theou is read as saving covenantal faithfulness. A strictly forensic reading of justice is a late-medieval construction, not a biblical foundation.

Moreover: the penal-substitutionary reading of God's justice produces the well-known problem of the addressee — to whom is the payment made, if not to God himself? Anselm's answer “to God” makes God both recipient and one who is angry, and leads to the paradoxical situation in which God pays out of his own hand. The Johannine-Socinian reading knows no such problem: God forgives out of his own essence, because he is love.

Objection 5: “Without a vicarious death of Christ his dying would be meaningless.”

This reduction is wrong. Christ's death is not either penalty or example; it is the saving event in several ways: it reveals God's love (Rom 5:8; 1 John 3:16; 4:9–10); it seals the new covenant (Mt 26:28; Lk 22:20); it breaks the power of death (Heb 2:14–15); it consecrates Christ to the heavenly high priesthood (Heb 9:11–14); it calls to discipleship in suffering (1 Pet 2:21).

None of these aspects requires a forensic penalty-performance. All of them together yield a complete, multi-layered saving event — without the juridical mechanism of penal substitution. Sozzini works this out at length in “On Jesus Christ the Saviour” (De Iesu Christo Servatore, 1578) as a positive doctrine of redemption, not as a merely negative critique.

Specifically for 1 John 4:10: the aim of the sending is named explicitly in v. 9 — that we might live through him. The giving of life is the positive saving aim, and Christ's sending-death-resurrection are the means of this giving of life. His death is therefore not meaningless if it is not a penal act — it is the means of the giving of life that God gives us out of love.

Theological consequences

Connected verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast the reading offered here:

• John 3:16 — love as the ground of the sending; Johannine parallel statement to 1 John 4:10.
• Romans 5:8–10 — Pauline parallel: God proves his love while we were still sinners — not as the consequence of a penal performance.
• 1 John 2:2 — hilasmós as a term of effect for the whole world; Sozzini's detailed commentary there.
• Romans 3:25–26 — hilastêrion and dikaiosyne theou as saving covenantal faithfulness, not penal justice.
• Isaiah 53:5 — Old Testament text of solidarity, not of penal substitution.
• Mark 10:45 — the lýtron-saying: liberation rather than payment, parallel to the Johannine hilasmós-reading.

Summary

1 John 4:10 is, linguistically, theologically and rhetorically, the theocentric key verse of Johannine soteriology. God loves first, then he sends; the Son is hilasmós in the Septuagint sense of taking-away of sins, not in the classical Greek sense of appeasement. The preposition peri marks the topical direction of effect, not a substitutionary stand-in.

The penal-substitutionary reading has to shift all three central markers of the verse against their proper sense: reverse the order of the verbs, read the basic meaning of hilasmós in classical Greek rather than Septuagint terms, and reinterpret the preposition peri as anti. Each of these shifts is philologically questionable; taken together they make the penal-substitutionary reading of 1 John 4:10 an eisegetical construction against the text.

On the Socinian reading, then, 1 John 4:10 is not the most difficult but the clearest saving verse of the New Testament: love is the beginning, sending is the consequence, hilasmós is the effect, life is the aim. Whoever takes the Johannine definitional structure seriously cannot read the verse penal-substitutionarily. In his commentary on the First Epistle of John, Fausto Sozzini has set out this reading philologically and theologically; it stands or falls with the fidelity to the wording John himself has chosen.