3:23 Jesus taught the apostles to trust in Him and to love each other. This is the distillation of His teaching. Specifically He taught them to trust in the efficacy of His name when they prayed to His Father (John 14:12-15; 16:24). This is an added ground for confidence in prayer.
Believing in this verse probably refers to believing for eternal salvation rather than to believing after we are Christians. The tense of the Greek verb (aorist) points to this as does the object of belief, namely, "the name of His Son Jesus Christ."
3:24 Obedience results in mutual abiding, God in man and man in God. God "abides"in every obedient believer, but He indwells every believer (cf. John 15:4-5, 7; Rom. 8:9). The evidence that God's Spirit "abides"in us is our manifestation of faith (4:1-6) and love (4:7-16; cf. v. 23). This is the first explicit reference to the Holy Spirit in 1 John.
