The author now focuses on the relationship of the three fundamental elements so important to him in the knowledge of God: faith, love, and obedience. “To believe, have faith”, first introduced at 3:23, becomes the primary term in this section. In John, faith requires not only that something is held true, but that someone has entered into one’s life. A commitment has been made and a relationship established that one can then only “confess”.
1JN 5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 1. Even as we love only because God first loved us, so also our belief is possible only because we have first been “born of God.” The author is not addressing the question of incorporation into the family of God but is rather looking only at its result. Now this sounds a bit backwards to us. We think we believe first but it is God’s love that gives us that capacity. We looked at some of this concept in Ephesians last year. “Believing” in Jesus is a direct consequence of our “having been born” of God and therefore becomes a test or proof of that birth.
2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.2 This statement troubles commentators because it reverses what is expected. One anticipates a conclusion like this: “And this is how we know that we love God: by loving his children and obeying his commands.” Instead the author concludes: “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.” Even as one cannot love God without loving his children, so also it is impossible to truly love the children of God without loving God also. Those who claim to love their brothers and not God have not truly recognized their brothers as those born of God and have not offered them the true love that comes from the Father. The author, John, cannot really talk of loving God, however, without also linking his words to obedience to his commands. Love always has a result. Loving God has a result. It affects every aspect of us.
3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,3 The connection between love for God and obedience is meant to protect us against thinking of love for God as “emotional feelings” about God. Agape love requires action. Agape is one of four words for love in greek. It implies a perfect love, God’s love, a complete love. In respect to humankind, it means willingness to lay down one’s life is seen as the supreme example. In respect to God, it means a life of willing obedience, a filial relationship with God, and service on behalf of God. It requires laying down one’s life as being one’s own possession and taking up a new life in response to a Lord and Master. John now qualifies what he has just said by adding, “And his commands are not burdensome.” To the natural man the will of God is strange; the requirement for righteousness, foreign and hard. Even the law of love is a burden. But when God enters into us and we trust God’s Son, then his yoke becomes gentle and the burden light.Yoke on a Clydesdale. We who have been born of God have within us a desire and a yearning for God. Seeking and hungering after righteousness becomes our joy (Mt 5:6) an experience that brings us pleasure AND meaning. Living the life of love becomes our delight.
4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 4 “Everyone [ Greek lit., everything] born of God overcomes the world.” Our being born of God is God’s act on our behalf, through which he moves to overcome the world. What is in view is the supernatural act by which human beings are being translated out of the kingdom of death into the kingdom of life through the Son. The victory that overcomes the world is now identified with “our faith.” It is best to interpret this statement as referring to a past event; John is emphasizing that the victory he refers to has already been won. By faith we now have access to what was once accomplished by and through the appearance of Jesus on earth.
5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.5 Observe the progression of thought in what John says about how victory over the world is gained. It begins with the new birth. It moves on to the believer’s experience and act of faith. It culminates in the confession that “Jesus is the Son of God.”
Victory requires the whole process. It assures us that we too can love God and the children of God and that we too can obey his commands (v. 3). Belief, love, and obedience are all the marks of the new birth. And the life lived in the new birth is not a burden but a life of celebration. This was the experience of the apostles and of the early church. Paul’s cry that “in all these things we are more than conquerors” (Ro 8:37) echoed throughout the Roman world. Whereas at first the victories were thought of in terms of alien powers on the outside, Christian consciousness soon perceived that the victory included the internal enemies that confront the conscience, assail Christian beliefs and standards, corrupt the soul, and negate the life of love and obedience to God. 1JN 5:6 This is the one who came by water and blood–Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 6a Jesus, the Son of God (v. 5) and the Christ (v. 1), came not just by water, but “by water and blood.” This enigmatic statement has given rise in the church to many interpretations. Augustine linked the reference to Jn 19:34, where the piercing of Jesus’ side produced water and blood. Calvin and Luther connected it to Jn 4 and 6 and saw in it a reference to the sacraments. Most commentators today see the “water” as referring to Jesus’ baptism and the “blood” to his death on the cross. Even though John’s gospel does not describe the water baptism of Jesus, the Johannine community could not have been ignorant of it. The purpose of the statement seems clear. The author once more affirms that it is the historical Jesus who is the Christ, the Son of God. Although the false teachers may have acknowledged Christ as the Savior, the divine Son of God, they denied his true human existence. Like Cerinthus, they probably held that the Christ came on the man Jesus at his baptism and remained till the time of the Crucifixion. In this way they could deny that the Christ had ever been truly human and subject to suffering and death. John rightly regards this as a denial of the redemptive activity of God. It was the Son of God who came into the world. It was this same divine Son who was baptized and received the Spirit. It was the Son who, with the Father’s approval and in fulfillment of the Father’s intention, shed his blood on the cross to redeem humanity. God would not be involved in human redemption apart from the Christ’s true humanity, suffering, and dying. Water and blood become, therefore, the key words of the true understanding of the Incarnation. 6b “And it is the Spirit who testifies” because the Spirit, as ultimate truth, is the only one capable of so bearing witness). One cannot receive the witness concerning the Son of God by oneself. There are no human categories available through which one can understand it. God’s redemptive act in Christ is not a bit of data humankind can deduce for itself by analogical reasoning. Like the Resurrection, it can only be announced The Spirit bore witness historically in Jesus’ baptism by coming down from heaven as a dove and remaining on him (Jn 1:32). At Jesus’ death on the cross, the “blood and water” that flowed from his side bore witness and led to the following statement: “The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe” (Jn 19:35). But here in v. 6 the present tense of the verb indicates that John wants to show that the Spirit continues in his witness to the community of believers.7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.7-8 “For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood.” Does the author mean that the Spirit still witnesses through the biblical Word in which Jesus’ baptism and death are recounted, or that the Spirit gives witness to the community of the efficacy of the historic baptism and death through the rites of water baptism and communion? The biblical word confirms the prophetic word that the Spirit prophesied (cf. 2Pe 1:20-21). But how does the Spirit give witness in the living voice of prophecy? Presumably he does it inwardly and supernaturally. The Spirit opens eyes and ears to perceive what God is declaring through his proclaimed word (cf. 1Co 12:3). He does not declare his own words, but through inward conviction he confirms the proclamation as being indeed the truth. In other words, we have testimony that Jesus lived historically in flesh and blood, that he did what God required. And Then the Holy Spirit verifies this in our lives. The Spirit provides what humanity is unable to acquire for itself. This witness of the Spirit accompanies every presentation of the word. The Spirit accompanies any recounting of the Jesus message.
9 We accept man’s testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.9 Man’s witness is one thing, a live eye witness is one thing but the Holy Spirit’s witness to God is much greater – He is God.
10 Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 10a Here we have a basic yet complex statement. Believing in Jesus as the Son of God has the testimony of the Holy Spirit in their lives. If you don’t accept that Jesus is the Son of God – you don’t get the Spirit. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.11-12 That Jesus is God’s Son is established by God’s own witness from the time of Jesus’ baptism up to and including his suffering and death. It is a testimony given through the Spirit and confirmed in the heart of those who believe in the Son. The consequence of accepting this testimony from God is the fulfillment of the promise John made in 1:2 to bear witness and to testify to that “eternal life” that was with the Father and has now appeared to us in the Son. Eternal life (which is nothing less than fellowship with the Father, with the Son, and with his people) is present in his Son. Those who have the Son have this life. Those who are without the Son are without this life. Eternal life is existent now as well as in the future – we have fellowship with God now as Christians.
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