3:20 For {4} if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
(r) If an evil conscience convicts us, much more ought the judgment of God condemn us, who knows our hearts better than we ourselves do.
3:20 For if our heart condemn us. If we have a troubled conscience because we have not kept the law of love,
God is greater than our heart. God, who is greater and whose condemnation is a far more serious affair,
and knoweth all things and seeth our failure in duty.
3:20 For if we have not this testimony, if in anything our heart, our own conscience, condemn us, much more does God, who is greater than our heart - An infinitely holier and a more impartial Judge. And knoweth all things - So that there is no hope of hiding it from him.
3:16-21 Here is the condescension, the miracle, the mystery of Divine love, that God would redeem the church with his own blood. Surely we should love those whom God has loved, and so loved. The Holy Spirit, grieved at selfishness, will leave the selfish heart without comfort, and full of darkness and terror. By what can it be known that a man has a true sense of the love of Christ for perishing sinners, or that the love of God has been planted in his heart by the Holy Spirit, if the love of the world and its good overcomes the feelings of compassion to a perishing brother? Every instance of this selfishness must weaken the evidences of a man's conversion; when habitual and allowed, it must decide against him. If conscience condemn us in known sin, or the neglect of known duty, God does so too. Let conscience therefore be well-informed, be heard, and diligently attended to.
