Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him.
Parallel Translations
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Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him.
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Whosoever beleveth that Iesus is Christ is borne of god. And every one that loveth him which begat loveth him also which was begotte of him.
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Whosoeuer beleeueth that Iesus is that Christ, is borne of God: and euery one that loueth him, which begate, loueth him also which is begotten of him.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (21)
Passages linked to 1 John 5:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- John 1:12-13 But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
- John 8:42 Therefore Jesus said to them, “If God were your father, you would love me, for I came out and have come from God. For I haven’t come of myself, but he sent me.
- 1 John 2:29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.
- 1 John 4:7 Beloved, let’s love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God.
- 1 Peter 1:22-23 Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth through the Spirit in sincere brotherly affection, love one another from the heart fervently, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and remains forever.
- 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death.
- 1 John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith.
- 1 John 3:9 Whoever is born of God doesn’t commit sin, because his seed remains in him, and he can’t sin, because he is born of God.
- Matthew 16:16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
- John 3:3 Jesus answered him, “Most certainly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom.”
- 1 John 2:22-23 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son doesn’t have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.
- John 15:23 He who hates me, hates my Father also.
- Romans 10:9-10 that if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes resulting in righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made resulting in salvation.
- John 6:69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
- 1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
- 1 John 2:10 He who loves his brother remains in the light, and there is no occasion for stumbling in him.
- 1 John 4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,
- 1 John 4:14-15 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God.
- 1 John 4:20 If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
- James 1:18 Of his own will he gave birth to us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
- 1 John 3:17 But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, then closes his heart of compassion against him, how does God’s love remain in him?
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (27 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 1 Whosoever believeth He confirms by another reason, that…
1 Whosoever believeth He confirms by another reason, that faith and brotherly love are united; for since God regenerates us by faith he must necessarily be loved by us as a Father; and this love embraces all his children. Then faith cannot be separated from love.
The first truth is, that all born of God, believe that Jesus is the Christ; where, again, you see that Christ alone is set forth as the object of faith, as in him it finds righteousness, life, and every blessing that can be desired, and God in all that he is. Hence the only true way of believing is when we direct our minds to him. Besides, to believe that he is the Christ, is to hope from him all those things which have been promised as to the Messiah.
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Nor is the title, Christ, given him here without reason, for it designates the office to which he was appointed by the Father. As, under the Law, the full restoration of all things, righteousness and happiness, were promised through the Messiah; so at this day the whole of this is more clearly set forth in the gospel. Then Jesus cannot be received as Christ, except salvation be sought from him, since for this end he was sent by the Father, and is daily offered to us.
Hence the Apostle declares that all they who really believe have been born of God; for faith is far above the reach of the human mind, so that we must be drawn to Christ by our heavenly Father; for not any of us can ascend to him by his own strength. And this is what the Apostle teaches us in his Gospel, when he says, that those who believe in the name of the only-begotten, were not born of blood nor of the flesh. (John 1:13.) And Paul says, that we are endued, not with the spirit of this world, but with the Spirit that is from God, that we may know the things given us by him. (1 Corinthians 2:12.) For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the mind conceived, the reward laid up for those who love God; but the Spirit alone penetrates into this mystery. And further, as Christ is given to us for sanctification, and brings with it the Spirit of regeneration, in short, as he unites us to his own body, it is also another reason why no one can have faith, except he is born of God.
Loveth him also that is begotten of him Augustine and some others of the ancients have applied this to Christ, but not correctly. For though the Apostle uses the singular number, yet he includes all the faithful; and the context plainly shows that his purpose was no other than to trace up brotherly love to faith as its fountain. It is, indeed, an argument drawn from the common course of nature; but what is seen among men is transferred to God.
But we must observe, that the Apostle does not so speak of the faithful only, and pass by those who are without, as though the former are alone to be loved, and no care and no account to be had for the latter; but he teaches us as it were by this first exercise to love all without exception, when he bids us to make a beginning with the godly.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain He goeth on forward in the same argument, showing…
He goeth on forward in the same argument, showing how both those loves come into us from the love wherewith God loveth us, to wit, by Jesus our Mediator laid hold on by faith, in whom we are made the children of God, and do love the Father of whom we are so begotten and also our brethren which are begotten with us.
By one he meaneth all the faithful.
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Is the true Messiah.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 1 Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is…
1 Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.
Ver. 1. Whosoever believeth] viz. Firmly and fiducially, with assent of mind and consent of will. {See Trapp on "1Co 12:3"} {See Trapp on "Joh 1:12"}
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Loveth him also that is begotten] His love, as Aaron’s ointment, floweth down from the head to the meanest member. God’s image, wheresoever it appeareth, is very lovely.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ; this is…
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ; this is not meant of a mere professed, or of a slight and superficial, but of a lively, efficacious, unitive, soul-transforming, and obediential faith in Jesus as the Christ, which is elsewhere made the effect of the regenerating power and grace of God, Joh 1:12,13. And as nothing can be more connatural to such a heaven-born faith, than the loving of him that hath begotten us to it; so nothing can be more certainly consequent and agreeable, than the loving of them too who are begotten also of the same Father, viz. with a correspondent love to the more excellent characters and image of God upon them, than are upon other men.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Observe here, 1. The grand proposition laid down as…
Observe here, 1. The grand proposition laid down as the object of our faith, namely, that Jesus is the Christ; that is, that Jesus of Nazareth, who was born with, and lived amongst the Jews, was the Saviour of the world, the person whom Moses and the prophets foretold to be the Messiah.
Observe, 2. The duty required of us, namely, to believe that Jesus is the Christ; that is, not historically only, to assent that Jesus is the predicted and promised Messiah, but to express the truth of that faith in a suitable conversation.
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Observe, 3. How evidential such a faith is of our regeneration; whosoever thus believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God; faith in Christ Jesus, as the great King, Priest, and Prophet of his church, accompanied with a holy life, is a sure mark and undoubted evidence of our new birth. Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God.
Observe, 4. The affection which every person that is born of God bears unto God, He loveth him that begat; this is the ingratiating and endearing quality; it is this that commends both our persons and performances to God’s acceptation; the service of love is therefore most acceptable, because most honourable to God, and most durable and lasting from us; the obedience of love will be lasting.
Observe, 5. What is the genuine effect, and natural product of this love to God, namely, a sincere affection to all the children of God: Whosoever loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him, every Christian that sincerely loves God, certainly loves the image of God in his saints and children; he that loves the father for his own sake, cannot but love the child for his father’s sake, if like him, and the more like him, the more he loves him: He that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain I. The apostle having, in the conclusion of the…
I. The apostle having, in the conclusion of the last chapter, as was there observed, urged Christian love upon those two accounts, as suitable to Christian profession and as suitable to the divine command, here adds a third: Such love is suitable, and indeed demanded, by their eminent relation; our Christian brethren or fellow-believers are nearly related to God; they are his children: Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, Jo1 5:1. Here the Christian brother is, 1. Described by his faith; he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ - that he is Messiah the prince, that he is the Son of God by nature and office, that he is the chief of all the anointed world, chief of all the priests, prophets, or kings, who were ever anointed by God or for him, that he is perfectly prepared and furnished for the whole work of the eternal salvation - accordingly yields himself up to his care and direction; and then he is, 2. Dignified by his descent: He is born of God, Jo1 5:1. This principle of faith, and the new nature that attends it or from which it springs, are ingenerated by the Spirit of God; and so sonship and adoption are not now appropriated to the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, not to the ancient Israel of God; all believers, though by nature sinners of the Gentiles, are spiritually descended from God, and accordingly are to be beloved; as it is added: Every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him, Jo1 5:1. It seems but natural that he who loves the Father should love the children also, and that in some proportion to their resemblance to their Father and to the Father's love to them; and so we must first and principally love the Son of the Father, as he is most emphatically styled, Jo2 1:3, the only (necessarily) begotten, and the Son of his love, and then those that are voluntarily begotten, and renewed by the Spirit of grace.
II. The apostle shows, 1. How we may discern the truth, or the true evangelical nature of our love to the regenerate. The ground of it must be our love to God, whose they are: By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, Jo1 5:2. Our love to them appears to be sound and genuine when we love them not merely upon any secular account, as because they are rich, or learned, or kind to us, or of our denomination among religious parties; but because they are God's children, his regenerating grace appears in them, his image and superscription are upon them, and so in them God himself is loved. Thus we see what that love to the brethren is that is so pressed in this epistle; it is love to them as the children of God and the adopted brethren of the Lord Jesus. 2. How we may learn the truth of our love to God - it appears in our holy obedience: When we love God, and keep his commandments, Jo1 5:2. Then we truly, and in gospel account, love God, when we keep his commandments: For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and the keeping of his commandments requires a spirit inclined thereto and delighting herein; and so his commandments are not grievous, Jo1 5:3. Or, This is the love of God, that, as thereby we are determined to obedience, and to keep the commandments of God, so his commandments are thereby made easy and pleasant to us. The lover of God says, "O how I love thy law! I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart (Psa 119:32), when thou shalt enlarge it either with love or with thy Spirit, the spring of love." 3. What is and ought to be the result and effect of regeneration - an intellectual spiritual conquest of this world: For whatsoever is born of God, or, as in some copies, whosoever is born of God, overcometh the world, Jo1 5:4. He that is born of God is born for God, and consequently for another world. He has a temper and disposition that tend to a higher and better world; and he is furnished with such arms, or such a weapon, whereby he can repel and conquer this; as it is added, And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith, Jo1 5:4. Faith is the cause of victory, the means, the instrument, the spiritual armour and artillery by which we overcome; for, (1.) In and by faith we cleave to Christ, in contempt of, and opposition to, the world. (2.) Faith works in and by love to God and Christ, and so withdraws us from the love of the world. (3.) Faith sanctifies the heart, and purifies it from those sensual lusts by which the world obtains such sway and dominion over souls. (4.) It receives and derives strength from the object of it, the Son of God, for conquering the frowns and flatteries of the world. (5.) It obtains by gospel promise a right to the indwelling Spirit of grace, that is greater than he who dwells in the world. (6.) It sees an invisible world at hand, with which this world is not worthy to be compared, and into which it tells the soul in which it resides it must be continually prepared to enter; and thereupon,
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III. The apostle concludes that it is the real Christian that is the true conqueror of the world: Who is he then that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? Jo1 5:5. It is the world that lies in our way to heaven, and is the great impediment to our entrance there. But he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God believes therein that Jesus Came from God to be the Saviour of the world, and powerfully to conduct us from the world to heaven, and to God, who is fully to be enjoyed there. And he who so believes must needs by this faith overcome the world. For, 1. He must be well satisfied that this world is a vehement enemy to his soul, to his holiness, his salvation, and his blessedness. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, Jo1 2:16. 2. He sees it must be a great part of the Saviour's work, and of his own salvation, to be redeemed and rescued from this malignant world. Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, Gal 1:4. 3. He sees in and by the life and conduct of the Lord Jesus on earth that this world is to be renounced and overcome. 4. He perceives that the Lord Jesus conquered the world, not for himself only, but for his followers; and they must study to be partakers of his victory. Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. 5. He is taught and influenced by the Lord Jesus's death to be mortified and crucified to the world. God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world, Gal 6:14. 6. He is begotten by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to the lively hope of a blessed world above, Pe1 1:3. 7. He knows that the Saviour has gone to heaven, and is there preparing a place for his serious believers, Joh 14:2. 8. He knows that his Saviour will come again thence, and will put an end to this world, and judge the inhabitants of it, and receive his believers to his presence and glory, Joh 14:3. 9. He is possessed with a spirit and disposition that cannot be satisfied with this world, that look beyond it, and are still tending, striving, and pressing, towards the world in heaven. In this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, Co2 5:2. So that it is the Christian religion that affords its proselytes a universal empire. It is the Christian revelation that is the great means of conquering the world, and gaining another that is most pure and peaceful, blessed and eternal. It is there, in that revelation, that we see what are the occasion and ground of the quarrel and contest between the holy God and this rebellious world. It is there that we meet with sacred doctrine (both speculative and practical), quite contrary to the tenour, temper, and tendency of this world. It is by that doctrine that a spirit is communicated and diffused which is superior and adverse to the spirit of the world. It is there we see that the Saviour himself was not of this world that his kingdom was not and is not so, that it must be separated from the world and gathered out of it for heaven and for God. There we see that the Saviour designs not this world for the inheritance and portion of his saved company. As he has gone to heaven himself, so he assures them he goes to prepare for their residence there, as designing they should always dwell with him, and allowing them to believe that if in this life, and this world only, they had hope in him, they should at last be but miserable. It is there that the eternal blessed world is most clearly revealed and proposed to our affection and pursuit. It is there that we are furnished with the best arms and artillery against the assaults and attempts of the world. It is there that we are taught how the world may be out-shot in its own bow, or its artillery turned against itself; and its oppositions, encounters, and persecutions, be made serviceable to our conquest of the world, and to our motion and ascent to the higher heavenly world: and there we are encouraged by a whole army and cloud of holy soldiers, who have in their several ages, posts, and stations, overcome the world, and won the crown. It is the real Christian that is the proper hero, who vanquishes the world and rejoices in a universal victory. Nor does he (for he is far superior to the Grecian monarch) mourn that there is not another world to be subdued, but lays hold on the eternal world of life, and in a sacred sense takes the kingdom of heaven by violence too. Who in all the world but the believer on Jesus Christ can thus overcome the world?
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ,.... Or the…
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ,.... Or the Messiah that was prophesied of old, was long promised to the Jews, and whom they expected; there was a person spoken of in the writings of the Old Testament under this character, Psa 2:2; and the Jews looked for him; and Jesus of Nazareth is he, as appears by all the characteristics of the Messiah in prophecy being found upon him: this the Jews deny, but is the grand article of faith embraced by the apostles and followers of Jesus, and is of very great importance; he that denies it is a liar, and he that does not believe it shall die in his sins: the word signifies "anointed", and includes all the offices of the Son of God, to which he was anointed, as prophet, priest, and King; so that to believe him to be the Christ, is to believe him to be that prophet Moses said should come, and who has declared the whole mind and will of his Father; and that he is that priest that should arise after the order of Melchizedek, and make atonement for sin, and intercession for transgressors; and that he is that King whom God has set over his holy hill of Zion, whose laws are to be obeyed, and his commands observed: but to believe that Jesus is the Christ, or the Messiah, is not barely to give an assent to this truth, or to acknowledge it; so the devils themselves have done, Luk 4:41; and whole nations of men, multitudes of which were never born of God; it is not a mere profession of it before men, or an idle, inoperative faith, which is destitute of love to Christ, and obedience to him; but whereas his work and business, as the Christ of God, was to bring in an everlasting righteousness, to procure the remission of sin, and to make peace and reconciliation for it, and to obtain eternal salvation; true faith in him as the Messiah is a believing with the heart unto righteousness, or a looking to, and trusting in the righteousness of Christ for justification; and a dealing with his blood for pardon and cleansing, under a sense of guilt and filth; and a laying hold on his atoning sacrifice for the expiation of sin, and peace with God; and a reception of him as the only Saviour and Redeemer, or a dependence on him for life and salvation; and which faith shows itself in love to him, and in a professed subjection to his Gospel, and cheerful submission to his ordinances: and every such person
is born of God; is a partaker of the divine nature; has Christ formed, and every grace of the Spirit implanted in him, among which faith in Christ is a considerable one; and such an one in consequence is openly a child and heir of God, wherefore, to be born of God is an instance of great grace, and an high honour and privilege, and of the greatest moment and importance. Regeneration is not owing to the power and will of man, but to the abundant mercy and good will of God, and is an instance of his rich mercy, great love, and free favour, and commands love again:
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and everyone that loveth him that begat; that is, God the Father, who has begotten them again to a lively hope, according to his abundant mercy and sovereign will; and as he is their Father that has begotten them, they cannot but love him: and such an one
loveth him also that is begotten of him; not only Jesus Christ, who by nature is the only begotten of the Father; for those who know God to be their Father by adoption and regeneration, will love Christ, who is the Son of God by nature; see Joh 8:42; but also every regenerate person, all that are born of God; since they are the children of the same Father with them, belong to the same household and family, and bear the image and likeness of their heavenly Father on them.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The scope and sum of this whole paragraph appears…
The scope and sum of this whole paragraph appears from the conclusion of it, 1 John v, xiii, "These things have I written to you who believe, that ye may know that ye who believe have eternal life." So faith is the first and last point with St. John also. Every one who loveth - God that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him - Hath a natural affection to all his brethren.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain He that believeth is born of God; loves God…
CHAPTER V.
He that believeth is born of God; loves God and his children;
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and keeps his commandments, which are not grievous, 1-3.
Faith in Christ overcomes the world, 4, 5.
The three earthly and heavenly witnesses, 6-9.
He that believeth hath the witness in himself, 10.
God has given unto us eternal life in his Son, 11, 12.
The end for which St. John writes these things, 13-16.
The sin unto death, and the sin not unto death, 16, 17.
He that is born of God sinneth not, 18.
The whole world lieth in the wicked one, 19.
Jesus is come to give us understanding, that we may know the
true God, 20.
All idolatry to be avoided, 21.
NOTES ON CHAP. V.
Verse 1. Whosoever believeth, c.] Expressions of this kind are to be taken in connection with the subjects necessarily implied in them. He that believeth that Jesus is the Messiah, and confides in him for the remission of sins, is begotten of God and they who are pardoned and begotten of God love him in return for his love, and love all those who are his children.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain 1Jn 5:1-4. Whosoever, &c. — The apostle having discoursed…
1Jn 5:1-4. Whosoever, &c. — The apostle having discoursed in the preceding chapters, on the privileges of the children of God, now adds a further illustration of the great essential parts of their character, in order that those to whom he wrote might be enabled to form a more accurate judgment of their own concern in the matters spoken of. And the scope and sum of the whole first paragraph appears from the conclusion of it, 1Jn 5:13. These things have I written to you who believe, &c. Whosoever believeth — Namely, with a living faith, a faith of the divine operation; that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ — The true Messiah, the Son of God, so as to be ready to confess this, even when the confession of it might expose him to imprisonment and martyrdom; is born of God — Is a child of God, not only by adoption, but by regeneration; he is renewed, in a measure at least, after the divine image, and made a partaker of the divine nature. See on Joh 3:6. And every one that loveth him that begat — That is, God, who begat him again by the influence of his word and Spirit, 1Pe 1:23; Tit 3:5; loveth him also that is begotten of him — Hath a natural affection to all the children of his heavenly Father, whom he views as his brethren and sisters in Christ, and as joint heirs with him of the heavenly inheritance. By this we know — This is a plain proof; that we love the children of God — Namely, as his children, in that we love God, and keep his commandments — In the first place, and then love his children for his sake. “Grotius, to render the apostle’s reasoning clear, thinks the original should be construed and translated in the following manner: By this we know that we love God, when we love the children of God, and keep his commandments. But not to mention that this construction is forced, it represents the apostle as giving a mark by which we know when we love God; whereas his intention is to show how we may know that we love the children of God in a right manner. Now this was necessary to be showed, since men may love the children of God because they are their relations, or because they are engaged in the same pursuits with themselves, or because they are mutually united by some common bond of friendship. But love, proceeding from these considerations, is not the love of the children of God which he requireth. By what mark, then, can we know that our love to the children of God is of the right sort? Why, saith the apostle, by this we may know that we love the children of God in a right manner, when we love God, and, from that excellent principle, keep his commandments, especially his commandment to love his children, because they bear his image. True Christian love, therefore, is that which proceeds from love to God, from a regard to his will, and which leadeth us to obey all his commandments?” — Macknight. For this is the love of God — The only sure proof of it; that we keep his commandments — That we conscientiously and carefully shun whatever we know he hath forbidden, and that we do whatever he has enjoined; and his commandments are not grievous — To any that are born of God; for, as they are all most equitable, reasonable, and gracious in themselves, and all calculated to promote our happiness in time and in eternity, so fervent love to him whose commandments they are, and to his children, whom we desire to edify by a holy example, will make them pleasant and delightful to us. For — Whereas the great obstruction to the keeping of God’s commandments is the influence of worldly motives and considerations on men’s minds; whatsoever — An expression which implies the most unlimited universality, (the word used by the apostle being παν, the neuter gender, to comprehend all sorts of persons, males and females, old and young, Jews and Gentiles, freemen and slaves,) is born of God, overcometh the world — Conquers whatever it can lay in the way, either to allure or fright the children of God from the line of duty to God, their fellow-creatures, or themselves, or from keeping his commandments. And this is the victory that overcometh the world — The grand means of overcoming it; even our faith — The faith which is the evidence of things not seen, and the subsistence, or anticipation, of things hoped for; a full persuasion especially, 1st, That Christ is the Son of God, (1Jn 5:5,) and consequently that all his doctrines, precepts, promises, and threatenings, are indisputably true, and infinitely important; 2d, That there is another life after this awaiting us, wherein we shall be either happy or miserable beyond conception, and for ever; 3d, That Christ has overcome the world for us, (Joh 16:33,) and hath obtained grace for us to enable us to overcome it; and that we have an interest by faith in all he hath done, suffered, or procured for us. “The power of faith, in enabling men to overcome the temptations laid in their way by the things of the world, and by worldly and carnal men, is finely illustrated by examples. (Hebrews 11.,) which show that before the coming of Christ the children of God, by believing the things which he discovered to them, whether by the light of natural reason or by particular revelations, resisted the greatest temptations, sustained the bitterest sufferings, and performed the most difficult acts of obedience, and thereby obtained a great and lasting fame. But now that Christ hath come, and made the gospel revelation in person and by his apostles, the faith of the children of God, by which they overcome the world, hath for its object all the doctrines and promises contained in that revelation, and particularly the great doctrine which is the foundation of all the rest, namely, that Jesus is the Son of God, and Saviour of the world, as the apostle observes in the following verse.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ - Is…
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ - Is the Messiah; the anointed of God. On the meaning of the word Christ, see the notes at Mat 1:1. Of course, it is meant here that the proposition, that “Jesus is the Christ,” should be believed or received in the true and proper sense, in order to furnish evidence that anyone is born of God. Compare the notes at 1Jo 4:3. It cannot be supposed that a mere intellectual acknowledgment of the proposition that Jesus is the Messiah is all that is meant, for that is not the proper meaning of the word believe in the Scriptures. That word, in its just sense, implies that the truth which is believed should make its fair and legitimate impression on the mind, or that we should feel and act as if it were true. See the notes at Mar 16:16. If, in the proper sense of the phrase, a man does believe that Jesus “is the Christ,” receiving him as he is revealed as the Anointed of God, and a Saviour, it is undoubtedly true that that constitutes him a Christian, for that is what is required of a man in order that he may be saved. See the notes at Act 8:37.
Is born of God - Or rather, “is begotten of God.” See the notes at Joh 3:3
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And everyone that loveth him that begat - That loves that God who has thus begotten those whom he has received as his children, and to whom he sustains the endearing relation of Father.
Loveth him also that is begotten of him - That is, he will love all the true children of God; all Christians. See the notes at 1Jo 4:20. The general idea is, that as all Christians are the children of the same Father; as they constitute one family; as they all bear the same image; as they share his favor alike; as they are under the same obligation of gratitude to him, and are bound to promote the same common cause, and are to dwell together in the same home forever, they should therefore love one another. As all the children in a family love their common father, so it should be in the great family of which God is the Head.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain That Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messias, the…
That Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messias, the Redeemer of the world, is born of God, is made his adoptive son by his grace in baptism. (Witham) --- Is born of God; that is, is justified, and become a child of God by baptism; which is also to be understood, provided the belief of this fundamental article of the Christian faith is accompanied with all the other conditions, which, by the word of God and his appointment, are also required for justification; such as a general belief of all that God has revealed and promised; hope, love, repentance, and a sincere disposition to keep God’s holy law and commandments. (Challoner) --- Loveth him [1] that begot; i.e. the eternal Father. --- Loveth him also who was born of him; i.e. loveth him who is his only begotten and eternal Son. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Eum qui genuit, Greek: ton gennesanta, generantem; which, in English, may be translated, the Father.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain 1 John Chapter 5
1 John Chapter 5
But a danger exists on the other side. It may be, that we love the brethren because they are pleasant to us; they furnish us with agreeable society, in which our conscience is not wounded. A counter-proof is therefore given us. “Hereby we know that we love the children of God, if we love God and keep his commandments.” It is not as children of God that I love the brethren, unless I love God of whom they are born. I may love them individually as companions, or I may love some among them, but not as the children of God, if I do not love God Himself. If God Himself has not His true place in my heart, that which bears the name of love to the brethren shuts out God; and that in so much the more complete and subtle manner, because our link with them bears the sacred name of brotherly love.
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Now there is a touchstone even for this love of God namely, obedience to His commands. If I walk with the brethren themselves in disobedience to their Father, it is certainly not because they are His children that I love them. If it were because I loved the Father and because they were His children, I should assuredly like them to obey Him. To walk then in disobedience with the children of God, under the pretext of brotherly love, is not to love them as the children of God. If I loved them as such, I should love their Father and my Father, and I could not walk in disobedience to Him and call it a proof that I loved them because they were His.
If I also loved them because they were His children, I should love all who are such, because the same motive engages me to love them all.
The universality of this love with regard to all the children of God; its exercise in practical obedience to His will: these are the marks of true brotherly love. That which has not these marks is a mere carnal party spirit, clothing itself with the name and the form of brotherly love. Most certainly I do not love the Father if I encourage His children in disobedience to Him.
Now there is an obstacle to this obedience, and that is the world. The world has its forms, which are very far from obedience to God When we are occupied only with Him and His will, the world’s enmity soon breaks out. It also acts, by its comforts and its delights, on the heart of man as walking after the flesh. In short, the world and the commandments of God are in opposition to each other; but the commandments of God are not grievous to those who are born of Him, for he who is born of God overcomes the world. He possesses a nature and a principle that surmount the difficulties that the world opposes to his walk. His nature is the divine nature, for he is born of God; his principle is that of faith. His nature is insensible to the attractions which this world offers to the flesh, and that because it has, altogether apart from this world, a spirit independent of it, and an object of its own which governs it. Faith directs its steps, but faith does not see the world, nor that which is present. Faith believes that Jesus, whom the world rejected, is the Son of God. The world therefore has lost its power over it. Its affections and its trust are fixed on Jesus, who was crucified, owning Him as the Son of God. Thus the believer, detached from the world, has the boldness of obedience, and does the will of God which abides for ever.
The apostle sums up, in a few words, the testimony of God respecting the life eternal which He has given us.
This life is not in the first Adam, it is in the Second-in the Son of God. Man, as born of Adam, does not possess it, does not acquire it. He ought indeed to have gained life under the law. This characterised it, “Do this and live.” But man did not and could not.
God gives him eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life, and he who has not the Son has not life.
Now what is the testimony rendered to this gift of life eternal ? The witnesses are three: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. This Jesus, the Son of God, is He who came by water and by blood; not by water only, but by water and by blood. The Spirit also bears witness because He is truth. That to which they bear witness is that God has given us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son. But whence did this water and the blood flow ? It was from the pierced side of Jesus. It is the judgment of death pronounced and executed (compare Rom 8:3) on the flesh, on all that is of the old man, on the first Adam. Not that the sin of the first Adam was in the flesh of Christ, but that Jesus died in it as a sacrifice for sin. “In that he died he died unto sin once.” Sin in the flesh was condemned in the death of Christ in the flesh. There was no other remedy. The flesh could not be modified nor subjected to the law. The life of the first Adam was nothing but sin in the principle of its will; it could not be subject to the law. Our purification as to the old man is its death. He who is dead is justified from sin. We are therefore baptised to have part in the death of Jesus. We are crucified with Christ; nevertheless we live, but not we it is Christ who lives in us. Participating in the life of Christ risen, we reckon ourselves as dead with Him; for why live of this new life, this life of the second Adam, if we could live before God in the life of the first Adam? No; by living in Christ we have accepted by faith the sentence of death, passed by God on the first Adam. This is Christian purification: even the death of the old man, because we are made partakers of life in Christ Jesus. “We are dead “-crucified with Him We need a perfect purification before God; we have it; for that which was impure no longer exists: what exists, as born of God, is perfectly pure.
He came by water-a powerful testimony, as flowing from the side of a dead Christ, that life is not to be sought for in the first Adam; for Christ, as coming for man, taking up his cause, the Christ come in the flesh, had to die: else He had remained alone in His own purity. Life is to be sought for in the Son of God risen from among the dead. Purification is by death.
But it was not by water only that He came; it was also by blood. The expiation of our sins was as necessary as the moral purification of our soul. We possess it in the blood of a slain Christ. Death alone could expiate them and blot them out. And Jesus died for us. The guilt of the believer no longer exists before God; Christ has put Himself in his place. The life is on high, and we are raised up together with Him, God having forgiven us all our trespasses. Expiation is by death.
The third witness is the Spirit: put first in the order of their testimony on earth, as He alone gives witness in power so that we know the other two; last, in their historic order, for such in fact was that order, death first and only thereafter the Holy Ghost. [22] In effect it is the testimony of the Spirit, His presence in us, which enables us to appreciate the value of the water and the blood. We should never have understood the practical bearing of the death of Christ, if the Holy Ghost were not to the new man a revealing power of its import and its efficacy. Now the Holy Ghost came down from a risen and ascended Christ; and thus we know that eternal life is given us in the Son of God.
The testimony of these three witnesses meets together in this same truth, namely, that grace-that God Himself-has given us eternal life; and that this life is in the Son. Man had nothing to do in it, except by his sins. It is the gift of God. And the life that He gives is in the Son. The testimony is the testimony of God. How blessed to have such a testimony, and that from God Himself, and in perfect grace!
We have then the three things: the cleansing, the expiation, and the presence of the Holy Ghost as the witness that eternal life is given us in the Son, who was slain for man when in relationship with man here below. He could but die for man s he is. Life is elsewhere, namely, in Himself.
Here the doctrine of the epistle ends. The apostle wrote these things in order that they who believed in the Son might know that they had eternal life. He does not give means of examination to make the faithful doubt whether they had eternal life; but- seeing that there were seducers who endeavoured to turn them aside as deficient in something important, and who presented themselves as possessing some superior light-he points out to them the marks of life, in order to re-assure them; developing the excellence of that life, and of their position as enjoying it; and in order that they might understand that God had given it to them, and that they might be in no wise shaken in mind.
He then speaks of the practical confidence in God which flows from all this-confidence exercised with a view to all our wants here below, all that our hearts desire to ask of God. We know that He always listens to everything that we ask in accordance with His will. Precious privilege! The Christian himself would not desire anything to be granted him that was contrary to the will of God. But for everything that is according to His will, His ear is ever open to us, ever attentive. He always hearkens; He is not like man, often occupied so that he cannot listen, or careless so that he will not. God always hears us, and assuredly He does not fail in power: the attention He pays us is a proof of His good-will. We receive therefore the things that we ask of Him. He grants our requests. What a sweet relationship! What a high privilege! And it is one also of which we may avail ourselves in charity for others.
If a brother sins and God chastises him, we may petition for that brother, and life shall be restored him. Chastisement tends to the death of the body (compare Job 33:33-33; Jas 5:14, we pray for the offender and he is healed. Otherwise the sickness takes its course. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is such sin as is unto death. This does not seem to me to be some particular sin, but all sin which has such a character that, instead of awakening Christian charity, it awakens Christian indignation. Thus Ananias and Sapphira committed a sin unto death. It was a lie, but a lie under such circumstances that it excited horror rather than compassion. We can easily understand this in other cases.
Thus far as to sin and its chastisement. But the positive side is also brought before us. As born of God, we do not commit sin at all, we keep ourselves, and “the wicked one toucheth us not.” He has nothing wherewith to entice the new man. The enemy has no objects of attraction to the divine nature in us, which is occupied, by the action of the Holy Ghost, with divine and heavenly things, or with the will of God. Our part therefore is so to live-the new man occupied with the things of God and of the Spirit.
The apostle ends his epistle by specifying these two things: our nature, our mode of being, as Christians; and the object that has been communicated to us in order to produce and nourish faith.
We know that we are of God; and that not in a vague way, but in contrast with all that is not us-a principle of immense importance, which makes Christian position exclusive by.its very nature. It is not merely good, or bad, or better; but it is of God. And nothing which is not of God (that is to say, which has not its origin in Him) could have this character and this place. The whole world lies in the wicked one.
The Christian has the certainty of these two things by virtue of his nature. which discerns and knows that which is of God, and thereby judges all that is opposed to it. The two are not merely good and bad, but of God and of the enemy. This as to the nature.
With regard to the object of this nature, we know that the Son of God is come-a truth of immense importance also. It is not merely that there is good and that there is evil; but the Son of God has Himself come into this scene of misery, to present an object to our hearts. But there is more than this. He has given us an understanding that in the midst of .all the falsehood of this world, of which Satan is the prince, we may know Him that is true-the true One. Immense privilege which alters our whole position! The power of the world by which Satan blinded us is completely broken, and we are brought into the true light; and in that light we see and know Him who is true, who is in Himself perfection; that by which all things can be perfectly discerned and judged according to truth. But this is not all. We are in this true One, partakers of His nature, and abiding in Him, and in order that we may enjoy the source of truth.[23] Now it is in Jesus that we are. It is thus, it is in Him, that we are in connection with the perfections of God.
We may again remark here-that which gives a character to the whole Epistle-the manner in which God and Christ are united in the apostle’s mind. It is on account of this that he so frequently says, “He,” when we must understand “Christ,” although he had previously spoken of God: for instance, 1Jn 5:20. And here, “We are in him that is true [that is to say], in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”
Behold then the divine links of our position! We are in Him who is true; this is the nature of Him in whom we are. Now, in reality as to the nature, it is God Himself; as to the Person, and as to the manner of being in Him, it is His Son Jesus Christ. It is in the Son, in the Son as man, that we are in fact as to His Person; but He is the true God, the veritable God. Nor is this all; but we have life in Him. He is also the eternal life, so that we possess it in Him. We know the true God, we have eternal life.
All that is outside this is an idol. May God preserve us from it, and teach us by His grace to preserve ourselves from it! This gives occasion to the Spirit of God to speak of “the truth” in the two short Epistles that -follow.
Footnotes for 1 John Chapter 5
22: Even the orderly reception of the Holy Ghost was so. (see Act 2:38)
23: I have already noticed this passage as being a kind of key to the way we really know God, and dwell in Him. It speaks of God as Him we know, in whom we are, explaining it by saying, that it is in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord; only here, as follows in the text, it is truth and not love.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain 1Whosoever42 believeth that Jesus is the Christ43 is born…
1Jn_5:1-12
1Whosoever42 believeth that Jesus is the Christ43 is born of God: and every one that 2loveth him that begat loveth him also44 that is begotten of him. By this45 we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.46 3For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments 4are not grievous. For47 whatsoever48 is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh49 the world, even our50 faith. 5Who is he51 that overcometh the world, but52 he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? 6This is he that came by water and blood,53 even Jesus Christ54; not by water only, but55 by water and blood.56 And it is the Spirit57 that beareth witness, because the Spirit58 is truth. 7For there are three that bear record59 in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.60 9If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for61 this is the witness of God which62 he hath testified of his Son. 10He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness63 in himself: he that believeth not God64 hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.65 11And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this66 life is in his Son.67 12He that hath the Son68 hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.69
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CRITICAL NOTE ON VERSES 7 AND 8
After ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσὶν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες in 1Jn_5:7, follows: ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ πατήρ, ὁ λόγος καὶ τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα. καὶ οὖτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσιν 1Jn_5:8, καὶ τρεῖς εἰσὶν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ.—Thus Cod. 173, not however in the original Cod. of the 11th century, but only in a copy of it made in the 16th century; Codd. 34 and 162, belonging to the same period, viz. the 15th and 16th centuries, omit the words καὶ οἱ τρεῖς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν, and the Articles before πατὴρ, λόγος and ἅγιον πνεῦμα, which shows the mechanical translation from the Vulgate. Said words are wanting in all the Greek Codices, also in the Codex Sinaiticus, in almost all the ancient versions, including the Latin, as late as the 8th century, and since that time they are found in three variations. Notwithstanding the trinitarian controversies, they are not referred to by a single Greek Father, or by any of the older Latin Church Fathers. For the allusions of Tertullian (adv. Prax. 25. connexus Patris in filio et filii in Paracleto, tres efficit cohærentes alterum ex altero; qui tres unum sunt), and of Cyprian (ep. ad Jubaianum: cum tres unum sunt) are to Joh_10:30; Joh_16:5; and if the latter says in De Unitate Ecclesiæ p. 79. “Dicit Dominus: ego et Pater unum sumus; et iterum de Patre et Filio et Spiritu Sancto Scriptum est: et hi tres unum sunt, the reference in iterum is clearly to this place, but to 1Jn_5:8, to wit, according to the symbolical interpretation [of the words τὸ πνεῦμα, τὸ ὕδωρ and τὸ αἶμα of the Trinity, as given in the Schol. by Matthæi: οἱ τρεῖς δὲ εἶπεν ἀρσενικῶς, ὅτι σύμβολα ταῦτα τῆς τριάδος, and in the Schol.: τουτέστι τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον καὶ ὁ πατὴρ καὶ αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ, and on ἕν εἰσιν: τουτέστι μία θεότης, εἶς θεός], as Facundus of Hermiane in the 6th century understood Cyprian, in Pro defens. trium capitum 1, 3 [tres sunt qui testimonium dant (in terra?). Spiritus, aqua et sanguis, hi tres unum sunt. … quod Joannis apostoli testimonium Cyprianus. … de Patre, Filio et Spiritu Sancto intelligit.—M.], who was not unacquainted with and free from mystical interpretations (the seamless coat, a type of Church unity, etc.). The aforecited Greek scholia contain unmistakable traces of the allegorical interpretation. The reading may gradually have originated in them and the passages from Cyprian, whose interpretation of the Persons of the Trinity was placed in juxtaposition with the text on which it was based. These words were mentioned first in a work which is to be ascribed to Vigilius of Thapsus, at the close of the 5th century; they occur more frequently afterwards and are found in most Latin translations [also in several German translations made from the Vulgate—M.]. After a Greek translation of the transactions of the Lateran Council of 1215 they were first inserted in Greek in the Complutensian edition (of 1502 to 1514). Erasmus, who did not insert them in his editions of the Greek New Testament of 1516 and 1518, received them in the version of 1521, and the third edition of 1522, yielding to the pressure of the Church (pium est, nostrum sensum semper ecclesiæ judicio submittere), and with reference to the Codex Britannicus (=codex 34), in order to justify himself before the learned. [Erasmus had committed himself to their insertion if they were found in any Greek Manuscript. Learning that they were found in said Codex Britannicus, he inserted them in the 3rd edition of 1522 and added the note: “Ex hoc igitur Codice Britannico reposuimus, quod in nostris dicebatur deesse: ne cui sit ansa calumniandi. Tametsi suspicor codicem illum ad nostros esse correctum.”—M.]. Then Robert Stephanus received them 1546–1569, Beza 1565–1576 and the Text. Recept. sanctioned the citizenship of this reading. Luther never translated these words, but commented upon them in his second commentary on this Epistle, although he had pronounced them spurious in his first commentary. They are omitted in all German Wittenberg Bibles from 1522–1545; they are first inserted in Lehmann’s Quarto Wittenberg edition of 1596, although they are still wanting in later editions and in the Quarto edition of 1620. They appear first in the Zürich edition of 1529; the next edition of 1531 has this passage in smaller type, the later editions insert it in brackets, which were not abandoned until 1597. The Basle edition of 1552 gives it already without brackets. Of the Frankfort editions, the Quarto of 1582 was the first in which this passage is inserted, although it is omitted in the Octavo edition of the same year. It was of no avail that Luther considered these words as a clumsy addition directed against the Arians which was wanting in the Greek Bibles, and that Bugenhagen, on the appearance in 1549, of a lectionary, containing these words, at Wittenberg, gave this warning: “Obsecro chalcographos et eruditos viros, ut illam additionem omittant et restituant græca suæ priori integritati et puritati propter veritatem.”—The genuineness of this passage was still attempted to be defended in the 17th century. Lastly Bengel still upheld it [but with the arbitrary assumption, that the text read originally thus: “ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ. Τὸ πνεῦμα κ. τ. λ. εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν. 1Jn_5:8. Καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ πατὴρ, ὁ λόγος καὶ τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα καὶ οὖτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσιν. Apparat. Crit.—M.], who was followed by v. Meyer, Sander, Besser and Mayer.—Compare Griesbach’s diatribe ad h. l. in ed. a. 1806; Rickli on this passage; Tischendorf editio major 1859, tom. 2. p. 225–228.—This critical, external evidence is fully sustained by internal evidence, viz. the exegetical reasons against these words. The idea of a witness ἐν τῷ οὺρανῷ cannot be carried out. Hence certain commentators, e.g. a Lapide, change the testari in cœlo into a testari de cœlo, or find in it a description of the nature of the testimony (S. Schmidt, Spener), or of the witnesses (Bengel). Moreover the collocation of the words ὁ πατήρ and ὁ λόγος is altogether contrary to John’s diction, which gives only ὁ θεὸς and ὁ λόγος or ὁ πατήρ and ὁ υἱός in juxtaposition (Joh_1:1 sqq.; Joh_5:21 sqq.; Joh_14:9 sqq.) Again τὸ ἕν can only be interpreted of unity of essence and the context affords no ground for such an interpretation. The advocates of the passage have also recourse to arbitrary expedients, e.g. Bengel who places 1Jn_5:8 before 1Jn_5:7 [see above—M.]. Lastly we cannot consider them to have been inserted by orthodox Christians against the Arians (as Luther thinks), the reference being to a testimony on earth. The fact is that they cannot be used without arbitrariness grammatically, dialectically or logically. Cf. Huther 2d edition, p. 228 sq.—[Huther: Luther remarks on this passage: “It seems that this verse was inserted by the orthodox with reference to the Arians, which insertion however was not congruous, because he does not discourse of the witnesses in heaven, but of the witnesses on earth, here and there.” This is the opinion of most modern expositors, excepting Besser and Sander. If we look at the contents of the whole Epistle, it is indeed not difficult to harmonize the thought of the three witnesses in heaven with scattered sayings in this Epistle; but it does not follow from this that it is appropriate or even necessary at the place where it occurs. On the contrary this is manifestly not the case, since neither the verses immediately following or preceding, with which 1Jn_5:7 is intimately connected by ὅτι, contain any reference whatsoever to such a trinitarian testimony in heaven. The specification of the three witnesses: πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ, αἶμα, is clearly and plainly substantiated by what precedes, but this is not the case with respect to that of the three witnesses: ὁ πατήρ, ὁ λόγος, τὸ πνεῦμα ἅγιον; this trinity is introduced abruptly, without any preparation; but the sequel also militates against it, especially since it is altogether uncertain which testimony is meant by the μαρτυρία του θεοῦ, 1Jn_5:9, that of the three in heaven, or that of the three on earth.—To this must be added that these two different testimonies are placed in juxtaposition without being connected together; it is said, indeed, that the two three witnesses agree together, but nothing is said of the relation of the two threes to one another.—The thought per se, moreover, lacks clearness; for what are we to understand by a testimony in heaven? Bengel (with whom Sander agrees) says indeed: “Non fertur testimonium in cælo, sed in terra: qui autem testantur, sunt in terra, sunt in cælo; i.e. illi sunt naturæ terrestris et humanæ, hi autem naturæ divinæ et gloriosæ.” But the untenableness of this proposition is evident, on the one hand, from the circumstance that ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ does not belong to εἰσιν, but to μαρτυροῦντες, that consequently the text absolutely says nothing of a being in heaven, but asserts a testifying in heaven, and on the other, from the consideration that the πνεῦμα which is afterwards connected with ὕδωρ and αἶμα is to be conceived as something earthly and human.—Add to this the non-johannean character of the diction, for though in John we meet the collocations ὁ θεός and ὁ λόγος, and ὁ πατήρ and ὁ υἱός, we never encounter that of ὁ πατήρ and ὁ λόγος; Sander, to be sure, has recourse to the rather easy expedient of assuming here an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, but that assumption cannot be admitted here, because those words are of constant occurrence in John—and the collocation is not accidental, but founded on the nature of the case. The interpolator evidently wrote λόγος because he thought that term to be purely Johannean, not reflecting however that its connection with πατήρ was un-johannean. Lastly, καὶ οὖτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσι, is also surprising. Bengel explains: Unum sunt essentia, notitia, voluntate, atque adeo consensu testimonii; and properly begins with the unity of essence, for that is indicated by said words—but this unity of essence is irrelevant here, where the reference is rather to the unity of the testimony.—I subjoin here also Sir Isaac Newton’s Paraphrastic Exposition: “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God, that Son spoken of in the Psalms, where He saith, ‘Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.’ This is He that, after the Jews had long expected Him, came, first in a mortal body, by baptism of water, and then in an immortal one by shedding His blood upon the cross, and rising again from the dead; not by water only, but by water and blood, being the Son of God, as well as by His supernatural birth of the Virgin (Luk_1:35). And it is the Spirit also, that together with the water and the blood, beareth witness of the truth of His coming; because the Spirit is truth, and so a fit and unexceptionable witness. For there are three that bear record of His coming; the Spirit, which He promised to send, and which was since sent forth upon us in the form of cloven tongues, and of various gifts; the baptism of water, wherein God testified, ‘this is my beloved Son;’ and the shedding of His blood, accompanied with the resurrection, whereby He became the most faithful martyr or witness of the truth. And these three, the Spirit, the baptism, and passion of Christ, agree in witnessing one and the same thing (namely, that the Son of God is come); and therefore their evidence is strong: for the Law requires but two consenting witnesses, and here we have three, and if we receive the witness of men, the threefold witness of God, which He bare of His Son, by declaring at His baptism ‘This is my beloved Son,’ by raising Him from the dead, and by pouring out His Spirit upon us, is greater; and therefore ought to be more readily received.“—“This,” Sir Isaac Newton observes, “is the sense plain and natural, and the argument full and strong; but if you insert the testimony of the three in heaven, you interrupt and spoil it; for the whole design of the Apostle being here to prove to men by witness the truth of Christ’s coming, I would ask how the testimony of the ‘three in heaven’ makes to this purpose? If their testimony be not given to men, how does it prove to them the truth of Christ’s coming? If it be (given), how is the testimony in heaven distinguished from that on earth? It is the same Spirit which witnesses in heaven and in earth. If in both cases it witnesses to us men, wherein lies the difference between its witnessing in heaven and its witnessing in earth? If in the first case it does not witness to them to whom does it witness? And to what purpose? And how does its witnessing make to the design of St. John’s discourse? Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part, I can make none. If it be said, that we are not to determine what is Scripture, and what not, by our private judgments, I confess it in places not controverted, but in disputable places, I love to take what I can best understand.”—M.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Connection. That which in the preceding verses had been repeatedly noticed as a proof of the love of God, the appearing of Jesus Christ (1Jn_5:9-10; 1Jn_5:14; 1Jn_5:19), and as the immediate consequence of it, had been indicated as the exhibition of our life-fellowship with God,—faith, knowledge and confession—(1Jn_5:15-16), the Apostle places with emphatic prominence at the end of this section with a primary reference to brotherly love (1Jn_5:1), then with respect to the love of God and obedience to His commandment (1Jn_5:2-3), with reference to the victory over the world (1Jn_5:4), viz. faith in Jesus the Christ (v. la), the Son of God (1Jn_5:5), who is confirmed as such by God Himself (1Jn_5:6-9), and in His work or gift, eternal life (1Jn_5:10-12). Bengel: “Concinne Apostolus in hac tractationis parte mentionem amoris ita collocat ut fides tanquam prora et puppis totius tractationis, in extremo spectetur.”
Efficacy of faith in Christ. 1Jn_5:1-5.
1Jn_5:1. Every one that believeth that Jesus is Christ, is born of God.—The only limitation of the universality (πᾶς) is believing (πιστεύων) and the object of faith (ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν ὁ χριστὸς); the faith may be weak and imperfect, provided that it be sincere (subjective) and right (objective), and consequently true. This believing involves knowledge, inclination, yielding and trust and genders susceptibility for receiving. It is clear from 1Jn_5:5 that ὁ χριστὸς refers to the inward nature of Him that has been manifested,=ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, although these ideas are not identical and may occur in juxtaposition (1Jn_3:23): the Divine Sonship makes the Man Jesus the Christ=Saviour. Cf. 1Jn_4:15; 1Jn_2:22. The tenses, the Present πιστεύων and the Perfect γεγέννηται denote the regeneration, the birth out of God as the ground, and faith, which is a Divine work (Eph_2:8), as the consequence; only a child of God believes in Jesus the Son of God.
And every one that loveth Him that begot him, loveth also him that is begotten of Him.—Πᾶς ὁ ἀγαπῶν is a parallel of πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων, and gives prominence to what was given along with and received in faith. Hence there is no need of an ellipsis to be filled up, like that specified by Huther: “he that is born of God loveth God.” The object (γεννήσαντα) is evidently God, and hence ἐξ αὐτοῦ=θεοῦ, and τὸν γεγεννημένον ἐξ αὐτοῦ denotes the believer (1Jn_5:2 : τἀ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ). Argumentum ex communi naturæ ordine sumtum (Calvin), or a propensione naturali, quæ cernitur in hominibus (Estius). Cf. Eph_5:28-30. The reference therefore is not to Christ as maintained by Augustine, Hilary and others. The Present ἀγαπᾷ by the side of ὁ ἀγαπῶν denotes the interconnection of brotherly love and the love of God [i.e. our love of our brother and of God—M.], the simultaneousness and duration of the relation of both. The Apostle lays it down as a fact, not as something which he requires; he shall love.
1Jn_5:2. In this we know, that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.—It is clear that the reference here is to something which every one may and must know from his own experience and not from that of others. Again it is clear that this something is brotherly love, even the love to our brethren, who are τέκνα θεοῦ. Lastly it is clear that the token and sign of it is our love to God and our keeping His commandments. For ὅταν followed by the Indicative ἀγαπῶμεν (Winer, p. 325), is a conditional particle, although it is qualified by the idea of time, =whensoever; there may be fluctuations, disturbances, pauses, or ebbs in our love to God; but when it is in us, brotherly love surely is also in us. Hence John annexes to ἀγαπῶμεν τὸν θεόν, τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ τηρῶμεν in order to designate the living love to God by an obedience rooted in the love of God, so that brotherly love should be considered as one of the commandments of God, and, at the same time, as the necessary consequence of our love to God, as of the necessary ground. [Huther: He that loves God, has in this his love a testimony that he also loves his brethren, even as τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ—because brotherly love is the necessary consequence of the love of God; but the converse is also true, that he who loves the brethren, has in this his love a testimony that he also loves God, because his love to God is the necessary ground of his love to the brethren. Alford: And indeed so inseparable are the two, that as before 1Jn_4:20, our love to our brethren was made a sign and necessary condition of our love to God, so conversely, our love to God, ascertained by our keeping His commandments, is itself the measure of our love to the children of God. Either of the two being found to be present, the presence of the other follows.—M.]. While John elsewhere (1Jn_2:3; 1Jn_4:20-21) makes the knowledge of God and love to God to be ascertained from our keeping His commandments and loving our brethren, i.e. the ground from the consequence, so he conversely makes us ascertain the consequence from the ground, which, considering the unity of the Divine life, is the less surprising, since the former references point to the truth and purity of our disposition, while here the concluding reference is to the consolation which we need in the discharge of an important and difficult duty. Hence it is wrong and unnecessary, to assume here, with Grotius following Oecumenius, a trajection, or to construe, with de Wette, the sentence τὸν θεὸν ἀγαπῶμεν as simply accompanying the sentence immediately following, so that obedience is to be considered only as emanating from the love to God, or still worse, to alter the text, as some of the ancient versions (the Ethiopic and Arabic), and several unimportant expositors, have dared to do. [Calvin also gives a wrong turn to the thought in the remark: “Nunc docet, recte et ordine amari homines, quum Deus priores obtinet; vult sic mutuam coli inter nos caritatem, ut Deus, praeferatur.”—M.].
1Jn_5:3. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.—The connection of our love to God with our keeping His commandments doubtless occasioned this saying, in order to take in its unity that which had been treated as simply coördinate [viz. the ideas expressed in the two preceding clauses.—M.]. Huther.—Αὕτη—ἵνα, as in 1Jn_1:9; 1Jn_4:17, denotes the requirement and tendency of love; ἐστιν describes its nature, not=it implies, it includes the effort (de Wette). The context (1Jn_5:2) shows that the love of God here is our love to God.
And His commandments are not grievous; this clause is added by John “encouragingly in the full and joyous consciousness of his Divine sonship,” (Düsterdieck). Cf. Mat_11:30 : φορτίον ἐλαφρόν; Luk_11:46; φορτία δυσβάστακτα. The connection requires us to apply this only to regenerate Christians, to whom is given the ability to keep the commandments of God. So most Commentators. Cf. Doctrinal and Ethical on this section below. [Oxford Catena: εἴ τις προσελθὼν αὐταῖς μὴ ὃν δεῖ τρόπον λέγει αὐτὰς βαρείας, τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀσθένειαν ᾐτιάσατο. Φίλον γὰρ τοῖς ἄγαν ἀποβάλλουσιν ἰσχὺν βαρέα νομίζεσθαι καὶ τὰ πανύ ἐλαφρὰ καὶ κοῦφα.—Spener: “The reference is to the difficulty of a burden so oppressive as to be insupportable and painful.”—Calov: “Dicit ea non esse gravia, quia non aggravant, aut instar molis onerosæ premunt renatum.”—Huther: “The commandments of God as the requirements of man created after His Image, cannot be difficult to man; but if they are, the reason is, that man has left his original relation to God; they are not difficult to the believer, because, as the child of God, he has returned to the original relation of love to God.”—Alford: “This declaration, that His commandments are not grievous, has, as did 1Jn_3:9, furnished some of the Roman Catholic Commentators with an opportunity of characterizing very severely the Protestant position that none can keep God’s commandments. But here as there the reply is obvious and easy. The course of the Apostle’s argument here, as introduced in the next verse by ὅτι, substantiates this βαρεῖαι οὐκ εἰσίν by showing that all who are born of God are standing in and upon the victory which their faith has obtained over the world. In this victorious state, and in as far as they have advanced into it, in other words in proportion as the Divine life is developed and dominant in them, do they find those commandments not grievous. If this state, in its ideality, were realized in them, there would be no difficulty for them in God’s commandments; it is because, and in so far as sin is still reigning in their mortal bodies and their wills are unsubdued to God’s will, that any βάρος remains in keeping those commandments.” The reader is also reminded of Augustine’s saying, “Da quod jubes et jube quod vis” (Confess. 10, 29), and referred to Ausonius (ad. Theodos. 13), “Juvat-qui Jubet,” and Bp. Sanderson, Serm 3. p. 316.—M.].
1Jn_5:4. Because all that is born of God overcometh the world.—Now follows (ὅτι) the reason why the commandments of God are not grievous. Hence πᾶν τὸ γεγεννημένον as in Joh_3:6; Joh_17:2 (πᾶν—αὐτοῖς, like here πᾶν—ἡμῶν), denotes universality. See notes on 1Jn_1:1, Winer, p. 191, 5=πάντες οἱ γεγεννημένοι. The reference is to persons, not to disposition, virtutes and charismata (Oecumenius, Paulus), or to the dignity of the Divine sonship (Baumgarten-Crusius).—Κόσμος is here taken collectively, as the opposite of the kingdom of God, as whatever opposes its progress, estranged from and hostile to God and the Divine, within and without men (Calvin [quicquid adversum est Dei spiritui. Ita naturæ nostræ pravitas pars mundi est, omnes concupiscentiæ, omnes Satanæ actus, quicquid denique nos a Deo abstrahit.—M.], Beza, Spener, Lücke, Düsterdieck, Huther, and al.); hence not merely inwardly the love of the world and of self (de Wette), or outwardly homines virtute et pietate adversantes, their machinationes, even to the persecutiones (Grotius), nor merely ecclesia judaica et judaismus (Schöttgen). [Alford: “The argument then is this: The commandments of God are not grievous: for, although in keeping them there is ever a conflict, yet that conflict issues in universal victory: the whole mass of the born of God conquer the world: therefore none of us need contemplate failure, or faint under his struggle as a hard one.”—M.].—The Present νικᾷ denotes the constant victory in the conflict to be endured; “the children of God fight with the world only as conquerors” (Düsterdieck), cf. 1Jn_2:13-14; 1Jn_4:4. But νικᾷν must not be diluted into “keeping oneself, unseduced” (Baumgarten-Crusius).
And this is the victory which hath overcome the world: our faith.—Αὕτη νίκη refers to πίστις, ἡμῶν is not explained here but in the next verse. Νίκη, being further qualified by νικήσασα, does not denote the action which conquers the world (Ebrard), but victoria parta, the fact of the victory, the faith, not the cause of, but the participation in the victory and the reception of the power of continuing, maintaining and consummating the victory. Lorinus: “Victoria proprie non vincit, sed comparatur vincendo, sed energiam continet ea formula, denotans in quo sita sit vincendi ratio, unde victoria parta.” Huther: “Faith is here intended to be extolled not as the result of a conflict, but as the combatant who has gained the victory.” Hence faith itself is not yet the victory (Baumgarten-Crusius, Neander), nor must the Aorist be explained to former, departed Christians (Socinus). Cf. 1Jn_2:13-14; 1Jn_2:23; 1Jn_4:4; 1Jn_5:12.
1Jn_5:5. But who is it that overcometh the world, if not he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.—While 1Jn_5:4 brought in ἡμῶν πίστις, this verse gives emphatic prominence to the contents of the faith qualified by ἡμῶν in a triumphant question well suited to this section of the victory over the world. Bengel: Credens omnis et solus vincit. Episcopius: Lustrate universum mundum et ostendite mihi vel unum, de quo vere affirmari possit, quod mundum vincat, qui christianus et fide hac præditus non sit. The Apostle, in this question, appeals to the experience of his Church. The Present ὁ νικῶν, which, with respect to the fact: ἡ νίκη νικήσασα (1Jn_5:4), denotes the person conquering in the conflict, indicates the existing and present attitude and relation of the believer. But by the variation: ὅτι—ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ instead of ὁ χριστός 1Jn_5:1, the Apostle refers to the essential glory of Jesus, and also to the fact that believers, as partakers of His glory and. as the children of God, of course conquer with. Him and participate in His victory. The believer, who is Christ’s and whose is Christ the Son of God, is a conqueror in his character of being a child of God. If only faith is true, and, the believer born again, born of God, which may be ascertained from love to the brethren and love to God and a hearty obedience to the commandments of God,—the victory over the world also is indubitable. And with this the Apostle is here particularly concerned.
Jesus is really confirmed as the Son of God. 1Jn_5:6-9.
1Jn_5:6. This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ.—Οὖτος refers to the Person Jesus, whose dignity is proved and confirmed. Ὁ ἐλθών must be taken substantively as at 1Jn_1:5; Joh_1:15; Joh_1:33; Joh_3:13; Joh_3:31; the Article requires this and forbids the connection of the Participle with the preceding ἐστιν, as if it were=this one came; for we read not ἐστιν ἐλθὼν, but ἐστιν ὁ ἐλθών. But we must here hold fast the usual form of the Partic. Aoristi, which simply narrates that which has happened, and does not denote present events or past events continuing in the present; this would require ἐρχόμενος or ἐληλυθώς (1Jn_4:2). How He came is stated in the words δι’ ὕδατος καὶ αἵματος, viz. by means of, by water and blood; διὰ denotes the medium; immediately afterwards we have ἐν ὕδατι, which indicates surrounding or accompaniment. There must therefore be facts, and facts at once historical and external, by which He came, and which are important and efficacious to demonstrate Him, who He is. Moreover the connection of the two requires us to understand acts equal in kind and relation. Hence we must explain δι’ ὕδατος καὶ αἵματος of the baptism, which He received of John in Jordan and which by its immersion pointed to death, while the voice of the Father uttered over Him pointed out His filial dignity, and of His death upon the cross with its atoning sacrificial virtue; in both facts He proved His obedience to the will of the Father, while His obedience proved Him to be the Son of God, the Holy and Innocent One.—Now the apposition Ἰησοῦς=οὗτος, χριστὸς=ὁ ελθών δι’ ὕδατος καὶ αἵματος, comprises what is here said into one whole as the result. A similar turn may be seen in Rom_1:3-4. Consequently we must not, contrary to the grammar and the dialectics of the text, refer οὗτος to the Predicate ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ 1Jn_5:5 (with Knapp, Huther 1st ed.), but to the Subject (Lücke), or to the Subject qualified by the Predicate (Huther 2d ed.); we must and cannot explain contrary to grammatical usage (Mat_11:3; Luk_7:19 sq.; Joh_11:27), ὁ ἐλθών of the Messiah, like ὁ ἐρχόμενος, and connect ἐστιν with δι’ ὕδατος καὶ αἵματος (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis ii. 1, p. 469), or take ἐστιν ἐλθὼν as a circumlocution of the verbum finitum the Article notwithstanding, and thus overlooking the force of the Aorist, explain it as a Present: He comes (Luther and al.), or as a Perfect: He has come and comes (de Wette, Sander and al.). There is no reference here to the water and blood which flowed from His side pierced on the cross (Joh_19:34, Augustine and al.), because the passage in John has αἶμα before ὕδωρ, and because that does not constitute a phase of His life, but is something which, after death had set in, took place in His body, so that concerning it we cannot predicate ὁ ἐλθὼν διά. The symbolical reference of this passage to the two Sacraments, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, is inadmissible (Luther I, S. Schmid, Bengel, Sander, Besser and al.), since the term ἐληλυθὼς is not used here, and αἰμα is not used to describe the Lord’s Supper; but since the two ideas are parallel, ὕδωρ cannot be referred to the Sacrament of Baptism (ὕδωρ moreover cannot be made to designate Baptism Joh_1:26; Joh_1:33), as instituted by Christ, nor αἶμα to the death He suffered (de Wette, Rickli, Düsterdieck, Ebrard and al.), nor both together to Baptism only (Luther I), since Baptism was administered into the death of Christ; the double reference is, by all means, to be held fast. It is either historically or grammatically unwarranted to explain ὕδωρ of vita purissima (Grotius), doctrina pura (Socinus), regeneratio et fides (Clemens Alex.), of tears, and αἷμα of the blood shed at the circumcision, expiatio (Cameron), redemptio (Bullinger), cognitio (Clemens Alex.). Compare particularly Huther on this passage. [Huther, who has changed his view expressed in the first ed. of his commentary, says in the 2d ed. p. 221. “There are two points in the life of Jesus which answer to the terms ὕδωρ and αἷμα, to wit, His Baptism at the beginning of His Messianic career, and His bloody death at the end of the same; by Baptism Jesus entered upon His office, which is the office of reconciliation; it constitutes the initiatio (Erdmann, Myrberg) of it; this initiation, however, did not take place only by that which occurred during His Baptism, but by the act of the Baptism itself, since thereby Christ consecrated Himself to death, which was symbolized by the act of immersion; by His death He effected reconciliation in cancelling with His Blood the debt of the world of sinners, for χωρὶς αἱματεκχυσίας οὐ γίνεται ἄφεσις (Heb_9:22). The Apostle therefore rightly designates Christ as the Reconciler, as Him that came δι’ ὕδατος καὶ αἷματος. The view that ὕδωρ and αἷμα are to be explained of the Sacraments instituted by Christ is confuted not only by the circumstance that they are only the means of appropriating the reconciliation effected by Him, whereas we are here concerned with the accomplishment of the reconciliation itself, but also by the use of the Aorist ἐλθών, instead of which in the former case we ought to have the Present, and by the fact that the term αἷμα, used alone, is in the New Testament not once applied to the Lord’s Supper; in 1Co_12:13 also ἐποτίσθησαν does not allude to the Lord’s Supper, but to the communication of the Spirit in Baptism.—The opinion that though αἷμα denotes the death which Christ suffered, ὕδωρ does not signify the Baptism He received is opposed by the following considerations: 1. The close connection of the two words (διά not being repeated before αἶματος) is only fitting if the ideas correspond the one to the other, which they do not if δι’ ὕδατος is referred to an institution of Christ, and αἵματος to the blood shed by Christ. 2. The simple term ὕδωρ is ill-suited to designate Christian baptism (for Christian Baptism is distinguished from John’s Baptism in that the former is essentially not ὕδωρ like the latter; even as John the Baptist distinguishing himself from Christ said: ἐγὼ βαπτίζω ἐν ὕδατι Joh_1:26, while Jesus had been indicated to him as ὁ βαπτίζων ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ, Joh_1:33. 3. Since the institution of Baptism took place after the death of Christ and necessarily presupposed that death, John, had he understood by ὕδωρ Christian Baptism, would surely have put ὕδατος not before but after αἵματος. Hilgenfeld and Neander have justly maintained that if ἔρχεσθαι δι’ αἵματος denotes something relating to the Messiah personally, ἔρχεσθαι δι’ ὕδατος must do so likewise. The relation must be the same in both terms. If αἷμα signifies the death to which Christ submitted, ὕδωρ also can only signify the Baptism to which He in like manner submitted.”—Passing to that class of commentators who substantially admit the views expressed by Huther, but superadd a secondary or implied sacramental reference, we give the language of Alford who says that “ὕδωρ represents the Baptism of water which the Lord Himself underwent and instituted for His followers, αἷμα, the Baptism of blood which He Himself underwent and instituted for His followers. It is equally impossible to sever.… from these words the historical accompaniments and associations which arise on their mention. The Lord’s Baptism, of itself, was indeed rather a result than a proof of His Messiahship: but in it, taking St. John’s account only, a testimony to His Divine Sonship is given, by which the Baptist knew Him to be the Son of God: ἐγὼ ἐώρακα κ. μεμαρτύρηκα ὅτι οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, are his words, Joh_1:34; and when that blood was poured from His “riven side,” he that saw it again uses the same formula ὁ ἑωρακὼς μεμαρτύρηκε. It cannot be that the word μαρτυρία being thus referred to two definite points of our Lord’s life, should not apply to these two, connected as they are with ὕδωρ and αἷμα here mentioned, and associated by St. John Himself with the remarkable preterite μεμαρτύρηκεν, of an abiding μαρτυρία in both cases. But these past facts in the Lord’s life are this abiding testimony to us, by virtue of the permanent application to us of their cleansing and atoning power.”—Wordsworth, as usual, adopts the Patristic and symbolical interpretation, and as the views of other classes of commentators have been given at considerable length, we add as a curiosum his exposition of this passage in a condensed form. “Jesus Christ”, came, as the Messiah and Son of God, in various ways.
1. ‘He came in all the purifications that were made by water and blood under the Old Law, which was dedicated with blood and water. Heb_9:22; because all those purifications were typical of, and preparatory to, His sacrifice on the Cross, and derived all their efficacy from it.……
2. ‘He came by water in His Baptism; and by blood in His circumcision, and especially in His agony and bloody sweat in Gethsemane, and by the blood shed in His scourging before His passion, and in the crown of thorns, and the piercing of His hands at the crucifixion.….
3. ‘He came both by water and blood at once, in a special manner, on Calvary after His death. …
‘Thus St. John in his Gospel prepares us to understand the words of this Epistle; and in his Epistle also he elucidates what had been recorded in his Gospel. His words therefore may be thus paraphrased: ‘This is He who came—that is, proved Himself to be what He was pre-announced to be by the types and prophecies of the Old Testament, and what He proclaimed Himself to be in the New—the “Coming One,” “The Comer” (ὁ ἐρχόμενος), the Messiah, the true Paschal Lamb, and Very Man, a true Sacrifice for Sin; and yet Very God, the Everlasting Jehovah, of whom the prophet Zechariah spoke (Zec_12:10), when he prophesied of His being pierced at His death.
‘He came by blood and water. He proved thereby the reality of His humanity and of His death; and thus He has given a practical refutation—which St. John saw with his own eyes—to the heretical notions of those in the Apostolical age, such as Simon Magus and the Docetae, who alleged that Christ had not a real human body, but was merely a spectral phantasm, crucified in show; and therefore Irenæus in the next age after St. John, infers this fact of the piercing of the side and the flowing out of the blood and water, recorded by St. John, as conclusive against their heresy. …
‘In the words, “not by water only,” there seems also to be a reference to another heresy of the Apostolic age, that of Cerinthus, who said that Christ came in the water of baptism, and descended into the Man Jesus; and afterwards departed from Him, when He shed His blood on the cross. In opposition to this notion St. John says, “This is He who came by water and blood; not by water only, but by water and blood.”
4. ‘Further it is to be observed that in this passage of his Epistle St. John is speaking of Christ’s generation, and of our regeneration.—Every one who believeth that Jesus is the Christ, hath been born, and is born, of God; i.e., is regenerate; and every one who loveth Him that begat, loveth Him also that is begotten of Him; i.e., whosoever loveth God the Father, loveth Him who by generation is the only-begotten Son of God; and every thing that is born of God (i.e., is regenerate) overcometh the world; and who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus—the Very Man Jesus—is also the Son of God?
‘St. John then proceeds to describe the means by which our regeneration, or New Birth, is communicated to us from God, through His Son Christ Jesus, Very Man and Very God, and how the new life, so communicated, is sustained in us. He does this by saying, This is He who came—came to us—by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.
‘The natural life which was imparted to Eve—the Mother of all living, the type of the Church, the Spouse of the Second Adam, Jesus Christ—was derived from the first Adam’s side, opened when he was asleep in Paradise. In like manner, the spiritual life is given to the spiritual Eve, the Church, and to all her faithful members, from the side of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, sleeping in death on the cross; and it is communicated through His death by means of the water and blood of the two sacraments, which derive their quickening, cleansing and invigorating virtue from the Divinity, Incarnation and Death of our crucified Lord and Saviour, and by which the benefit of that death is applied to our regeneration and revivification; and which were visibly exhibited in the water and blood flowing from His precious side, pierced on the cross. … [See Augustine, Serm. V.—M.].
‘He came by water, which is our λουτρὸν, and by blood, which is our λύτρον. His Baptism of blood is our λύτρον, or ransom from death; and His Baptism by water is our λουτρὸν, or laver of birth. And the water of the λουτρὸν derives its efficacy from the blood of the λυτρόν, shed on the cross, which works in and by the water of baptism. He has washed us from our sins in His own blood (Rev_1:15). His blood cleanseth us from all sin (1Jn_1:7). In baptism we pass through the Red Sea of His blood, and are delivered from our enemies thereby.”—For further particulars connected with the symbolical interpretation, the reader is referred to Wordsworth himself, and for a good account of all the interpretations, to Huther’s Commentary, 2d edition, pp. 217–219.—M.].
Not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood.—The preposition ἐν should be connected with ἐλθὼν, and, as compared with διὰ, signifying the medium through which, introduces a new shade of thought, viz., the surrounding, accompaniment and sphere [or “element in which”—M.]; a similar change occurs at Heb_9:12; Heb_9:25 (Delitzsch, pp. 390, 434). Articulus habet vim relativam (Bengel) to what has just been specified, which must be taken in the same sense as before. Μόνον after ὑδατι renders the latter very emphatic, and is not followed by ἀλλὰ καὶ because it is not connected with οὐ. Consequently not only in the Baptism received at the hands of John the Baptist has Jesus been proved to be the Christ, the Son of God, but in both. This refutes the opinion of those heretics who alleged that the Son of God was with Jesus at His Baptism, but not at His death upon the cross, that He left Him before His death (Huther [i.e., the heresy of Cerinthus.—M.]). The distinction of Jesus from the Baptist, who baptized with water only, is out of the question, the reference being not to Jesus’ baptizing, but to His being baptized (against Lücke, Düsterdieck, Ebrard and others).
And it is the Spirit that testifieth.—Καὶ superadds a further and third particular, an additional witness (ἐστιν τὸ μαρτυροῦν cf. ὁ ἐλθὼν). The Article before the Participle compels us to understand τὸ πνεῦμα as the absolute, objective Spirit, as the Holy Spirit, and the Present denotes the continuance of the office of witnessing (Joh_15:26) wherein He leads into all truth, mediates fellowship with Christ, and secures eternal life. Τὸ πνεῦμα must not be explained of the spirit of believers, of the spiritual life wrought in believers by the Holy Spirit (Episcopius, Sander and others); this is forbidden by the context, and the grammatical usage of the New Testament disallows such a construction without any further qualification Nor is it=ὁ πνευματικός, i.e., the Apostle John himself (Ziegler, Stroth), nor a third sacrament of absolution Augustine), nor the word, the ministry of the word (Luther, Piscator, al.). [In order to complete the catalogue of curious and fantastic views begun in the text, we mention those of Oecumenius and Knapp, who regard τὸ πνευμᾶ=ὁ θεός—διὰ δὲ τοῦ πνεύματος, ὅτε ὡς θεὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν· θεοῦ γὰρ τοῦτο μόνου λοιπόν, τὸ ἀνιστᾰͅν ἑαυτόν. τῇ δὲ τοῦ πνεύματος φωνῇ σημαίνεται ὁ θεος: thus making the threefold witness to the υἱοθεσία of Jesus, τὸ βάπτισμα, ὁ σταυρός, ἡ ἀνάστασις; of Socinus, Schlichting, Grotius, Whitby and al. who understand the Divine power by which Christ wrought His miracles: ‘id est,’ says Grotius, ‘per μετωνυμίαν, admiranda ejus opera, a virtute divina manifeste procedentia,’ of Bede, who understands the Spirit which descended on the Lord at His Baptism, and of Wetstein, who considers τὸ πνεῦμα to signify the psychical element which, along with ὕδωρ and αἷμα the physical elements, constituted the human nature of Christ.—The interpretation given by Braune is that of Scholiast I., Estius, Corn. a-Lapide, Tirinus, Calvin, Calov, Lücke, Rickli, de Wette, Huther, Neander, Düsterdieck, Alford and Wordsworth. It is the Holy Spirit, whom Christ in fulfilment of His promise, sent to His Church on the Day of Pentecost, and who is a permanent witness of the Divine Sonship of Jesus.—M.].
Because the Spirit is the truth.—This clause does not contain the substance of the testimony, which is determined by the context (viz., that Jesus, the Son of God, is the Christ), but the reason of the testimony, as being a reliable one; ὅτι is=because, not=that (Luther, Besser, al.). Ἡ ἀλήθεια designates the Truth revealed in the word of God, and received in faith, in its perfect fulness, which Truth is the nature of the Spirit who is the Spirit of the Truth into which He leadeth (Joh_14:17; Joh_15:26; Joh_16:13). Christ, who has the Spirit without measure (Joh_3:34 sq.), and who with the Father sends Him (Joh_15:26; Joh_16:7), is of course in the same sense the Truth according to His nature (Joh_4:6). We must not construe ἡ ἀλήθεια=ἀληθές, as Grotius does. [Estius: “Testimonium ejus haudquaquam rejici potest, quoniam Spiritus est veritas, quam sit Deus, ideoque nec falli potest, nec fallere.”—M.].
1Jn_5:7-8. For three are the witnesses, Spirit, water and blood.—[Grotius: “Johannes hic causam reddit, cur locutus fuerit non de Spiritu tantum, cujus præcipua in hoc negotio est auctoritas, verum etiam de aqua et sanguine, quia in illis etiam non exigua est testimonii fides, et ternarius numerus in testibus est perfectissimus.”—M.]. This formula is precisely like that of the preceding verse (1Jn_5:6). Οἱ μαρτυροῦντες of course must be construed substantively and in the same sense as 1Jn_5:6, nor must be supplied another object of the testimony; in like manner to τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ αἷμα bear exactly the same meaning here as in 1Jn_5:6. The historical facts, previously specified merely as evidencing the Divine Sonship of Jesus, are now introduced in the Masculine Gender, in order to designate them as concrete witnesses, like persons (Lücke and al.); but of course so, that they are subordinated to the Spirit, who is the principal, and alone absolute Witness, employing and making use of the facts in the life of Jesus. The verb denotes the activity of the testifying, with reference to the condition of being μάρτυρ, and the Present signifies the permanent character of that activity, wherefore it is not necessary to think here of objects at present existing, e.g., the sacraments, but we have only to hold fast that these facts in the history of the life of Jesus, like that history itself, are fixed in the Gospels, and that these facts, even without such written fixedness, continue to be permanently operative during the years of salvation [i.e., the dispensation of grace.—M.] with world-historical import [i.e., exerting a permanent influence on the world’s history during the dispensation of grace.—M.].—Τρεῖς, with reference to Deu_17:6; Deu_19:15; Mat_18:16; 2Co_13:1; Heb_10:28-29, denotes the assurance of the perfectness of the testimony. This sentence is annexed with ὅτι=for, in order to represent now in a compressed form the testimony, particularized in 1Jn_5:6, as a weighty confirmation and substantiation of the truth, that Jesus, the Son of God, is the Christ.
And the three are one.—The Article οἱ τρεῖς denotes here, as also previously, the witnesses already designated and well known, and likewise in εἰς τὸ̣ ἕν the one Truth in question, the object of the testimony (1Jn_5:1; 1Jn_5:5). Εἰς, like εἰς ἕν in Joh_11:52; Joh_17:23, denotes in unum consentire.—Hence we need neither assume with de Wette, ah ellipsis between 1Jn_5:6-8, nor take ὅτι in the sense of jam vero (Grotius), consequently, therefore (Baumgarten-Crusius, Meyer), nor understand τρεῖς οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, with Bengel, of three different classes of men (prophetas, baptistas, apostolos), or of symbols of the Trinity. Lastly we must not interpret the being one, with Luther, as a being together, a being joined together. [Alford renders “and the three concur in one” and explains, that they contribute to one and the same result: viz., the truth that Jesus is the Christ, and that we have life in Him. Wordsworth explains the passage of the Trinity and the sacraments and paraphrases: these three (Persons) who are bearing witness are joined into one (ἕν one substance, neuter). He collects, as usual, many Patristic and Anglican notices and gives in his exegesis the following:—‘The Spirit, who begins the work of regeneration by applying all quickening grace to man.—The Water: the symbol and instrument of the new birth derived from God the Father, who is the original Well-spring and Fountain of all life and grace to man. The natural heavens and the earth were formed out of the Water. There was their origin (2Pe_3:5). So it is with the spiritual life; it is formed from out of water. Water therefore is a proper symbol of the Paternity of God.—The Blood, symbolizing the Incarnation and Passion of God, the Son through whom all grace descends from the Father, by the Holy Spirit. 2Co_13:13.—These three Persons are joined consubstantially into one Godhead; and their Witness is the witness of God. (Andrews: “Water notes Creation; Blood notes Redemption by Christ; the Spirit notes Unction, to complete all”).—There is an image of the Trinity in the Christian sacraments. There is baptismus fluminis, the baptism of water, the work of Creation by the Father; there is baptismus sanguinis, the baptism of blood, the work of Redemption by the Son; but these are not enough, unless there be also the baptismus Flaminis, the Baptism of the Spirit. Thus the work of the Ever-Blessed Trinity is done in the soul.’ In addition to the notes on the spurious passage given above, the reader is referred to a sketch on this subject in Horne’s Introduction, vol. IV. pp. 355–388.—M].
1Jn_5:9. If we receive the testimony of men.—Εἰ denotes an undoubted fact; hence the Indicative, but the fact is put down as the premise of a conclusion. [It is an argumentum a minori ad majus.—M.]. Winer p. 307 sq. [also ibid, p. 642.—M.]. In τὴν μαρτυρίαν τῶν ἅνθρώπων. the Article opposes the human testimony to the Divine, without in any way specifying one qualified by its substance (Brückner). The reference therefore is neither to the prophecy of Christ (Bede), nor to John the Baptist, to eye-and ear-witnesses (Wetstein, Stier), nor to prophets, baptists and Apostles (Bengel). Grotius takes λαμβάνειν=judicio approbare, and Düsterdieck understands any human testimony, provided that it possess the necessary requirements.
The testimony of God is greater.—Here ἡ μαρτυρία τοῦ θεοῦ is not particular, but quite general [The particular is specified in the sequel. Supply in the argument: much more must we receive the testimony of God (Winer).—M.]. As the testimony of God it is greater than that of men and requires so much the more its reception and validity.
Because this is the testimony of God. Now follows the definite testimony of God, which must be received as the testimony of God. Here is evidently an ellipsis, viz.: but a Divine testimony is really extant, namely this …. (Düsterdieck).
That He hath testified of His Son.—The clause beginning with ὅτι depends on οὕτη, and notes the testimony as a historical fact, μεμαρτύρηκε, which has been given, but must be understood to be continuous and permanent in its operation, namely the threefold testimony specified in 1Jn_5:7-8. Hence ὅτι cannot be rendered “because,” which would especially designate the author of the testimony, in which case αὐτὸς could hardly be wanting before μεμαρτύρηκε; nor is here any reference to internal testimony (Düsterdieck) introduced afterwards, and still less to the testimony vouchsafed to John the Baptist (Joh_1:33), as maintained by Ebrard.
The possession of eternal life in the faith on Jesus the Son of God, is the inward confirmation of the Divine testimony 1Jn_5:10-12.
1Jn_5:10. He that believeth in the Son of God, hath the testimony in himself.—The result as well as the purport of the Divine testimony is faith in Jesus as the Son of God; hence we now have ὁ πιστεύων εἰς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ. Such an one ἔχει τὴν μαρτυρίαν ἐν ἑαυτῷ. The addition τοῦ θεοῦ is unnecessary; the context precludes any other testimony than that of God; the Article designates that which has been specified and is known. “The outward has become to him something inward” (Huther). [“The object of the Divine testimony being, to produce faith in Christ, the Apostle takes him in whom it has wrought this its effect, one who habitually believes in the Son of God, and says of such an one, that he possesses the testimony in himself. What it is, he does not plainly say till below, 1Jn_5:11. But easily enough here we can synthetically put together and conjecture of what testimony it is that he is speaking: the Spirit by whom we are born again to eternal Life, the water of baptism by which the new birth is brought to pass in us by the power of the Holy Ghost (Joh_3:5; Tit_3:5), the Blood of Jesus, by which we have reconciliation with God, and purification from our sins (1Jn_1:7; 1Jn_2:2), and eternal life (Joh_6:53 sqq.),—these three all contribute to and make up our faith in Christ, and so compose that testimony, which the Apostle designates in 1Jn_5:11 by the shorter term which comprehends them all.” Alford following Düsterdieck.—M.].—Ἔχειν bears the same sense here as in. 1Jn_5:12; 1Jn_3:3; 1Jn_2:23. Ἐν ἑαυτῷ might be wanting, but John specifies besides the having, the possession of the sphere, the believer’s own inward testimony for it. It is wrong to render, to have with him (Luther), more wrong, recipit in se (Grotius), nor is it=τηρεῖ (Baumgarten-Crusius), nor=he not only receives it, but is also firmly convinced of it (Lücke), nor=he has received it in and with himself (de Wette).—As usual, the Apostle continues in the negative.
He that believeth not God, hath made Him a liar.—The Dative refers not to the object of faith, but to the witness; hence the reading τῷ υἱῷ is not in agreement with the text, as is τῷ θεῷ τῷ μεμαρτυρηκότι (Huther); this is confirmed by αὐτὸν, which must be referred to God, but would have to be connected with υἱῷ, if that were the reading. The Perfect πεποίηκεν indicates the still continuing and operating animus of the disbeliever: he has told and ever tells God to the face: thou liest (Luther). The reason follows:
Because he hath not believed in the testimony, which God hath given concerning His Son.—Οὐ πεπίστευκεν and not μὴ, because John refers to him, whom he had supposed not to believe (ὁ μὴ πιστεύων), as a definite individual, who in point of fact, objectively, has not become believing. Joh_3:18 : ὁ δὲ μὴ πιστεύων ἤδη κέκριται, ὅτι μὴ παπίστευκεν, because there the reference is to the judgment of the judge, and not simply to a fact per se. See Winer, p. 495 sq. The Perfects denote continuing and permanent facts.
1Jn_5:11. And the testimony is this, that God hath given us [better gave us—M.] eternal life.—John now annexes by καὶ what follows, and this is the substance, the testimony consists in this (αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ μαρτυρία); the reference is not to intentio, finis of the same (Lyra), nor to its use, fruit and blessing (Calov, Spener), nor to its exhibition, test, experience (Lücke, Neander, Huther). The testimony of God is in himself eternal life, which at the Baptism of Jesus, at His death, in the Holy Spirit, makes itself felt and perceptible, and testifies for the Son of God. Hence ὅτι=that, and ἔδωκεν, like μεμαρτύρηκεν points to a giving, with a present continuing of that past giving; it cannot be dare decrevit, promisit (Socinus, Carpzov), any more than ζωὴ αἰώνιος is vita æterna in spe (Bede), to be given only in heaven in re. Ἡμῖν designates the οἱ πεπιστευκότες. To the principal idea, ζωὴ ἀώνιος, placed first, the Apostle now adds
And that is the life in His Son, (or: and this life is in His Son).—This clause is co-ordinate with the one preceding and not dependent on ὅτι. Αὕτη ἡ ζωὴ is ἡ αἰώνιος, and this is in Jesus the Son of God; ἐν is not per (Grotius), or in communion with Him, nor ἐστιν=contingit. The eternal life is οὐσιωδῶς (Joh_1:4; Joh_11:25; Joh_14:6), σωματικῶς (Col_2:9), ἐνεργητικῶς (2Ti_1:10) in Christ. It became manifest in Him, because it really was in Him, and the believer participates in the eternal life, because he has part in the Son of God. Hence the conclusion.
1Jn_5:12. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God, hath not the life (or: the life he hath not).
Very fine and pointed is Bengel’s note: “Habet versus duo cola; in priore non additur Dei, nam fideles norunt Filium;, in altero additur, ut demum sciant infideles, quanti sit, non habere. Priore hemistichio cum emphasi pronunciandum est habet; in altero vitam.” This is also indicated by the arrangement of the words (Düsterdieck). Ἔχει τὴν ζωὴν is not=habet jus certum ad vitam æternam (Grotius). Cf. 1Jn_1:3; 1Jn_2:23; Joh_17:3. [Alford: “The having the Son is the possession of Christ by faith testified, by the Spirit, the water and the blood: and the having the life is the actually possessing it, not indeed in its most glorious development, but in all its reality and vitality.”—M.]. Ὁ μὴ ἔχων points to a supposition: if one has not; which implies that he might have, but only through faith 1Jn_5:10-11. [Düsterdieck has remarked that the use of ὁ μὴ ἔχων, not ὁ οὐκ ἔχων (cf. οἱ οὐκ ἡλεημένοι, 1Pe_2:10) shows that the Apostle is contemplating, at all events primarily, rather a possible contingency than an actual fact: and thus is, primarily again, confirming his saying to those to whom the Divine testimony has come. To them, according as they receive or do not receive it, according as they are οἱ ἕχοντες or οἱ μὴ ἔχοντες τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, it is a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.”—M.].
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
I. Concerning the Person of Christ
1. In Christ, as the Son of God is the life eternal, so that it is as well said: God has given us the eternal life (1Jn_5:11), as: He gave His only begotten Son (Joh_3:16); and he that hath the Son, hath the life, the eternal (1Jn_5:11). Beside Him there is no salvation (Act_4:12).
2. The essential nature of the Son was unmistakably exhibited in His obedience to the will of the Father, both at the commencement of His ministry by the baptism in Jordan, and at the close of it in His death upon the cross (1Jn_5:6).
3. The testimony of the Holy Spirit for the Divine Sonship of Christ must not be separated from the historical facts of His life, even as these cannot become witnesses without the Holy Spirit, who has the office of testifying (1Jn_5:6-8); the history on earth must not be severed from the Spirit of God. One might almost find here the principle of the Lutheran Church that the finitum may become infiniti capax, in opposition to the [German] Reformed principle: finitum infiniti non capax.
4. The Father hath so definitely appointed all things, that He who does not believe in the Divine Sonship of Jesus, refuses to believe God (1Jn_5:10), as in Joh_14:1.
II. Concerning the acquisition or salvation
1. The origin of faith: Regeneratio præcedit fidem (1Jn_5:1).
2. The nature of faith: it is essentially an ethical act laying hold of the merit of Christ, of the love of the Father in the Son, so that it has (ἔχει) that on which it believes (1Jn_5:12; 1Jn_5:10-11): it includes therefore love, and is not to be joined only to it, as set forth in the Roman Catholic representation of the fides formata. Nor does John allow faith to be described as the second condition, nor even as the first condition by the side of love and morality (1Jn_5:1), as de Wette holds and expresses it.
3. The virtues of faith: a. with reference to men—it makes all believers brethren, because it makes them the children of God (1Jn_5:2); b. with reference to the commandments of God—it makes us strong and cheerful in obedience (1Jn_5:3), so that Bengel rightly observes: in se sunt suavia; sed τὸ non gravia contradicit et occurrit iis, qui gravia esse putant; c. with reference to the world—it imparts courage for the conflict and power for the victory (1Jn_5:4-5). This it works with reference to men, at the same time changing them, transforming children of men into children of God, and causing such change to be perceived and received; with reference to the law of God and the world, it only changes believers by first giving to them the powers of the eternal life, and afterwards clear perception and a deeper understanding of the justice and blessing of the law and the transitoriness of the world.
4. The necessity of faith: without it one has neither Christ, nor God the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the eternal life; consequently, without it and beside it there is no justification, no forgiveness of sins, no sanctification, no salvation (1Jn_5:12).
5. The liberty of faith: all men are to believe according to the will of God, but coërcion of faith is not ordained; every man has the power of resistance (ὁ μὴ ἔχων τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ=ὁ μὴ πιστεύων, 1Jn_5:10; 1Jn_5:12).
6. The immorality of unbelief follows from 1Jn_5:1, and especially 1Jn_5:10 : not to believe God, to consider Him a liar, is like misbelief and despair, a shameful thing, and, as Luther says in the Catechism, a vice.
III. Concerning the Law.
1. It should be considered as a fact of the revelation of love, of paternal discipline.
2. It answers to the originally God-ordained human nature, which sin has corrupted and grace has healed; the burden and grievousness of it to men proves their state of sin, joy in it and obedience to it, their state of grace.
3. Of his own strength man cannot fulfil a single commandment; in this the Evangelical Church is right.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Do not separate faith and love! This is forbidden, 1. by the origin of faith in the regeneration from God who is Love, and 2. by its object, Jesus the Christ, in whom the love of God was manifested, and 3. by its task, to conquer the world through love.—Do not fail to distinguish between faith and love in the work of regeneration which is secured by the former, not by the latter, but do not sever them in the sphere of sanctification, where faith is the root of love, and love the many-branched crown of faith.—You may ascertain whether you have faith and are born again from 1. your love to God the Father, 2. from your love of the brethren, 3. from your obedience to the Divine commandments, 4. from your fight with the world in and around you.—Dr. Christian Friedrich Richter, physician at the Orphan House of Halle, in Franke’s time, was the author of the Christian song: Es kostet viel ein Christ zu sein, etc. ‘It costeth much to be a Christian and to live conformably to the mind of the pure Spirit, for nature finds it very hard, ever to be reconciled to the death of Christ,’ and the companion verse: ‘It is not difficult to be a Christian and to live conformably to the mind of the pure Spirit, for though nature finds it very hard, etc.’ Both are true and good. For the law is only a burden to man enfeebled by sin, but not to the Christian strengthened by grace, the one, indeed, is only enjoined to be good, but the other is enabled to be good.—Obedience to the Divine commandments notes the recovery of the Spirit, disobedience notes its decay. Nothing is more natural, nothing more adapted to human nature created by God after His own Image, than the Will of God, consistent with His Nature and expressed in the lovingly ordained Law for the benefit of His Kingdom, which was given, not against man, but for man, not against man, but against sin.—Learn from John how to contend with error! With all his resoluteness and decision, he is so objective and calm, and reasons so joyfully on the foundation of truth, that we are not even induced to make a personal application of his reasoning to others, but rather influenced to make it the test of our own standing.
Augustine:—Qui habet in memoria et servat in vita, qui habet in sermonibus et servat in moribus, qui habet audiendo et servat faciendo, aut qui habet faciendo, et servat perseverando, ipse est, qui diligit Deum. Opere est demonstranda dilectio ne sit infructuosa nominis appellalio.—You adore the Head, and offend the members. He loves His Body. Just as if somebody would desire to kiss your head, and at the same time trample with nailed shoes on your feet. Would you not decline the proffered demonstration of honour and exclaim: What are you about? You tread on my feet? The head would cry more for the trodden members than make account of being honoured.
Spener:—The meaning is not, that the keeping of the Divine commandments does not require considerable pains, labour and diligence, for that would contradict Luk_13:24; 2Ti_4:7.—The difficulty applies to a burden so oppressive and painful as to be unbearable.—Spiritual life is, as to its nature, an eternal life, and consists as well in the grace of God which forgives sin and imparts new Divine strength, as also in the enjoyment of eternal felicity and glory.
Starke:—Christianity is not a sham, but a true and honest thing which has its foundation, its coat of arms and tokens, its works and fruits, its profit and happiness.—If thou hast a sense of shame and honour, thou wilt surely not hurt the saintly children of a saintly father; look, believers are the children of thy heavenly Father; if instead of loving, thou hate them, thou art truly an enemy of God, their Father, and He, in His turn, thy enemy.—If thoughtful preachers stop long at one matter, and perhaps repeat it several times, and with changed phraseology make it more clear, be not impatient of it, but take note of their zeal and of the importance and necessity of the matter treated of.—O, how much pain, burden, difficulty and anxiety attend the children of the world in their sins and iniquities, of which the children of God are free and delivered! Thus many a child of Satan has more trouble to find hell, than a child of God to find heaven.—O man, do not persuade thyself and do not suffer thyself to be persuaded, that the world cannot be overcome. This is the infallible sign of true and false faith: viz., whether thou conquerest the world, or sufferest the world to conquer thee.—The children of God are soldiers and knights. The crown must be fought for; faith is victorious. Wretched man, if conquest and the crowning do not attend thy course! World begone beneath my feet. We will trample under foot lions and vipers. Come hither, sword of the Lord! The blessed state of a righteous man in Christ, his Head! He does not fortify the walls of houses and cities, but the empire of Satan and the walls of Jericho in his heart.—The stronger thy faith, the greater thy victory over sin, the world, death, the devil and hell.—The Bible surpasses, and should be preferred to, all books; all other good books are conducted like rivulets from this river.—Christ is not only the foundation, but also the true centre and chief work of our faith, at which alone the believer under the practice of self-denial, is ever aiming, and into which he does, as it were, ground himself.—As there is nothing more excellent than faith, so is nothing more dishonourable than unbelief. Faith honours God, and is the mother of all virtues; unbelief dishonours God, and is the mother of all vices.—Man must not seek the true life any where except in Christ; nor cherish any hope of life beside Him. As long as he is without Christ, he has no life; whereas the degree to which he is in Christ and partaker of His Being, is also the measure of his life.—A true Christian is a veritable Christophorus, who carries Christ in his heart, and leads his life in Him.—
Besser:—If thou art a conqueror, thou must have thy spoils to show.—The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life are the chief trophies, of which the soldiers of Christ divest the conquered world, and which they suspend from the victorious banner of the cross.—
Heubner:—Without prejudice to the general love of man, a Christian must be especially attracted to those who are of one mind with him; he must value the true children of God infinitely more than the unconverted.—The genuineness and holiness of human love betokened by its religious character.—All love is worthless without religion, a mere natural impulse, or masked selfishness.—True love is allied to strict conscientiousness; love must not render us languid or indulgent in respect of duty.—If the love to God requires obedience, the true love of man also must consist in obedience, fidelity and conscientiousness.—Struggle for this strength (1Jn_5:3); to be ever complaining is a bad sign.—1. The light of faith conquers the errors, illusions and delusions of false wisdom, it sees through them, perceives their nothingness and masters them; the word of Christ is the eternal, unchangeable truth; faith the pole-star, that we do not swerve from the truth. 2. Faith conquers the allurings and fascinations of the world which we encounter in its lusts, its riches and honours; it conquers them by the love of Christ, by the heavenly riches and the eternal glory, which it discloses. 3. It conquers the threatenings of the world, the obstacles which it raises, its persecutions; the call of Christ to us is too mighty, and the crown of honour offered to us causes us to despise the contempt of the world.—This (viz. the conquest of the world) is an idea peculiar to Christianity, because it only teaches the contrast of the kingdom of God and the world.—A lofty thought, to face the whole world and to conquer it! This is a greater task than that of the world-conquerors; they are servants of the world.—Unbelief is an offence against the Majesty of God, a denial of the holy miracles in the moral world, which God has wrought.—
1Jn_5:1. L. in Gesetz und Zeugniss, 1John 1859:—When does the feast of the Nativity become to us the birth-day of a new life? When its glad tidings excite in us anew 1. the undoubting faith that Jesus is the Christ; but also 2. grateful love to God, and to all those who are our brethren in Christ.
On 1Jn_5:4. Spurgeon:—A great victory, a great birth, a great grace.
Danneil:—The Christian’s warfare. 1. The warrior (born of God); 2. The enemy (the world); 3. The victory (faith).
Genthe, on the tercentenary Anniversary, 1860, Baptismal Address. How Melanchthon conquered the world in the strength of faith; 1. The temptation of the world; 2. The opposition of the world; 3. The fear of the world.
5. Schleiermacher:—Our Christmas-joy is closely connected with the fact that the faith, that Jesus is the Son of God, is the victory which conquers the world. 1. The object of the festal joy, that in Jesus is born the Son of God, surpasses all similar events in our family and social life, for through Him we are made well-pleasing to God. 2. The world is destined to be conquered, judged, and destroyed as to its transitory and corruptible side, but to become more and more blessed as to its Divine side, and this has been done in Christ and through Christ in believers, so that it is one and the same thing to say: the the Son of God conquers the world through our faith, and our faith conquers the world through Him.
1Jn_5:9-12. F. A. Wolf:—Christ the Author and Giver of a living religion. 1. Explain and prove that this is true of Christ as a Witness, an Ensample, and a Surety. 2. The inferences: a. Christianity has nothing to fear from all-changing time, from false love of novelty, and from true zeal for improvement; b. test the genuineness of your own Christianity by the vitality of the faith that is in you.
1Jn_5:1-13. Petri:—The Easter-faith, that Jesus is the Christ. 1. That we become anew conscious of the wholesome virtues of this faith; 2. and edify ourselves on this our most holy faith.
On the Epistle for Dom. Quasimodogeniti [First Sunday after Easter—M.] 1Jn_5:4-10.
Heubner:—The great value of faith in Jesus Christ. 1. How it manifests itself: a. in its power: it makes us the children of God and conquers the world (1Jn_5:4-5); b. in its certainty: it is supported by the testimony of God (1Jn_5:6-8); 2. The duties it enjoins upon us: a. it warns us against contempt of faith (1Jn_5:9), and b. it lays us under the obligation to receive the testimony of God (1Jn_5:10).
Faith in Christ the good part of younger Christians (Candidates for Confirmation). 1. Proof: this faith makes them the children of God; preserves them from the world. 2. How do they acquire this faith? By diligent consideration of the testimonies for Jesus, and by ready obedience.
Continued provision for grown-up children, 1. In what it consists; 2. What makes it our bounden duty.—
R. Stier:—What John means by conquering the world? Our faith must conquer 1. The unbelief of the world; 2. The sin and seduction of the world; 3. The enmity of the world.—
What sort of faith does conquer the world? 1. Faith in Him, who also was not of the world, but the eternal brightness of the glory of the Father, and the express image of His Person; 2. Faith in Jesus, the Conqueror of the world.—
Kapff:—The Confirmation of regeneration. 1. How the regeneration of mankind is confirmed in Christ; 2. How it is confirmed in individual hearts; 3. What influence in that direction outward confirmation has.
Genzken:—Build yourselves up on faith by the Holy Ghost. 1. This is needful for the regenerate, as feeble newly-born persons (1Jn_5:4); 2. But the foundation, which is laid, stands firm like a rock (1Jn_5:5); and the Prince of life evermore joins us in the Holy Communion (1Jn_5:6); 3. The Holy Spirit bears testimony concerning the truth of His word, and the power of His life (1Jn_5:6; 1Jn_5:8-11).
F. W. Krummacher:—The threefold testimony for Jesus the Messiah and Saviour of the world 1. in the water; 2. in the blood; 3. in the Holy Spirit.
Beyer (in Gesetz und Zeugniss for 1862):—A test of Faith! 1. Dost thou know the victory, whereby faith verifies itself? 2. The fountain, whence it daily draws fresh nourishment? 3. The testimony which gives it assurance?—
The testimony of God concerning His Song of Solomon , 1. to us; 2. in us; 3. by us.
The victorious power of faith, 1. against the sin of the world, 2. against the lie of the world.
Our faith is the victory which conquers the world. 1. What sort of faith is it? 2. How is it obtained? 3. How does it conquer the world?—
[1Jn_5:2. Macknight:—The intention of the Apostle was to show, how we may know when we love the children of God in a right manner. Now this was necessary to be shown, since men may love the children of God because they are their relations, or because they are engaged in the same pursuits with themselves, or because they are mutually united by some common bond of friendship. But love proceeding from these considerations is not the love of the children of God which He requires. By what mark then can we know, that our love to the children of God is of the right sort? “By this,” saith the Apostle, “we may know that we love the children of God” in a right manner, “when we love God and” from that excellent principle, “keep His commandments,” especially His commandment to love His children, because they bear His Image. True Christian love therefore is that which proceeds from love to God, from a regard to His will, and which leadeth us to obey all His commandments.—M. ].
[1Jn_5:3. Pusey:—“For nothing is grievous or burdensome to him who loves. They are not grievous, because love makes them light; they are not grievous, because Christ gives strength to bear them. Wings are no weight to the bird, which they lift up in the air until it is lost in the sky above us, and we see it no more, and hear only its note of thanks. God’s commands are no weight to the soul, which, through His Spirit, He upbears to Himself; nay, rather, the soul, through them, the more soars aloft and loses itself in the love of God.”
1Jn_5:4. “ ‘They are not grievous, because every thing which is born of God overcometh the world.’ He saith not only whosoever, but ‘every thing which,’ showing the largeness of the gifts. ‘Every thing,’ of every sex or age time or clime, ‘which is born of God, overcometh the world,’ and that not of themselves, but of the gift of God; not they, but the power, through their new birth, in-born in them, faith, love, grace, from God, unto God, and they, as wielding in them a power not their own, overcome the world.—‘The commandments of God are not grievous,’ because we have a power implanted in us mightier than all which would dispute the sway of God’s commandments and God’s love, a power which would lift us above all hindrances, carry us over all temptations, impel our listlessness, sweep with it whatever opposes it, sweep with it even the dulness or sluggishness of our own wills, the Almighty power of the grace of God.”
“This is the victory, by which the martyrs overcame, by which the weak became strong, and, in Divine strength, mastered the strong; the strength of endurance wearied out the brutal might of affliction; children overcame their oppressor; the ignorant took captive the learning of the world; fishermen and the tent-maker subdued the world; the dying conquered the living; the blood of martyrs became the harvest-seed of the church. By faith, St. Paul says, ‘they subdued kingdoms;’ by faith St. Peter bids us resist the evil one. For faith knits us to Christ; faith obtains for us the power of Christ; faith prevails with Him who is Almighty, and overcomes the world, for it has power with Him who has power over the world.”
“Faith binds us to Him, who is Almighty; but faith, too, opens our own eyes to things invisible. It imparts to us of the power of the All-Powerful, of the wisdom of the All-Wise. It gives us to see the nothingness of all things which are but for a time. It opens our eyes to the majesty and beauty of things eternal. What to us are things which perish in the grasp? What to us are things of time and sense, save as they speak of that which lives when time shall cease to be, or as they shall themselves live on, purified but indestructible? One only is above us, He who made us. All we see is below us. His friends we may be, His we have been made, who is Lord of the world. The world itself, and all which is in the world, is for our use, subject to us, as we to God. All things beautiful to sight, sweet to taste, transporting in sound, pleasant to smell, and thrilling to touch, all things are ours and for us, if used in obedience to their and our Maker. But we are above them. They were made for us, not we for them; they are made to serve us, not we to be slaves to them. Faith shows us Him who is above all things, but in all things; immortal, invisible, incomprehensible, in light unapproachable, yet who willeth to come unto us, and make His abode in us. God made us, because He willed to impart Himself to us. He made us, not that He needed us, but to show us His love. He has made us for Himself, He willed not to make us apart from Himself. He willed to join us to Himself. He who hath and is all things, of which we have the shadow here below, ‘the true riches of wisdom, and spiritual delight, royal glory, eternal peace, a kingdom incorruptible, eternal joy, overflowing peace, true bliss, certain knowledge’ (Laurentius), pleasure for evermore, He willeth to give thee all which is His, and much more, He willeth to give thee Himself. Why shall we not trust Him with the things of time, or with ourselves, who must trust Him with our eternity? Why not trust that, for these few days and years, He will provide for us, whom He has made for His love, if He will not have it, in those countless ages which time measures not?”—M.].
[Secker:—Presumption in our strength is destructive to our virtue; confidence of our own merit is injurious to our Maker; but a deep sense of human unworthiness and of Divine grace will inspire us with that lowliness of heart, which God will accept, and that vigilance of conduct, which He will bless. “This,” therefore, “is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”—M.].
[1Jn_5:6. Pyle:—“Nor are the effects and influences of this great truth more excellent and noble than is the ground and foundation of it strong and certain. The testimonies given Him at His baptism, when God by a voice from heaven declared Him to be His beloved Son, the Saviour of mankind: the miracles at His crucifixion, when at the shedding of His innocent blood, we saw both water and blood come out of His side; the sun was darkened; the earth trembled, and the vail of the temple was rent; the signs and wonders done by Him, and by others in His name; these three, respectively denoted by ‘the water,’ ‘the blood,’ and ‘the Spirit,’ are all testimonies of the authority of His Person and mission, most unexceptionable, as being evidences of that Holy Spirit that cannot deceive us.”—M.].
[1Jn_5:12. Sherlock:—“If we reflect upon the holiness of God, and His hatred of sin and iniquity, and begin to fear that He can never be reconciled to sinners; let us take courage; the work is difficult, but the Son of God has undertaken it; and how great soever the distance between God and us is, yet through the Son we have access to Him. If we still fear for ourselves, that all may again be lost through our own weakness and inability to do good; even here help is at hand, the Spirit of God is our support, He is the pledge and earnest of our redemption. These being the necessary means of salvation it was necessary to reveal to the World the doctrines concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit: and the belief of these doctrines is necessary to every Christian, as far as the right use of the means depends on the right faith and belief of the doctrines. ‘He that hath the Son,’ saith St. John, ‘hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life;’ and again: ‘whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.’ For since we can only come to the Father through the Son, to deny the Son is to cut off all communication between us and the Father. The same may be said of the blessed Spirit, through whom we are in Christ: ‘If any man,’ says St. Paul, ‘have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.’ Our blessed Lord has Himself told us, that ‘this is life eternal, that we may know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.’ ”—M.].
[Sermons, etc.
1Jn_5:1. Howe, John, On Regeneration. Works, 8, 484.
1Jn_5:3. Tillotson, Abp., The Precepts of Christianity not grievous. Serm. 1:152.
Osterwald, J. F., Qu’il est nécessaire et facile de garder les commandements de Dieu. Sermons, 79.
Wardlaw, R., On the identity of morality and religion. Christian Ethics, 240.
Sherlock, W., Obedience the best evidence of our love to God. Sermons, 2:44.
1Jn_5:4. Alleine, R., The world conqueror. 8vo. 1676.
Hare, J C., The victory of faith.
Faith the victory that overcometh the world.—Faith a practical principle.—Office and province of faith.—Power of faith in man’s natural life.—Power of faith among the heathen and among the Jews.
Pyle, P., The Christian’s victory over the world. Sermons, 4:503.
1Jn_5:7-8. Among the controversial writers on these verses the following have supported their genuineness: Dr. Mill, T. Smith, Kettner, David Martin, Calamy, Calmet, Sloss, Travis, Hey, Butler, Middleton, Nolan, Hales, Alber, Bp. Burgess, John Jones, Card. Wiseman; the following assert their spuriousness: Simon, Emlyn, Sir Isaac Newton, Benson, Porson, Marsh, Griesbach, A. Clarke, Jowett, Turton, Orme, Scholz, Horne and the authors named above in Exegetical and Critical. Our limits do not allow us to give the titles of the books in this controversy, which is a library in itself.
1Jn_5:10. Baxter, W., Christ’s witness within us, the believer’s special advantage against temptations to infidelity. Works, 20:129.
Watts, I., The inward witness to Christianity. 3 Serm. Works, 1Jn_1:1.
Melvill, Henry, The witness in oneself. Lecture 58.
1Jn_5:11-12. Stedman, Rowland, The mystical union of believers with Christ; or a treatise wherein that great mystery and privilege of the saints’ union with the Son of God is opened. 8vo. London, 1668.—M.].
Footnotes:
[42] 1Jn_5:1. [German: “Every one that believeth,” and so E. V. in second clause.—M.]
[43] 1Jn_5:1. [German: “That Jesus is Christ.”—M.]
[44] 1Jn_5:1. Καὶ before γεγεννημένον is the reading of A. Sin. (which has τὸ instead of τὸν) and several minusc.
[German: “loveth also Him that is begotten of Him.”—M.]
[45] 1Jn_5:2. [Ἐντούτῳ, in this, hereby.—M.]
[46] 1Jn_5:2. τηρῶμεν, cannot be considered to be supported by A. which omits the following words αὑτὴ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ, ἵνα τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ, so that τηρῶμεν there might come from 1Jn_5:3, although the omission of said words is more easily accounted for, even if we read τηρῶμεν and not ποιῶμεν (B. and al.) 1Jn_5:2; but Sin. G. K. al. abundantly sustain the reading in question.
[47] 1Jn_5:4. [German: “because” so Alford.—M.]
[48] 1Jn_5:4. [πᾶν τὸ; German: “all that;” so Alford.—M.]
[49] 1Jn_5:4. ἡ νίκη ἡ νικήσασα τὸν κόσμον; German: “the victory which hath overcome the world;” Alford: “has conquered.”—M.]
[50] 1Jn_5:4. ἡμῶν; so A. B. G. K. Sin.; ὑμῶν, only in unimportant Codd.
[51] 1Jn_5:5. Sin. reads δὲ after τίς, B. K. have δὲ after τίςἐστιν; others read γὰρ; e.g. Syriac; others prefix καὶ, while A. and al. [G. Vulg., Lachm., Tischend., Alf.—M.] have no conjunction at all. [German: “But who is it, that etc.”—M.]
[52] 1Jn_5:5. [German: “If not he;” Alf. “except he.”—M.]
[53] 1Jn_5:6. καὶ πνεύματος after αἵματος, though found in A. Sin., several minuscules and versions, is evidently an interpretation, like the still less authentic καὶ ἐν τῷ πνεύματι after ἐν τῷ αἵματι.
[54] 1Jn_5:6. The Article ὁ before χριστός found in B., is omitted by A. G. Sin. al.
[55] 1Jn_5:6. [German: “not in the water only” so Alford.—M.]
[56] 1Jn_5:6. [German: “but in the water and in the blood.”—M.]
[57] 1Jn_5:6. [German: “And the Spirit is it that testifieth.”—M.]
[58] 1Jn_5:6. The reading χριστὸς, instead of τὸ πνεῦμα before η ἀλήθεια is only very feebly supported. Equally devoid of all firm foundation are several readings in this verse which do not even touch the sense, e.g. μόνῳ, ἀλλὰ καὶ, ἀλήθεια without the Article.
[59] 1Jn_5:7. [German: “For they are three that bear witness;” Alford “For those who bear witness are three.” German: “And the three are one.” Alford: “And the three concur in one.”—M.]
[60]For particulars concerning this passage see Critical Note on 1Jn_5:7-8.—M.
[61] 1Jn_5:9. [German: “because.”—M.]
[62] 1Jn_5:9. ὅτι is the reading of A. B. Sin. al. instead of ἥν, Rec. [K. L. al. German: “because that is the testimony of God, that He hath testified of His Son.” Alford: “The testimony of God is this, that He hath borne testimony concerning His Son.”—M.]
[63] 1Jn_5:10. The addition of τοῦ θεοῦ after μαρτυρίαν in A, is wanting in B. Sin. al.
[64] 1Jn_5:10. τῷ θεῷ in B. G. Sin. is more authentic than τῷ υἱῷ of A. and in better agreement with the context.
[65] 1Jn_5:10. [German: “He that believeth in the Son of God, hath the testimony in himself; he that believeth not God, hath made Him a liar, because He hath not believed in the testimony, which God hath given concerning His Son.” The last clause is more correctly rendered thus: “which God hath testified concerning His Son.” The variation “record” in this verse in E. V. should by all means be avoided.—M.]
[66] 1Jn_5:11. ἐστιν, generally at the end of the verse; in A. between αὕτη and ἡ ζωὴ.
[67] 1Jn_5:11. [German; “And this is the life in His Son.”—M.]
[68] 1Jn_5:12. τοῦ θεοῦ after the first τὸν υἱὸν, as Luther reads, is too feebly supported; it is wanting in the best Codd., also in Sin.
[69] 1Jn_5:12. [German: “hath not the life.”—M.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain I. POWER OF THIS REGENERATION THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST,…
I. POWER OF THIS REGENERATION THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST, 1Jn_5:1-21.
1. Its effects—love, spontaneous obedience, victory, 1Jn_5:1-5. Becoming sons of God by faith, we love the sons of God, and love our divine Father’s commandments through a world-conquering faith, 1Jn_5:1-5. The object of our faith—Christ—is attested by the threefold reliable testimony, 1Jn_5:6-10. The contents of this faith are eternal life, (1Jn_5:13,) the answer of prayer, (1Jn_5:14-15,) especially for an erring brother, (1Jn_5:16-18,) and the knowledge of our unity with the true God, in separation from idols, 1Jn_5:21.
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1. Whosoever believeth—In order to a full communion with God in Christ, full hearty assent of intellect, heart, and will, must be conceded to Christ. This faith embraces him as Christ, that is, as anointed Son of God, with all his offices of propitiator and giver of eternal life. Whosoever so believeth is born of God. He is child of God, as Christ is only-begotten Son of God.
Loveth… begat… loveth… begotten—He that loves the Father loves the Father’s Son, and loves the Father’s sons. They are, indeed, his brothers by a celestial parentage. Our filial love ascends to our Father, God, and thence comes down upon all his sons. And all form one great communion of love.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1–12. Faith is the Source of Love, the Victory…
1–12. Faith is the Source of Love, the Victory over the World and the Possession of Life
1. Whosoever believeth] Or, Every one that believeth: the construction is identical with that in 1Jn_2:29, 1Jn_3:3-4, 1Jn_4:2-3; 1Jn_4:7, and in the second half of this verse. See concluding note on 1Jn_3:4. The verb ‘believe’, which occurs only 3 times in the rest of the Epistle, occurs 6 times in these first 13 verses. After the third verse the word ‘love’, which has been the keyword of the last two chapters, ceases to appear. With the first sentence comp. Joh_1:12.
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The verse is a couple of syllogisms condensed into an irregular Sorites.
Every one who believes the Incarnation is a child of God.
Every child of God loves its Father.
… Every believer in the Incarnation loves God.
Every believer in the Incarnation loves God.
Every one who loves God loves the children of God.
… Every believer in the Incarnation loves the children of God.
To believe that Jesus is the Christ is to believe that One who was known as a man fulfilled a known and Divine commission; that He who was born and was crucified is the Anointed, the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world. To believe this is to accept both the Old and the New Testaments; it is to believe that Jesus is what He claimed to be, One who is equal with the Father, and as such demands of every believer the absolute surrender of self to Him. Belief without love is, as S. Augustine remarks, the belief of a demon (Jas_2:19).
is born of God] Better, in order to be uniform with what follows, is begotten of God: see on 1Jn_5:18.
him also that is begotten of him] Any believer. Here again the verb (ἀγαπᾷ) may be either the indicative or the hortative subjunctive: as in 1Jn_4:19, the indicative is preferable; ‘loveth’, not ‘let him love’.
This verse shews that 1Jn_4:20 ought not to be interpreted to mean that through love of the visible brother we ascend to the love of the invisible God. On the contrary the love of the Father is the source of love of His children. “That is the natural order; that, we may say it confidently, is the universal order” (Maurice).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (8.) FAITH THE TEST OF LOVE (1Jn_5:1-12).
V.
(8.) FAITH THE TEST OF LOVE (1Jn_5:1-12).
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(a) Its power (1Jn_5:1-5).
(b) The evidence on which it rests (1Jn_5:6-10).
(c) What it contains (1Jn_5:11-12).
(8 a.) St. John has been setting love in the supreme place which it held in our Lord’s teaching and in St. Paul’s. But there is another faculty which has to regulate, purify, direct, and stir up our weak and imperfect loving powers, and that is, faith. Without faith we cannot be certain about the quality of our love. He begins very simply with a position already laid down: genuine faith in Christ is the genuine birth from God. From that faith, through that birth, will come the proper love, as in a family: the love of our spiritual brothers and sisters. (This is specially sympathy with real Christians; but it does not exclude the more general love before inculcated.) If we are doubtful about the quality of our love, or are not sure whether any earthly elements may be mingled with it, we have only to ask ourselves whether we are loving God and keeping His commandments: the true work of faith. The love of God does, indeed, actually consist in keeping His commandments (and none can complain that they are tyrannical, vexatious, or capricious). The very object of the divine birth is the conquest of all that is opposed to God and to His commandments, and the instrument of the conquest is faith. There can be no victory over these elements that are opposed to God, and, consequently, no pure, true, God-like love, except through faith.
(8 b.) Having left the discussion about the effect of faith on love with the same thought which began it—belief in Jesus Christ—he is led to state the grounds on which that faith rests. These are here stated to be three: water, or Christ’s baptism, symbolising the complete fulfilment of the Law in His own perfect purity, and thus appealing to the Old Testament; blood, or His meritorious cross and passion, symbolising His own special work of atonement and reconciliation; and the Spirit, embracing all those demonstrable proofs of His kingdom which were from day to day forcing themselves on the attention of believers. If we accept human testimony on proper grounds, far more should we receive this divine testimony of God to His Son—the witness of the Old Testament, of the work of Christ, and of the Spirit. This witness is not far to seek, for it is actually within the true believer.
(8 c.) The contents of the record which God has thus given us are at once most simple and most comprehensive: the gift of eternal life in His Son. The presence of the Word of God in the heart is the sole condition of life.
(8 a.) (1) Whosoever believeth . . .—What may be the works of God among those who have not heard of His Son we do not here inquire. Enough that those who have this privilege are sons if they accept the message.
Begotten.—Of those who have the new birth, in a general sense: quite distinct from “only-begotten.”
(2) By this we know . . .—Love and obedience to God will assure us of the truth of our love to others. In 1Jn_2:3; 1Jn_4:20-21, obedience to God and love to our fellows were the signs of knowledge of God and love to Him. The two are really inseparable. If love of God is absent, then our love of our fellows is not genuine—is earthly, is a mockery. If love of our fellows is absent, then we have no love for God. All friendship must be tested by loyalty to God; all love to Him must be tested by charity.
(3) For this is . . .—These words are introduced to show that what were treated as two separate qualities in the last verse are in reality the same thing.
And his commandments are not grievous.—A transitional thought, introduced for encouragement, and forming a bridge to the next statement. (Comp. Mat_11:30.) God has commanded us nothing for His own sake, but everything for our own highest profit and happiness. Were we perfect, we should not find them commands at all, for they would be our natural impulses. The more sincerely we serve God, the more enjoyment we shall derive from them. Only to those whose inclinations are distorted, perverted, and corrupted by sin can God’s laws seem irksome.
(4) The difficulty experienced by some in keeping God’s commands arises from the influence of all that is opposed to Him in our surroundings. But he who is born of God—the true child of God—fights with this only as a conqueror, because, as far as he is born again, God is in him. God overcame the world in Christ, and is still ever conquering through Him in His sons: so that to such the commands are congenial. (Comp. 1Jn_3:9; 1Jn_4:4; Joh_16:33.)
And this is the victory . . .—A new thought, suitable to the tenor of the passage, which lays down that faith is the measure of love. As the conquest that is overcoming the world is wrought by human instruments, its agent may be regarded as our faith, which appropriates Christ’s work, and carries it out for Him and through Him. (Comp. 1Jn_2:13-14; 1Jn_2:23; 1Jn_4:4; 1Co_15:55-57.)
(5) Who is he that overcometh?—An appeal to the consciousness of Christians. If there be any besides the disciples of Jesus who have vanquished all that is opposed to God, where are they? God has declared that He will not harshly judge the Pagan world (Rom_2:13; Rom_2:15); but salvation by uncovenanted mercies is a very different thing from the glories of the illuminated and victorious Christian heart. Where are they? Not Socrates, with his want of the sense of sin and his tolerance of evil; not Cicero, with his tormenting vanity; not the Gnostics, with their questionable lives: only those in whom had dawned the bright and morning Star.
(8 b.) (6) This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ.—“Water” and “blood” are referred to as two of the three great witnesses, or sets of evidence, for Christ. They are symbols, and look back to two of the most characteristic and significant acts of His personal history. The one is His baptism, the other His cross. Why His baptism? The baptism of John was the seal of the Law. It was the outward sign by which those who repented at his preaching showed their determination to keep the Law no longer in the letter only, but also in the spirit. Jesus, too, showed this determination. Baptism in water was His outward sign and seal to the Old Testament: that He had not come to destroy but to fulfil the Law; not to supersede the prophecies, but to claim them. It was to show that in Him the righteousness and purification which the Law intended was to be a reality, and through Him to be the law of His kingdom. Thus it pointed to all the evidence which the Old Testament could possibly afford Him; and, through the Old Testament, it pointed to the dispensation of the Father. Thus, when this most symbolic act was complete, the Almighty Giver of the old Law or covenant was heard saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
“Blood.” in the same way, refers to the special work of Christ Himself—the work of reconciliation and atonement by His death and passion, the realisation of all that the sacrifices and types of the former state of religion had meant. That He was the true sacrifice was proved by the perfection of His life, by the signs and wonders with which He had attracted and convinced His followers, by the fulfilment of prophecy, by the marvels of His teaching, by the amazing events which had happened at the different crises of His life, by His resurrection and ascension, and by the confession of all who knew Him well that He was the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth, and with the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.
Not by water only.—John the Baptist might have been said to come by water only: he came preaching the washing away of the personal results of sin through turning again to the truth and spirit of the Law; Jesus came by blood also, for His sacrifice atoned for sin as rebellion against God.
And it is the Spirit that beareth witness.—The Holy Spirit had descended on Jesus at His baptism, had proved Him to be the Son of God in every word and act of His life, had raised Him up on the third day, and glorified His body till it could no longer be seen on earth. He had made new men of His disciples on the Day of Pentecost, had laid far and wide the foundations of the new kingdom, and was daily demonstrating Himself in the renewed life in all parts of the world. (Comp. Mat_3:16; Joh_1:32-33; Joh_3:34; Rom_1:4; 1Ti_3:16; 1Pe_3:18.)
Because the Spirit is truth.—Rather, the truth; the sum and substance of God’s revelation in all its fulness, regarded as personally proceeding from the divine throne, teaching the prophets their message, accompanying the Son on His human pilgrimage, and bringing all things afterwards to the remembrance of His disciples.
(7) For the reasons why this verse cannot be retained in the text, see the Introduction.
(8) The text of this verse is properly, For there are three that bear witness; the Spirit, and the water, and the blood. It is a repetition of 1Jn_5:6 for the purpose of emphasis. The fact that the three that bear witness are in the masculine gender bears out the interpretation given of 1Jn_5:6; that they imply the Holy Spirit, the author of the Law, and the author of Redemption. It also explains how 1Jn_5:7 crept in as a gloss.
And these three agree in one.—Literally, make for the one. The old dispensation, of which the Baptist’s preaching was the last message, had no other moaning than the preparation for the Messiah; the sacrifice of Calvary was the consummation of the Messiah’s mission; the kingdom of the Spirit, starting from that mission, was the seal of it. The three witnesses to Christ have their counterparts in the Christian soul: “baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God;” “the blood of Christ purging our conscience from dead works to serve the living God;” and “the baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”
(9) If we receive the witness of men.—Any human testimony, provided it is logically binding on our understandings, to establish common facts or to prove opinions. (Comp. Deu_17:6; Deu_19:15; Mat_18:16; 2Co_13:1; Heb_10:28-29.)
The witness of God is greater.—Any message that clearly comes from God is to be accepted by us with a readiness infinitely greater than in the case of mere human testimony. St. John considers the threefold witness from God to convey a certainty which no human evidence could claim.
For this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son.—Such witness from God there is: for this three-fold testimony is what He has said to us about His Son. If any should doubt whether the carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth, was in reality God, St. John would refer them to the righteousness and predictions of the Law and the prophets all fulfilled, to the life and death of Christ which spoke for themselves, and to manifest inauguration of the reign of the Spirit. Under these three heads would come all possible evidence for Christian truth.
(10) He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself .—To the real believer the three-fold testimony of God no longer remains merely an outward object of thought to be contemplated and grasped: it has become part of his own nature. The three separate messages have each produced their proper result in him, and he can no more doubt them than he can doubt himself. The water has assured him that he is no longer under the Law, but under grace, and has taught him the necessity of the new birth unto righteousness (Joh_3:5; Tit_3:5). The blood has shown him that he cannot face God unless his sins are forgiven; and it has enabled him to feel that they are forgiven, that he is being daily cleansed, and that he has in himself the beginnings of eternal life (1Jn_1:7; 1Jn_2:2; Joh_6:53). And the Spirit, which has had part in both these, is daily making him grow in grace (Gal_5:22; Eph_5:9).
He that believeth not God hath made him a liar.—The negative contrast, as usual, to strengthen the affirmative. St. John regards the evidence as so certain, that he to whom it is brought and who rejects it seems as if he was boldly asserting that what God had said was false. The sceptical reply that the message did not really come from God at all it is not St. John’s purpose to consider; his object is to warn his friends of the real light in which they ought to regard the opponents of the truth. There should be no complacent condoning; from the point of view of the Christians themselves, such unbelievers were throwing the truth back in God’s face.
(8 c.) What Faith contains (1Jn_5:11-12).
(11) This is the record.—This is the substance of the witness of God. The Christian creed is here reduced to a very small compass: the gift of eternal life and the dependence of that life upon His Son. Eternal life does not here mean the mere continuance of life after death, whether for good or evil; it is the expression used throughout St. John’s writings for that life in God, thought of without reference to time, which can have no end, which implies heaven and every possible variety of blessedness, and which consists in believing in God the Father and in His Son. Its opposite is not annihilation, but the second death: existence in exclusion from God. (Comp. 1Jn_2:25; Joh_17:3; 2Ti_1:10.)
(12) He that hath the Son hath life.—The emphatic word here is “hath.” As this sentence is addressed to the faithful, there is no need to say “the Son of God.” “Having the Son” is His dwelling in the heart by faith: a conscious difference to human life which transforms its whole character. “Having life” is the birth of the new man within which can never die.
He that hath not the Son of God hath not life.—As this is contemplating unbelievers, the words “of God” are added, to show them what they have lost.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 1-12. Faith is the source of love.
Vers. 1-12. Faith is the source of love.
The verse is a sorites. To believe in the Incarnation involves birth from God. To be born of God involves loving God. To love God involves loving his children. Therefore to believe in the Incarnation involves loving God"s children. Tonon ejx aujtou is not to be understood as meaning Christ to the exclusion of Christians; it means any son of God, as the next verse shows.
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Vers. 1-5.
The victory of faith.
Connecting link: The preceding chapter closed with a statement of the two-foldness of love, showing us that love of our brother must follow our love to God, and is, in fact, the commanded and the only outward expression thereof. But, so far, at any rate, as our redeemed brethren in Christ are concerned, they being believers in Christ have been begotten of God. Consequently they are members of one family with us. And every one who loves the Father will, as a matter of fact, love those who are begotten of him, and so bear his image. With this new birth, and the faith and love which are its fruits, there comes to be a spring of holy obedience, so that there is not only an external command telling us we ought to love, but a spirit within leading us on to love. We do not by any means feel the yoke of a command to be grievous; for all that would otherwise have made it so has been overcome by a living faith born from above. TopicFaith victorious over the world, and faith alone. It will be noted that in verse 4 the verb "overcome" is twice used. In the first instance it is in the present, in the second in a past tense. "Overcometh" is overcoming, continuously overcome," rather, "which did overcome" (aorist), referring to some victory which was gained once for all. The continuous overcoming is attributed to "whatsoever is begotten of God." The overcoming, which is accomplished once for all, is attributed to" our faith." Hence our lines of homiletic exposition are at once suggested.
I WE HAVE A GLORIOUS FAITH WHEREBY THE WORLD HAS BEEN OVERCOME, It is hardly possible to regard the "faith" hero as other than objective, as in Jud_1:3; Luk_18:8 (Greek) We have, moreover, the contents thereof clearly stated here, "that Jesus is the Son of God." This is the mighty fact by which the world has been conquered. How? In three senses.
1. The Lord Jesus as the Son of God has himself overcome the world; i.e., he has grappled with and put to open shame the sinful element in the world that of self-rule and opposition to God.
(1) By his obedience unto death.
(2) By his conflict with and conquest of the evil one.
(3) By his atoning death the prince of this world was cast out.
(4) By his intercession he secures a like victory to all his followers. (Joh_16:33)
1. By the use of his Name, the powers of the world had been met and worsted. (2Co_2:14; Act_19:20; Php_1:12; Col_1:13)
2. This glorious objective truth, that Jesus is the Son of God, is that whereby God, in his wondrous grace, has come to have new-born sons in whom the world is overcome. All things are through Christ. By his wondrous work he has come to be the Firstborn among many brethren. Every one of these is a fresh trophy of grace. The creation and sustenance of the Church is a conquest of the world, being so much snatched from it!
II THIS FAITH, ACCEPTED, BECOMES A LIVING FORCE IN NEW-BORN SOULS, WHEREBY THEY CONTINUOUSLY OVERCOME THE WORLD. (Verse 4.)
1. God"s own begotten ones are born to a new life.
1. Of faith (verse 1).
2. Of love. (1Jn_4:7)
3. Of righteousness. (1Jn_2:29)
4. Of inability to be sinning. (1Jn_3:9)
5. This new life of theirs is sustained by the Lord Jesus as the Son of God. Faith laying hold of him appropriates his power. They are "strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." They can do all things through him that strengtheneth them.
1. Thus strengthened, their faith achieves a continuous victory over the world. By Christ, the world is crucified to them and they to the world. And however so many may be the aspects of wrong-thinking and wrong-doing which are seen in the world, so many will be the ways in which the children of God will meet and overcome them. They will overcome its errors, its glare, its enticements, its threats, its unbelief, its hatred, its opposition, its persecution. They will overcome by powerful argument, by holy living, by sturdy resistance, by faithful testimony. "By the Word of truth, by the power of God." They will maintain the fight earnestly, fearlessly, joyously, persistently, even to the end; and they will
Win the day, Though death and hell obstruct the way.
And all all through the unconquerable might imparted by him in whom they believe Jesus the Son of God! What a glorious series of continuous victories over the world have our eighteen Christian centuries witnessed! How great a chapter, like to the eleventh in the Epistle to the Hebrews, might be compiled from the histories of God"s faithful ones, who have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the Word of his testimony; for they loved not their lives unto the death!
III THIS VICTORY OVER, THE WORLD IS WON ONLY BY BELIEVERS IN JESUS CHRIST. (Verse 5.) "Who but." Those who are not in Christ are still in the world; hence they cannot even fight against it, much less overcome it! Apart from Christ"s light, men"s vision is bounded by things seen and temporal; apart from Christ"s life, their pursuits are entirely of the earth, earthy; apart from Christ"s love, their aims are all for self turn every one to his own way." Hence the world is ever conquering them, and will make them first its tools, then its slaves, and at last its victims.
Note: Three matters are suggested here for pungent and powerful application.
1. If these things be so, then whoever casts away the doctrine that Jesus isthe Son of God leaves himself helpless in life"s struggle.
2. It is only by a living faith in Jesus that we receive power to carry on thestruggle. A mental adhesion to the doctrine only will not suffice. A living cling to the Person is needed.
3. We see the purpose intended to be secured by religion, viz. a victoryover all that is false and wrong.
HOMILIES BY W. JONES Vers. 1-3.
The reason, and the evidence of brotherly love.
believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God," etc. Our text is vitally related to the last two verses of the preceding chapter. To our mind it presents two important aspects of love amongst Christian brethren.
I THE REASON OF THE OBLIGATION OF BROTHERLY LOVE. The duty to love our Christian brethren is here based upon our common relation to God. The order of the apostle"s thought seems to be this:
1. The Christian brother is a true believer in Jesus the Christ. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ" is included by St. John among the Christian fraternity. The genuine Christian accepts Jesus as the Christ of God, the Anointed of the Father for the great work of human redemption. He looks to him as the Being in whom ancient prophecies are fulfilled, and in whom the noblest expectation and the purest desire of the human race are realized. And the belief of which the apostle writes is not the mere intellectual acceptation of the proposition that Jesus is the Christ, but the hearty acceptation of Jesus himself as the Saviour appointed by God. Every one who thus receives him is a true member of the Christian brotherhood.
1. Every true believer in Jesus the Christ is a child of God. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God." Where there is genuine faith in our Lord and Saviour there is a new moral disposition. The
2. Christian believer is born anew of the Spirit of God. "As many as received him i.e., Jesus the Christ, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his Name," etc.. (Joh_1:12, Joh_1:13) "If any man is in Christ he is a new creature," etc. (2Co_5:17) he has new sympathies, new purposes, new principles, new relationships, a new spirit. He has the filial spirit, "the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
3. Every child of God should be loved by the children of God. "Whosoever loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.
(1) It is taken for granted that the child of God loves his Divine Parent. In whomsoever the new life beats there is love to God. In the spiritual realm love is life. "Every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God." The highest life is that of supreme love to God; and, where this is, love to the brotherhood will not be absent. "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar," etc.. (1Jn_4:20, 1Jn_4:21)
(2) From the fact that the child of God loves his Divine Parent, St. John makes this deduction, that he will love the children of God. It is natural and right that he who loves the Father should also love his children, or that the children of the one Father should love each other. Here, then, is the reason of the obligation to love our Christian brethren. We believe in one Lord and Saviour; we are children of the one Divine Father; we are members of one spiritual family; we are characterized by some measure of moral resemblance to each other, for each is to some extent like unto the Father of all; we are animated by the same exalted and invigorating hope; and we are looking forward to the same bright and blessed home. That we should love each other is in the highest degree natural and reasonable.
II THE EVIDENCE OF THE: GENUINENESS OF BROTHERLY LOVE. "Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God," etc. (verses 2, 3). Two remarks, we think, will help us to apprehend the meaning of St. John.
1. Our love to the brethren is genuine when we love God. "Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and do his commandments." We may love our Christian brethren for other and inferior reasons than that of their relation to the heavenly Father; we may love them because they are rich in worldly goods, or because they are gifted and clever, or because they arc amiable and attractive, or because they bold the same political principles, or believe the same theological
2. opinions, or belong to the same ecclesiastical party, as we do. But love for any of these reasons is not necessarily and essentially Christian love. The genuine Christian affection towards the brethren is to love them because they believe that Jesus is the Christ, and they are the children of God. In the consciousness of our love to God we have evidence that we love our Christian brethren as his children.
3. Our love to God is genuine when we cheerfully keep his commandments. "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not grievous.
(1) The divinely appointed test of love to God is obedience to his commandments. "If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me," etc.; (Joh_14:15, Joh_14:21, Joh_14:23) "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love," etc.; (Joh_15:10) "This is love, that we should walk after his commandments". (2Jn_1:6) Genuine love is not a merely sentimental, but a practical thing.
(2) The obedience which springs from love is cheerful. "His commandments are not grievous" to them that love him. Love is not only life, but inspiration, courage, and strength; therefore, as love to God increases, obedience to his commands becomes easier and more delightful. "I confess," says Watson, "to him that hath no love to God, religion must needs be a burden; and I wonder not to hear him say, " What a weariness is it to serve the Lord!" It is like rowing against the tide. But love oils the wheels; it makes duty a pleasure. Why are the angels so swift and winged in God"s service, but because they love him? Jacob thought seven years but little for the love he did bear to Rachel. Love is never weary; he who loves money is not weary of toiling for it; and he who loves God is not weary of serving him." Says Miss Austin, "Where love is there is no labour; and if there he labour, that labour is loved." Will our love to God bear this test of cheerful obedience to his commands? Then do we love him truly; and so loving him, we shall love all his children. W.J.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON Vers. 1-12.
Faith and the Divine testimony.
I FAITH.
1. A common faith with a common life is the foundation of brotherly love. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God: and whosoever loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him." A general aspect is given to the truth. Given a person who (according to what John has formerly taught) believes that Jesus is the Christ, it can be said of him that he is begetter, of God, i.e., is the subject of a Divine life. It is implied, but not expressed, that a child of God loves the Author of his life. This love is extended to him that shares with him the same Divine life. There is thus created a brotherhood, with a common source of life and a common stream of life. And shall not all who have a common origin and common movements love one another?
2. The reality of brotherly love is proved by the activity of obedience. "Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and do his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." There is here personal application of the truth. When can we say that we love the children of God? The answer given is (the converse being also true), when we love God. Have we some real love to God? then inseparable from that is love to his children. For along with love to God goes the doing of his commandments, under which is included love to the children of God. This is the love of God in its working, that we are careful about doing the commandments of God. If a child has a sincere love to his parents, and knows that they wish him to be kind to his brothers and sisters, he will not oppose that wish. So if we have love to God, and know that it is his will that we should extend our love to his children, we shall make an endeavour in that direction. Transitional thought. "And his commandments are not grievous." If a parent loves his children, he will not give them all that they are inclined for; but he will lay commandments on them, i.e., he will lay down certain rules for their conduct, lines in which they are to act, which will be for their benefit, and, he hopes, their ultimate emancipation. There is nothing grievous in these commandments; they are the expression, not only of righteousness, but of kindness. So with the Divine commandment. If God had not loved us, he might have left us without directions for our life; but because he loved us, and could not bear to see us straying in devious paths to our destruction, therefore he has commanded and warned us well. There is "line upon line, precept upon precept." So far from these commandments being grievous in their nature, they are beneficial, emancipating. They are the direct roads to our happiness. They are not arbitrarily laid on us, but are thoroughly reasonable and suited to our nature. Is there anything unreasonable or unnatural in our loving the God of our life, and with our whole soul? And, loving the Father, may we not be asked to love also those who share with us the life of God?
3. The difficulties of obedience which are presented by what the world is are conquered by faith. "For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith." The apostle"s thought is not of the world in its normal state, but as it has been made by sin. The world is that of which the pervading spirit is forgetfulness of God. "The wicked and all the nations that forget God". (Psa_9:17) Men may not be all wicked in the highest degree deliberate and daring in sin; they may be divided against each other; but it is natural to all alike to wish to banish God out of their minds as an unwelcome, disagreeable subject. The world is that of which the pervading spirit is selfishness the opposite of what is here inculcated. Men may not be all malevolent in the highest degree devilish, according to the common conception but it is natural to all alike to hurry on to their own satisfaction, without regard to the claims of others. The world is, further, that in social condition which is formed by following ungodly, selfish tendencies. Take such a social condition as is presented among the Jews. Long ago they took up a wrong position with regard to the Messiah. "His blood be on us, and on our children!" And in their generations, with few exceptions, they have stood to their position. Scattered among the nations, they have not conformed to the creeds of the nations. A common sentiment has pervaded them in many lands. Centuries of neglect and persecution have only served to burn into their minds the conviction that their forefathers were in the right. And now it would seem like a cutting off a right arm to acknowledge the Messiah. Take, again, such a social condition as is presented in the Church of Rome. It is well organized, is restlessly active, has a wonderful power of reaching minds, and yet it is identified with a system which is, to a great extent, in the name of Christ, a flattery of the human heart. Take a quasi-Christian condition of society. Without flagrant irreligiousness and vice, there is a worldly tone prevalent in families, in communities, in trades, in professions, even in Churches. There are views of life and practices that tend to lessen the sense of responsibility, and to divide men. When the world has on its side the influences of early training, of numbers, of dignitaries, of daily example, it is a formidable power to which to be opposed. And, if we look to ourselves, we are entirely at its mercy. But we are not hopeless, for a Divine power can be communicated to us, and all within us that is quickened by the Divine touch overcometh the world. What God does is to impart life; what we have to do is to exercise faith. We lay hold on what is outside of us, and thus we conquer. We lay hold on the infinite satisfaction there is in Christ, and thus we are not clogged, in our battle with the world, with the feeling of guilt. We lay hold on the conquest Christ obtained over the world. There is presented to our faith a God whom we are powerfully impelled to love. Thus situated, the commandments of God are not grievous. We may be said to conquer the world when no longer worldly ideas are influential with us. And when we have taken up the position of faith, the world becomes only the means of our discipline. The world will only be conquered in the fullest sense when the customs of society and influences which permeate it are such as to afford the greatest help to remembering God and living for the good of others. Appeal to experience. "And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" "Survey the whole world, and show me even one of whom it can be affirmed with truth that he overcomes the world, who is not a Christian, and endowed with this faith." In the apostle"s day there were many who seemed hopelessly involved in heathen customs and traditions; but even out of their heathenism they reached forth the hand of faith to the incarnate Son of God, and conquered, in giving up their heathen life, and living according to Christian rule. It is only condescending love, apprehended by faith, that can break the spell of the world.
II THE DIVINE TESTIMONY TO THE OBJECT OF FAITH.
1. Its nature. "This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one." The Bible is not so plain in every part that he that runneth can read. Peter found in Paul"s writings some things hard to be understood. John uses simple words, but it is not always easy to catch his meaning. The present passage has been very perplexing. The historical basis is obvious. There was water at the commencement of our Lord"s ministry; there was blood at its close. He came by water as baptized, he came by blood as crucified. Water signifies life in its purity; blood signifies life in all its purity sacrificed, and so made available for us. He came not with the water only; for his pure life by itself could not be available for us. But he came with the water and with the blood; for it was as sacrificed that his pure life was available for us. The fact that he had a pure life in the midst of sinful humanity testified to his being the Son of God. And so at his baptism there was the voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The fact that by his death a fountain of life was open for men (significantly there gushed from his pierced side blood and water first blood, and then water) also testified to his being the Son of God. And so there was the Divine attestation following in his resurrection. That is historical testimony belonging to a distant century. But the Spirit is the ever-present Witness, being the Truth. There are thus three present witnesses. There is the Spirit, placed first; because he witnesses through the water and the blood. There is the water, witnessing in the power of a new life.in us. There is the blood, witnessing in redemptive virtue going into us to give us the power of a new life. And the three agree in one; their testimony converges to one point, viz. to the new life in us being the grand proof that Jesus is the Son of God.
2. Its sufficiency.
(1) It is Divine. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for the witness of God is this, that he hath borne witness concerning his Son." It is implied that we receive the witness of men. If three human witnesses of ordinary intelligence and probity agree, we proceed upon their testimony even in matters affecting life and death. There is an important sense in which the condition of three witnesses is fulfilled with regard to the Divine testimony. Apart from that there is to be taken into account the infinite superiority of God to man. He is not a man, that he should be deceived; he is not a man, that he should lie; and, therefore, when he gives his testimony concerning his Son, he should be believed.
(2) It is in consciousness. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning his Son." The object of the Divine testimony is that we should believe on the Son of God. He that, accepting the Divine testimony, believes on the Son of God is made independent of it as external. He hath the (Divine) testimony in himself, so that he does not need to go beyond his own consciousness for testimony to the place of Jesus. In the case of him who believes not God who hath testified, this testimony in consciousness is forbidden by the very nature of his unbelief, which is making God a liar believing what men say in ordinary matters, but not believing what God says about his Son.
(3) It is in the possession of life in Christ. "And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." We have here a better disclosure of the purport of the testimony, showing it to be fraught with the greatest blessing. It is testimony regarding God"s own gift of life. One element in life is the enjoyment of the Divine favour; another element is the quickening of our powers. It is life that, even in what is begun of it here, is eternal in its nature. It is life not promised, but actually given. It is life intended for our appropriation by faith. It is life to be found in Christ, by whom, though free in reference to us, it has been meritoriously procured, in whom also its nature is exhibited. We who have appropriated the Divine gift in the Holder and Dispenser of it can testify to his being more than man, even God incarnate. P ractical inference. "He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life." The boon, which is of unspeakable value, comes with the possession of the Son; therefore the all-important thing is to possess the Son. He that hath the Son hath the life gifted, enjoys the favour of God, has his spiritual powers quickened. He that hath not the Son of God hath not the life gifted, lies under the Divine disfavour, has his spiritual powers with the torpor of death on them. And the two states are the poles asunder. Let us believe on the Son of God, and we are at the pole of eternal sunshine. "Let us refuse the Divine testimony, and we are at the opposite pole of eternal cold. R.F.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born…
1Jn_5:1
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God
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Belief in Jesus as the Christ
This is the third virtual repetition of this truth (see 1Jn_4:2; 1Jn_4:15).
Now in the apostles days every Christian as such believed that Jesus was the Christ. By this belief and its confession he was distinguished from a Jew on the one side and a heathen on the other; and the same might be said of the confession that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, for this in the apostles eyes would be the same as that Jesus is the Christ, for if He was the Christ, His assertion of Himself as being the true and only begotten of God, who came down from heaven, must be true, for God would never send into the world one who would so misrepresent His truth as to say that He was His special anointed messenger and representative when He was not; and so with Jesus being the Son of God of 1Jn_4:14.
Faith and regeneration
I. What is the believing intended in the text?
1. The believing here intended is that which our Lord and His apostles exhorted men to exercise, and to which the promise of salvation is always appended in the Word of God.
2. The faith here intended is the duty of all men. Jesus Christ is worthy of the confidence of all men; it is therefore the duty of men to confide in Him.
3. At the same time this faith, wherever it exists, is in every case, without exception, the gift of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. He has wrought all our works in us, and our faith too.
4. The faith intended in the text evidently rests upon a person--upon Jesus. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. What is meant by Jesus is the Christ, or Jesus is the Anointed? First, that He is the Prophet; secondly, that He is the Priest; thirdly, that He is the King of the Church, for in all these three senses He is the Anointed.
5. True faith is reliance. Have you confidence as well as credence? A creed will not save you, but reliance upon the anointed Saviour is the way of salvation. Moreover, true faith is not a flattering presumption, by which a man says, I believe I am saved, for I have such delightful feelings, I have had a marvellous dream, I have felt very wonderful sensations; for all such confidence may be nothing but sheer assumption. Faith, again, is not the assurance that Jesus died for me. On such a theory every believer in a universal atonement would necessarily be born of God, which is very far from being the case. Neither is it faith for me to be confident that I am saved, for it may be the case that I am not saved, and it can never be faith to believe a lie.
II. We must now pass on to show that wherever it exists it is the proof of regeneration. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Ah! I hear thee say, poor soul, the new birth is a great mystery; I am afraid I am not a partaker in it. You are born again if you are relying upon a crucified Saviour. Mystery or no mystery, the new birth is yours if you are a believer. Electricity is a great mystery, and you cannot see it; but the operator tells you that the electric current is moving along the wire. How does he know? I know it by the needle. How is that? I could move your needles easily. Yes; but do not you see the needle has made two motions to the right, one to the left, and two to the right again? I am reading a message. But, say you, I can see nothing in it; I could imitate that clicking and moving very easily. Yet he who is taught the art sees before him in those needles, not only electric action, but a deeper mystery still; he perceives that a mind is directing the invisible force, and speaking by means of it. Not to all, but to the initiated is it given to see the mystery hidden within the simplicity. The believer sees in the faith, which is simple as the movements of the needle, an indication that God is operating on the human mind, and the spiritual man discerns that there is an inner secret intimated thereby, which the carnal eye cannot decipher. To believe in Jesus is a better indicator of regeneration than anything else, and in no case did it ever mislead. Now let me reply to certain questions. Must not a man repent as well as believe? Reply: No man ever believed but what he repented at the same time. Faith and repentance go together. They must. If I trust Christ to save me from sin, I am at the same time repenting of sin, and my mind is changed in relation to sin, and everything else that has to do with its state. All the fruits meet for repentance are contained in faith itself.
III. Now what flows out of this? Love is the legitimate issue I We must love if we are begotten of God all those who are also born of God. First, I love God, and therefore I desire to promote Gods truth, and to keep Gods gospel free from taint. But then I am to love all those whom God has begotten, despite the infirmities and errors I see in them, being also myself compassed about with infirmities. Life is the reason for love, the common life which is indicated by the common faith in the dear Redeemer is to bind us to each other. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The theory of brotherly love
Four things are here associated, and said to arise out of one another--faith, regeneration, the love of God, and the love of man.
I. Faith--whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is found to be all that the Scripture predictions declared the Messiah should be. They who discover this harmony can say, we have found the Messiahs, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. Even in this state of mind there are the elements of rich promise, but there is far more in the reception of Jesus as the Christ. He is acknowledged, not merely in general terms, as a Divine Saviour; but He is appreciated in the special offices which He bears for the redemption of men.
II. The regeneration connected with it--is born of God. Faith and regeneration are united. This view is brought out still more fully in Joh_1:12-13. We ask what must be the moral effect produced by accepting Christ in His gracious offices? It is plain it must be vital and saving. We see at once how just and reasonable is the representation of the text--that faith and regeneration are united.
III. In every mind thus influenced the love of God obtains a prominent place. Everyone that loveth Him that begat. It must be so, considering the change that has been produced. It is a new birth. God is seen to be the only Master who can claim unreserved obedience. A mind thus enlightened must love God. Especially must it be so when it is considered that He is the Author of this change. In His gracious love He has been pleased to put forth His power, and create the soul anew in righteousness. How calculated is such a contemplation to call forth the warmest exercise of love! Add to this, that when such a change is effected in the soul by God, it brings us into a new relation to Him, and one that eminently calls forth our love. It is that of a child. It is natural to a child to love his parent. Nor let it be overlooked how God is continually increasing His claims on His own children. They are constrained to say (Eph_1:3).
IV. The love of God is accompanied by the love of man. Everyone that loveth Him that begat, loveth Him also that is begotten of Him. (J. Morgan, D. D.)
Love to man inspired by new life
If we do not love Him more than what lies around us--houses and lands, father or mother, son or daughter--we are not worthy of Him. Nor are we worthy of them. Unless we come to them and they to us in the richness of a life inspired and quickened by Him, in the wealth of affections, impulses, desires, and hopes thus quickened and inspired by a loftier faith, we come to one another as trees encased in ice. But if, first of all, we give ourselves to Him, and the generous hopes and affections which faith in Him may awaken in us, we shall be like these same trees, lifting up their branches to the spring day sun, till from the lowest root to the highest twig they feel the pulses of a new life bursting out into leaf and blossom, while birds nestle within their shade, and the air is burdened with their melodies. (H. W. Beecher.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 1–5. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ. This…
1–5. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ. This belief, accepted in the heart, confessed with the mouth, and perfected by the obedience of faith (Rom. 1:5; James 2:22) makes one a child of God.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain GENUINE faith in Christ is the sure sign of…
FAITH THE SOURCE OF LOVE, AND LOVE THE FRUIT OF FAITH
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
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GENUINE faith in Christ is the sure sign of the new life—faith in the sense of living, daily trust. The faith which links us with Christ in sonship carries with it a twofold love: love to the Father, which is shown in keeping His commandments; and love to the brethren—the other sons—which is shown in self-denying service. “The very object of the Divine birth is the conquest of all that is opposed to God and to His commandments, and the instrument of the conquest is faith.” “There is an historical faith, or receiving of Christ, which precedes the new birth. But the sure and certain persuasion that Jesus is the Christ, the Mediator, Prophet, Priest, and King, with a practical and personal trust in Him as such for salvation, is the principal fruit of the new birth.”
1Jn_5:1. Born.—Better, as R.V., “begotten.” Him that begat.—God. See chap. 1Jn_4:7. So our Lord pleaded that men could not really love God, if they did not receive and love the Son whom He had sent.
1Jn_5:2. Keep His commandments.—A reminiscence of our Lord’s teachings (Joh_14:15; Joh_14:21; Joh_14:23; Joh_15:10 : see also 2Jn_1:6).
1Jn_5:3. Not grievous.—It is never a strain to obey those whom we love. It is of the very nature of love to make obedience easy. Were we perfect, we should not find God’s requirements to be commands at all; they would be our natural impulses. Commands indeed are only helps from outside us towards our being what we ourselves would wish to be, if we were our free, best selves.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Jn_5:1-3
The Love of the Father involves the Love of His Sons.—“Whosoever loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.” These words give the point of this paragraph. It is a common delusion of Christian professors, that they can keep in saving relations with God while they persist in keeping unloving relations with men. The delusion is based upon the failure to recognise the essential family element in Christianity. The supreme mission of the Christian revelation, the very essence of the work of Christ, is the full restoration of the family relation in which God designed to stand with His creatures, and still wishes to stand. It was that family relationship which the wilful sin of the children broke up. Men ceased to be sons; they persisted in being men. God might be King, but they refused to recognise Him as the “eternal Father.” And there was no hope for humanity until, maybe through a bitter experience, the self-willed prodigal turned his thoughts to Father and home. And turning his thoughts to Father and home is just the work which the Lord Jesus did, by the manifestation of His own Sonship, and by the holy persuasion of His teachings. It is the fashion of our day to insist that all the social, and political, and national woes of humanity would be cured, if men did but fully believe in, and heartily carry out, the “brotherhood of humanity.” They do not see that, standing by itself, with no common love, or common interest, beyond its own interest, human brotherhood never has been, and never can be, anything but selfish, and, being selfish, it never can be a real brotherhood. No brotherhood is possible save out of a common fatherhood. And so Christ brought men together, as nobody else has ever brought them, because He has revealed the Father-God, who is the Father of them all. “Whosoever loveth [the Father] who begat loveth also [the sons and brothers] who are begotten of Him.” It is missing the point to say that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is one of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It is the first, it is the foundation, it is the essential doctrine. It has nothing whatever to say to men about themselves or their relations until it has put them right with God—made them think rightly of God, and brought them into gracious reconciliations with Him.
I. Loving the Father.—“Him that begat.” The love required is precisely that which is characteristic of good children, and is the law of their life. St. John tells us that believing the only begotten Son wakens the sonship in us, and makes us feel like those who are “born of God.” And that is the actual fact of our experience. When we believe in Christ the Son, we begin to feel that we are sons with Him, and like Him. And He adds, that as soon as the feeling of sonship comes to us, the signs of sonship will appear in our life and conduct. We shall do just as Jesus did; we shall “keep our Father’s commandments.” In our limited human measures we shall say, what the Divine Son could say, “My meat and My drink is to do the will of My Father.” The question of our being sons is settled if we are sonlike, as Christ was.
II. When we love the Father, everything else will come right.—All the human relationships will be rightly toned; all the human responsibilities will be rightly borne. Was the Lord Jesus the very ideal of sacrificing brotherhood? It was but His Sonship getting expression in the family sphere. It will be thus with all who share His Sonship. They cannot help it—they cannot be true to themselves and help it—they must be brothers and brotherly. The love of the Father is the source of love to His children. And Maurice wisely says, “That is the natural order; that, we may say it confidently, is the universal order.” “If love of God is absent, then our love of our fellows is not genuine—is earthly, is a mockery. If love of our fellows is absent, then have we no love for God. All friendship must be tested by loyalty to God; all love to Him must be tested by charity.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Jn_5:1. Faith and the New Birth.—“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God.” What appears to be asserted is, that faith is at once the condition and the sign of the new life. Confusion comes by limiting faith to the acceptance of some particular proposition concerning Christ. Men are said to be saved when they declare their belief in some statement about Christ which is made to them. What we need to see clearly is, that faith is the very essence of the child-spirit. A child cannot be a child without faith. And wherever there is faith there is a child-spirit. So faith is the condition of the new birth. There never yet was a soul alive unto God that did not believe and trust. And being the condition, it becomes also the sign. See what a man is toward God, toward God manifested in Christ, and you can tell whether he is a child. If he is born of God, he will as surely believe and trust as the new-born babe will cry.
1Jn_5:3. A Misapprehension of the Commandments.—“And His commandments are not grievous.” They seem to be sometimes, because they put us into limitations and restraints. But of one thing we can be absolutely sure—the commandments are no abstract or arbitrary things. They are Fatherly arrangements, precisely adapted to secure the truest welfare of the children. And this we can see plainly—the commandments never were in any sense grievous to Christ. If we ever feel them to be grievous, it must be because we are failing from that perfect love which always carries with it perfect trust and perfect submission. Two reasons have been given as explaining why the Father’s commandments are not grievous.
1. He gives us strength to bear them and do them.
2. Love makes the Father’s yoke (which Christ called His) feel light and easy. The commandments are only grievous when we resist them.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain 1. Here faith and divine love are set forth…
ARGUMENT 12
FAITH OUR VICTORY
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1. Here faith and divine love are set forth as inseparable concomitants, like Siamese twins, living and dying together, constituting the two hemispheres of the beautiful celestial globe of human salvation, faith our side, and love God’s counterpart.
2. Our profession of love to God and His people must be confirmed by keeping His commandments.
3. “And His commandments are not heavy.” The world is full of disobedient, sinning religion. It is all the devil’s delusive hoax to blind the eyes, chloroform the conscience and lead to hell. God’s religion is this divine love which delights in obedience in all its forms and phases. Satan is always lying to the people, telling them God is a hard Master. Entire sanctification makes all burdens light, and all obedience a delight.
4. “Everything that has been born of God conquers the world.” No one can possibly commit sin while he has victory over the world, for all sin is the service of Satan, “the god of this world.” 2Co 4:4. Hence you see the very hypothesis of a sinning religion, even in the lowest type (which is regeneration), flatly contradicts the Word of God. “This is the victory which conquers the world, our faith.” The solution of our victory is plain and easy. We hold to Jesus by faith, and He conquers for us the world, the flesh and the devil. The people of Jericho had nothing to do but shout. God leveled down the walls. So the shout of faith will smash every Jericho encountered in your earthly pilgrimage.
5. As the Christhood of Jesus, revealed by the Holy Ghost, is the great salient fact of revelation, it constitutes the grand truth to be constantly received, appropriated and utilized by our faith.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain 1Jn 5:3
1Jn 5:3
Love for God’s Commands.
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I. People talk of "going to heaven" as if admission to future happiness had nothing to do with the bent and tone of their minds and their inward being here on earth. But salvation is the consummation of that eternal life which begins for Christ’s true servants in this world. This essence of eternal life is union with Him who is the Eternal, and is the Life. To possess it, in however imperfect a measure, is to be in moral fellowship with the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. There is nothing arbitrary in the Divine awards. Alike for weal and for woe, there is a true continuity between a man’s character as formed and settled in this world and the portion assigned to him in the next. Perdition is no vindictive infliction for bygone evil, but the inevitable, one might say the natural, result of obdurate persistency in evil, or, as it has been expressed, a free will self-fixed in obstinate refusal of God, and therefore necessarily left to itself; and salvation must similarly be the complete development of a moral and spiritual condition which may be described as the renewal of the soul by the joint operation of grace on the one hand and of responsiveness to the aid of grace on the other, which condition must at any rate have been inaugurated if the soul is to depart in what is called the state of grace. In short, we must be grateful for salvation if we would be saved.
II. And how is this to be done? By loving what God commands—that is, by putting our wills into a line with His will; by giving Him our hearts; by sympathising, if we may so speak, with His intentions towards us and for us. Thus to love what He commands is accepted by Him as in substance love for Himself.
W. Bright, The Morality of Doctrine, p. 154.
1Jn 5:4
Office and Province of Faith.
I. Faith is not primarily a light of the soul. Though its gaze ought ever to be fixed on the source of all light, it looks to that source rather in the first instance as being at the same time the source of all warmth and all life. It is the living principle by which the soul drinks in life from the heavenly fountain of life; and only as the recipient of the light from above does it become the light of every one in whom it shines. It is still given to Christ’s disciples to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. To those who believe in Him it is given, but to those who do not believe in Him it is not given. We are to seek and search, not with our eyes half closed, as though we were fearful lest we should see too much of truth, lest we should look beyond God into a region where God is not. In this respect also, seeing that we have such a High-priest, who Himself is passed into the heavens, we may approach boldly to the temple of wisdom, for He who has delivered our hearts and souls has also delivered our minds from the bondage of earth. Therefore let no man say to the waves of thought, "Thus far shall ye go, and no farther." Let faith propel them, and they shall roll onward, and ever onward, until they fall down at the foot of the eternal throne.
II. The true antithesis is not between faith and reason, but between faith and sight, or more generally between faith and sense. The objects of faith are not the things which lie beyond the reach of reason, but the things which lie beyond the reach of sight—the things which are unseen, the things which as yet are objects of hope, and which therefore must be remote from the senses. Nor is it the office of faith to deliver man from the bondage of reason, but from the bondage of the senses, by which his reason has been deposed and enthralled, and hereby to enable him to become reason’s willing, dutiful, active servant. In fact, the truths which are the objects of faith are in the main the very same with those which are the objects of reason, only, while reason is content to look at them from afar, or, it may be, handles them and turns them about, or analyses and recompounds them, but after all leaves them lying in a powerless, notional abstraction, faith, on the other hand, lays hold of them and brings them home to the heart, endowing them with a living reality, and nurtures itself by feeding on. them, and leans on them as a staff to walk with—yea, fastens them on to the soul as wings wherewith it may fly. Thus faith surpasses reason in power and vitality; it also anticipates reason by centuries, sometimes by millenniums. It darts at once with the speed of sight to those truths which reason can only attain to slowly, step by step, often faltering, often slumbering, often wandering by the way. When faith dies away, the heart of a nation rots; and then, though its intellect may be acute and brilliant, it is the sharpness of a weapon of death and the brightness of a devouring fire.
J. C. Hare, The Victory of Faith, p. 63.
The Victory of Faith.
It is acknowledged by everybody that the world is a place of conflict; but it is not felt by everybody that there is an inestimable advantage in this: that the conditions of human life should be those of conflict. And yet, if we reflect, we shall not, I think, murmur that our lot should be cast in a world where there is every need for the putting forth of our energies, for surely it is by the stimulating influences of various oppositions that our powers will ripen and develop. Let us take such a survey of the conflict as will enable us to see that perhaps one of the reasons why there is so much complaint of failure lies in this fact: that men mistake the nature of the conflict, and as they mistake the nature of the conflict, so they mistake the nature of the weapons that should be employed.
I. They mistake, I think, the nature of the conflict. The world, they say, is a great arena of contest. It is true, and there are many foes. We may enumerate them. There is poverty, there is ignorance, there is obscurity, there is weakness; and as men take a survey of life, these are the enemies which they most dread. Of all they dread poverty as the worst. It seems to smite down man and to rob him of the powers of struggle, because it robs him of the power of hope. They dread obscurity, they dread ignorance, because if a man feels that he can only emerge into the full light, where he can be seen and can have a full, free scope for his energies, then perchance success will be his. The Apostle tells us in effect the foe is not care; the foe is not obscurity; it is not poverty. The thing which men mistake is the enemy that they have to assail, and they always will identify the real advantages of life with the things that they can see, which they can enjoy, whereas he tells us that the true enemy is not in the world, nor in the things that are in the world, but rather that it is in the world within the heart. The enemy, he says, is not poverty, but desire; the enemy is not obscurity, but lust; and therefore he brings out and shows where the true conflict is. Here, he says, are the enemies: "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life"; and now I know that men may win the victory in imagination, and be defeated at the testing time. Not he who has broken through the barriers of the shade of inferiority and has found his way to the highest places of the earth, but rather he who has taken the chains of these lower things, and has broken them in pieces, and has risen out of the darkness of sin into the true light of the knowledge of purity and of God; not he who imagines that his power is sustained by men being at his feet, but he rather who has been victorious over the subtle passions of his own heart—he has overcome the world.
II. Then there is another thought; that is, the weapon is mistaken also. If, indeed, poverty is the worst of evils, obscurity the worst of enemies, ignorance the worst of foes, then by all means let us take to our aid the weapons of human warfare. I know that the weapons of industry shall overcome poverty, and I know that industry and knowledge will vanquish obscurity and bid ignorance depart; but if these are not the foes, then must we try another weapon. The Apostle bids us to try the weapon of faith. This, he says, is the victory that overcomes the world. Take rather this weapon in hand, and the triumph shall be yours—even your faith. At the essential root of all human life the measure of human success lies often in the spirit of confidence and faith. Therefore in the world of religion and in the great world—for religion, after all, is only the art of living nobly and well—this will be the victory that shall overcome the world, even our faith.
Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 321.
Faith’s Conquest.
That there is a contest carried on in creation between opposite principles was so apparent even to the heathen that many of them imagined the existence of two opposite deities, the one dealing out good and the other engaged in counteracting that good. We who have the Divine revelation know better than this. We know that a fierce conflict goes on between evil and good, but that only good can be referred to the Creator, evil originating exclusively with the creature. This earth, which God designed for the habitation of an innocent, and therefore happy, race, has been converted, through the apostacy of that race, into a battle plain, upon which Satan and his emissaries measure their strength with Jehovah and His hosts. The contest between Christ and Satan is a contest for the souls of men, and its battles are fought on the narrow stage of individual hearts more frequently than on the wide area of nations and provinces.
I. It is asserted here that the renewed man overcometh the world. We must take a modified interpretation of St. John’s strong sayings. The renewed man "overcomes," and the renewed man "does not sin," in the sense of the object which he has in view, rather than of the end to which he has attained. The sayings are to be interpreted of what is habitual, not of what is occasional. His habits are those of victory and righteousness. When he fails to conquer or falls from obedience, the failure and fall are exceptions to ordinary success and general steadfastness. Hence we may say, the renewed man overcomes because, though sometimes defeated, to be the victor, and not the vanquished, is his habit.
II. And now as to the agency by which this result is effected. Faith overcometh the world. In general it is worse than useless to concede to the world. The world very justly takes it for cowardice and gives it contempt. And this faith decides that the march of a righteous cause is not to be advanced by throwing a mantle over the uniform of its soldiers. It decides that they who would hate you if you showed yourself an out-and-out Christian can only love you in proportion as you play the renegade and buffoon. Thus by faith in the whole record of Scripture, by faith in the fact that the friendship of the world is enmity with God, by faith in Christ as able to effect the spread of the Gospel without requiring me to disguise it in myself, by faith in the Holy Spirit as ready to support me against all obloquy which absolute decision may provoke, I overcome the world; I resist its advances; I decline its courtesy; I reject its alliance. When a man is not afraid of standing out to be pointed at; when he will make no terms but that the world shall come over to his ground, that he will perish rather than advance one inch towards the world, then we affirm that a great victory has been achieved, and so preeminent has faith been in the conflict that at once we may declare with St. John, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2015.
Power of Faith among the Heathen and among the Jews.
I. God did not leave Himself without a witness on earth. He would not so forsake mankind as that there should not be a single eye of faith to look up to Him among all the nations, that there should not be a single altar, a single heart, from which prayer, and thanksgiving, and praise should mount to heaven. When the whole world was turning away from Him to enwrap itself in its own natural darkness, He called Abraham to be the father of them that believe, and promised that from him in the course of ages should spring One through faith in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. Thus did God ordain that faith should overcome the world. When man had given himself up to the worship of the creature, of the earth and its fruits, of the flesh and its lusts, God said, I will light up the light of faith in the heart of Abraham.
II. The faith which was a living principle in the hearts of the Jews, and which manifested itself so often by heroic action and endurance—nay, which became so inwrought in them that seventeen centuries of dispersion and oppression have not been able to destroy it—was a faith in Jehovah as the God of their fathers and their own God, who in manifold wonderful ways had shown Himself to be the Protector of their fathers, and who had chosen them out from all the nations of the earth to be His peculiar people. The heathen never discerned that God was a God of holiness and justice; at least, their popular religion was often at direct variance with any recognition of this truth. To the Jews it had been declared and fully displayed, although they were perpetually blinding their hearts to it. Along with the historical groundwork of their faith, they had a law, by keeping which they were to show forth their faith; and every commandment in that law was, as it were, a fresh step towards overcoming the world. In reading the law, indeed, there was often a veil upon their hearts; often, too, they turned the law itself into a veil, the letter of which darkened and concealed its spirit. The Jews could trust in God, and could act nobly and boldly in that trust; for a high degree of such trust may exist apart from that earnest endeavour after righteousness which ought to go along with it. But few of them lived by faith: only the just can so live; and they alone who do live by faith can be just. Even those who were strongest in their faith or trust in God’s upholding and protecting providence, and who by this faith were enabled in outward act to overcome the world to vanquish the most formidable outward enemies it could bring against them, even those who were full of this lively, animating trust, and who in this trust encountered and overthrew every obstacle—even they could yet at times fall woefully and appallingly. The revelation made to the Jews was incomplete, and so it was seldom adequate to produce anything like a faith which will overcome the world.
J. C. Hare, The Victory of Faith, p. 151.
Power of Faith in Man’s Natural Life.
If Christian faith has often been represented as a totally new quality, a gift of the Spirit, to which there is nothing analogous in the unregenerate man, this has arisen in great measure from the notion that faith is mere belief. For such faith being notoriously powerless, they who felt the inadequateness of such faith for the office assigned to it in the Christian scheme of salvation might naturally infer that the faith which is to be the living root of the Christian life must be something wholly and essentially different from any form of belief discoverable in the natural man. And so in truth it is. Whereas, if the business of faith be in all men equally to lift up the heart and the will, as well as the understanding, from things seen to things unseen, and to draw us away from the impulses of the present moment to the objects of hope held out by the future, to supply us with higher principles, and motives, and aims of action than those with which the senses pamper and drug us, then assuredly may the whole of man’s life, so far as he is a being raised above the beasts of the field, be called a school and exercise and discipline of faith.
I. To take one of the simplest daily examples, when we lie down on our beds at night, we lie down in faith: we believe and trust that the dew of sleep will fall on our heavy eyes, and will bathe our weary limbs, and will refresh them and brace them anew. Again, when we rise in the morning and betake ourselves to our daily task, we rise and set to our task in faith: we believe and trust that the light will abide its wonted time in the sky, and that we may, each according to his station, go forth to our labour and to our work until the evening. And whatsoever that work may be, each step in it must rest on the ground of faith. Faith is absolutely indispensable to man even when he is dealing with outward things, in order to make them minister to his sustenance and outward well-being.
II. A child cannot learn his alphabet, cannot learn the name of anything, cannot learn the meaning of any word, except through faith. He must believe before he can know. That which is the law of our intellectual being at all stages of our progress in knowledge is most evidently so in the first stage. If the child did not believe his teachers, if he distrusted or doubted them, he could never learn anything. In like manner, the whole edifice of our knowledge must stand on the rock of faith, or it may be swallowed up at any moment, as has been seen in the history of philosophy, by the quicksands of scepticism. Faith, too, must be the cement whereby all its parts are bound together each to each, or a blast of wind will scatter them. Every fresh accession of knowledge requires fresh exercises of faith: faith in evidence; faith in the criterions and in the faculties by which that evidence is to be tried. Faith, too, is indispensable as the motive principle whereby alone we can be impelled to seek after knowledge. We must have seen in the visions of faith that our Rachel is beautiful and well-favoured; thus alone shall we be willing to serve seven years for her, which years will then seem but a few days for the love we bear to her.
J. C. Hare, The Victory of Faith, p. 103.
Faith a Practical Principle.
I. Nothing can be more fallacious than the notion that faith is not a practical principle. Were faith nothing more than the assent of the understanding, then, indeed, we should be forced to grant that it is not a practical principle. But this consequence of itself is enough to prove how totally inadequate that definition of faith must be. In truth, if we look thoughtfully through the history of the Church, or even of the world, we shall find that this, under one shape or other, has ever been the main principle and spring of all great and magnanimous action, even faith. The persons in whose character love has been the predominant feature have not seldom been disposed to rest in heavenly meditations and contemplations. Unless, too, it be corrected and nerved by faith, love shrinks from giving pain and giving offence. But the great, stirring motive spirits in the history of the world, the angels who have excelled in strength, and who have done God’s commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word, have been those who may be called the heroes of faith, those who by faith have dwelt in the immediate presence of God. By giving a substantial reality to that which is invisible, to that which is no object of the senses or of the natural understanding, and by animating the heart with an unshakable assurance of that for which it looks in hope, faith performs the task assigned to her of overcoming the world.
II. Bearing this in mind, we perceive how every act of faith, as the act of a man’s whole personality, will be single, and that there is no confusion of thought, no mixing up of incongruous elements, in saying that it is not the act of the understanding alone, but of the understanding and still more emphatically and essentially of the will. If it were the act of the understanding alone, it would be the act of a fraction of a man’s being. Only as the act of the will mainly and primarily is it the act of a man’s whole being. The primary, germinal act must be that of the will, not of the understanding. There must be some motion of the will, however slight, which in the first instance directs the application of the understanding to an object before that object can be introduced through the understanding to act upon the will. Hereby we may be assisted in some degree to conceive how the influences of the Spirit should be of such momentous power in the work of our faith, in producing it from the very first and afterward in nourishing and maturing it. Were faith merely an act of the understanding, it would be without that region which is the peculiar sphere of the spirit. So far, however, as faith is a spiritual act, so far as it is the act of the will, which Christ came to redeem from the bondage of the flesh, we may feel assured that in every act of spiritual faith, in every act by which we evince a desire to become partakers in Christ’s redeeming grace, to shake off the yoke of corruption, and to strive after the glorious liberty of the children of God—in every such act, we may feel assured, the Spirit of God will be working along with our spirits.
J. C. Hare, The Victory of Faith, p. 32.
References: 1Jn 5:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i., No. 14; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 332; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. ii., p. 351; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. i., p. 209; E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. i., p. 243; T. T. Crawford, The Preaching of the Cross, p. 135; Fleming, Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 29; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iii., p. 221; A. P. Peabody, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 105; H. P. Liddon, Ibid., vol. xxi., p. 241; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 243; J. Keble, Sermons from Easter to Ascensiontide p. 201.
1Jn 5:4
Filial Faith overcomes the World.
I. The indefiniteness, the sort of unsatisfactory vagueness, that is sometimes felt to attach to the Scriptural idea of the world, is here somewhat obviated by the connection or train of thought in which it occurs. What is the world which faith overcomes? It is whatever system or way of life, whatever society or companionship of men, tends to make us feel God’s commandments, or any of them, to be grievous. If this is a true account of the world as here presented to us, it must be very evident that it is a world to be overcome. We cannot deal with it, if we would avoid its deleterious and deadly influence, in any other way. The world cannot be shunned, neither can it be conciliated. The only effectual, the only possible, way is to overcome it. And the manner of overcoming it must be peculiar. It must be such as thoroughly to meet and obviate that tendency to minister to a rebellious frame of mind which constitutes the chief characteristic, and indeed the very essence, of what is here called the world.
II. Two explanations, accordingly, of this overcoming of the world are given, the one having reference to the original source, the other to the continued following out, of the victory. (1) "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." So the victory begins; that is its seed or germ. And as to its seed or germ it is complete, potentially complete, though not so in actual result fully and in detail. Being born or begotten of God implies the overcoming of the world. There is that in our being born or begotten of God which secures, and which alone can secure, our overcoming the world. And what can that be but the begetting in us of a frame of mind which cuts up by the roots the whole strength of the world’s hold over us—the idea, namely, of God’s commandments being grievous? (2) This implies faith, and faith in constant and lively exercise. Our overcoming the world is not an achievement completed at once, and once for all, in our being begotten of God. It is a lifelong business, a prolonged and continuous triumph in a prolonged and continuous strife. Our being born of God does, indeed, give us the victory; it puts us in the right position and endows us with the needful power for overcoming the world: but we have still before us the work of actually from day to day, all our life long in point of fact, overcoming the world; and it is by faith that we do so.
R. S. Candlish, Lectures on First John, vol. ii., p. 186.
Christian Faith.
Christian faith has this advantage over simple religious faith, in the more general sense of the word: that, having obtained clearer and fuller notions of God’s perfections, it is rendered stronger and more triumphant over temptations.
I. Christian faith, or the faith that Jesus is the Son of God, gives us so much clearer and fuller notions of God that it makes us know both Him and ourselves and love Him far better than we could do without it. If the Christian turns to the temptations of the world, and casts the eye of faith towards that future and unseen recompense which is promised him, he bethinks him at what price it was purchased for him, and by what infinite love it was given; he feels, on the one hand, how worthless must be his own efforts to buy that which only the blood of the Son of God could buy, yet, on the other hand, with what zealous hope he may labour, sure that God is mightily working in him, giving him an earnest will and strengthening him to do steadily what he has willed sincerely. This, then, is a faith that overcometh the world, for it is a faith that looks to an eternal reward, and which is founded on such a display of God’s love and holiness that the Christian may well say, "I know in whom I have believed."
II. The means of gaining this faith are principally three: reading the Scriptures, prayer, and a partaking of the Lord’s Supper. You see what it is that is wanted—namely, to make notions wholly remote from your common life take their place in your minds as more powerful than the things of common life, to make the future and the unseen prevail over what you see and hear now around you. Faith will come by reading, as of old time it came by hearing; and when we have thus become familiar with Christ, have learned to love Him and to know that He not only was, but is now, a living object of our love, the prospect of being with Him for ever will not seem like a vague promise of we know not what, but a real, substantial pleasure, which we would not forfeit for all the world can
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 8.
References: 1Jn 5:4, 1Jn 5:5.—C. Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons, p. 231; J. H. Thom, Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ, 2nd series, p. 45; W. Anderson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 138.
1Jn 5:6
Christ Coming by Water and Blood.
I. Let us settle the immediate sense of these words. There was living then at Ephesus a conspicuous and enterprising teacher, whom not a few were likely to regard as more profound and philosophical than St. John, who himself probably looked down with superb indulgence on the aged Galilean as pious enough in his simple way, but quite uncultured, without any speculative ability, with crude and unscriptural views of God and the universe, and wholly unfit to interpret Hebraic ideas to men who had breathed the air of Gnostic wisdom. "One confusion," he would say, "which John makes, must be most carefully avoided: you must draw a sharp distinction between Jesus and Christ. Jesus was simply a man, eminent for his wisdom and goodness, but not supernaturally born, on whom at his baptism a heavenly power called Christ descended, to use him as an instrument for revealing truth and working miracles, but to depart from him before he suffered and died." Now St. John, in the context before us, contradicts this absolutely. "The self-same Person who stooped to the waters of Jordan gave up His blood to be shed for us on Golgotha." This is He, the one, indivisible Christ, in whom to believe is to overcome the world.
II. In the "water and blood" St. John further saw a combination which seemed to present in a kind of symbolical unity the purifying and the atoning aspects of Christ’s work.
III. When we hear that He came by water and blood, it is well-nigh impossible not to think of that great ordinance in which water is made the effectual sign—that is, the organ or instrument—of a new birth, and of that still greater rite which embodies for us in a concrete form the new and better covenant, and in which, as St. Augustine tersely expresses it, we "drink that which was paid for us." And thus the water and the blood, in this large and manifold application of the terms, bear witness, with the Holy Spirit, for Jesus as the Christ, for Jesus as God’s own Son.
W. Bright, Morality in Doctrine, p. 28.
Reference: 1Jn 5:6.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ix., p. 205.
1Jn 5:6
Has Christ Risen?
I. Let us ask ourselves what is the evidence with which we are supplied on the subject of the Resurrection, what is there to be said on the subject to a person who believes—I will not say in the supernatural inspiration, but in the general trustworthiness, of the writings of the first Christians. In order to know that our Lord did really rise from the dead we have to satisfy ourselves that three distinct questions may be answered. Of these the first is this: Did Jesus Christ really die upon the cross? For if He merely fainted or swooned away, then there was no resurrection from death; then He merely recovered consciousness after an interval. The Evangelists, each one of them, say expressly that He did die; and the wonder is not that He died when He did after the three hours’ agony on the cross, but that, with all His suffering at the hands of the soldiers and of the populace before His crucifixion—with all these sufferings He should have lived so long. But suppose that what looked like death on the cross was merely a fainting fit, would He have survived the wounds in His side inflicted by the soldier’s lance, through which the blood yet remaining in His heart escaped? We are expressly told that the soldiers did not break His limbs, and that He was already dead; and before Pilate would allow His body to be taken down from the cross he ascertained from the centurion in command that He was already dead.
II. The second question is this: Did the disciples take our Lord’s dead body out of the sepulchre? They would not have wished to do it. Why should they? What could have been their motive? They either believed in His approaching resurrection, or they did not. If they did believe in it, they would have shrunk from disturbing His grave as an act not less unnecessary than profane; if they did not believe in it, and instead of abandoning themselves to unreflecting grief, allowed themselves to think steadily, what must have been their estimate of their dead Master? They must now have thought of Him as of one who had deceived them, or who was Himself deceived. If He were not a clever impostor who had failed, He was a sincere but feeble character, who had Himself been the victim of a religious delusion. On either supposition, why should they arouse the anger of the Jews, and incur the danger of swift and heavy punishment? And once more, had they desired and dared to remove our Lord’s body from its grave, such a feat was obviously beyond their power. The tomb was guarded by soldiers; every precaution had been taken by the Jews to make it secure. The great stone at the entrance could not have been rolled away without much disturbance, even if the body could have been removed without attracting attention. The character of the guards themselves was at stake. Had they countenanced or permitted any such crime, their almost inevitable detection would have been followed by severe punishment. In after-years, you will remember, St. Peter was released from prison by an angel; and the sentinels were punished by death.
III. A third question is the following: What is the positive testimony that goes to show that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead? There is, first of all, the witness of all the Apostles. Next, there is the testimony of a large number of persons besides the Apostles. Five hundred persons could not be simultaneously deceived. Their testimony would be considered decisive as to any ordinary occurrence when men wished only to ascertain the simple truth. And the force of this flood of testimony is not really weakened by objections which do not, you will observe, directly challenge it, but which turn on accessory or subordinate points. For instance, it is said that the evangelical accounts of the Resurrection itself and of our Lord’s subsequent appearance are difficult to reconcile with each other. At first sight they are, but only at first sight. In order to reconcile them, two things are necessary: first, patience; and secondly, determination to exclude everything from the narrative which does not lie in the text of the Gospels. Two-thirds of the supposed difficulties are created by the riotous imagination of the negative commentators. Scripture takes no precautions against hostile judges; Scripture speaks as might a perfectly truthful child in a court of justice, conscious only of its integrity and leaving the task, whether of criticism or of apology for what it says, entirely to others. It proceeds on the strong conviction that in the end, in this as in other matters, Wisdom is justified of her true children.
H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 257.
1Jn 5:6-8
The Spirit, the Water, and the Blood.
I. Consider the testimony of the water. I believe that the reference here is exclusively to baptism—the baptism of Jesus Himself, and probably also the baptism which He instituted, and which remains as a permanent ordinance in connection with His name. This is the testimony of the water. Jesus, the Christ, came not by water only; but He did come by water. He was baptised by John in the Jordan. The importance attached by the Evangelists to the baptism of Jesus is surely not without significance. It stands on the very threshold of Christ’s public ministry. It was His initiation into that ministry. It was His own open consecration of Himself to His own great work in relation to the new era; and the signs which accompanied His baptism were, so to speak, the manifest anointing by the Father of His Son. Thus Jesus, the Christ, "came by water." His public ministry was inaugurated by a baptism, which brought with it a Divine testimony to His being the Anointed.
II. Consider the testimony of the blood. His was a baptism, not only of consecration, but of suffering. The blood-shedding of Jesus was really a testimony to His Divine Sonship; it was the price He was willing to pay for the world’s redemption; it was the completion of His revelation of the Father. Not until He hung upon the cross could He say, "It is finished."
III. Consider the testimony of the Spirit. Even during His life on earth, the Spirit which manifestly shone through the character, and conduct, and works of Jesus Christ, bore witness to Him as the Anointed of the Father. But, again, this Spirit with which Jesus was anointed was a Spirit which He was also to impart. "The Spirit beareth witness" in the Church "because the Spirit is truth."
T. C. Finlayson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 195.
1Jn 5:6-11
The Witness of Christ.
"Witness!" The word in its emphatic recurrence is typical of the situation out of which the Epistle springs. The special perils and anxieties with which the Church is now beset are changed from those with which we are familiar in the earlier epistles of St. Paul. And it may be worth our while to remind ourselves of the contrast. There the effort had been to get the message itself of Christ out in its distinct and native force; to disentangle it from the encompassing matter that obscured or distorted it; to set it free from the misdirections to which it was liable, whether from Jewish or Gentile pressure. But now the body of believers has possessed its faith for some years; some have grown up from childhood within its familiar environment. There they stand, in compact possession of their position. But over against them they find set, in resolute hostility, a world, intellectual and moral, that will not yield—a world fierce, hard, and strong. And the task given them to do begins to look tough and grim. It will be a long business. They are but as a spot of light in the darkness that shows few signs of breaking. This "world" is, indeed, to be convinced, convicted, converted, but not, it seems, at a stroke, not in some rapid onset of victory. A long, slow, plodding fight is evidently ahead, the end of which no eye can yet recognise. And the faith that is to face this work must look well to itself. It must have recognised how far it means to go, on what it can rely; it must be complete, and prepared, and explicit. Christians must not be afraid to look into their faith. Its early simplicity is inadequate for their task. They must unearth its roots; they must probe it and note, and sort, and distinguish. They must verify their belief. And this verification they must win out of the fact itself to which belief commits them. The fact is a living fact, and can make its own answers. By contact with it, by penetration into it, the fact will bear witness to itself.
I. How can this be? How can a fact be said to bear its own evidence with it? Well, broadly speaking, all facts, of whatever kind, to which we give internal credit do so—at least, to some degree. For the credit we give them is derived, not from the mere evidence for their having occurred, but from their harmonious correspondence with the world into which they arrive. They fit it; they belong to it; they fall in with it; they take an appropriate place amid the general body of facts. It is this luminous self-evidential character which St. John would claim for the Christian fact. Its witness to itself is to be found in its complete correspondence with the spiritual situation into which it enters. The burden of responsibility for the nature of the proof is thus thrown back upon ourselves. It operates as a judgment, detecting where we stand and laying bare the secrets of the heart. The Christian must, if he would be sure of himself in the awful war with the world, brood and pore over the Divine fact presented to him, the fact in which he had believed, until the fact itself should grow ever more luminous with the intensity and the reality of the light that it threw on the tremendous issues which lie about man’s destiny here and hereafter. Ever as he so pondered the illumination would increase; and in this increase of illuminative power would lie that evidence of the fact, that intelligent and convincing assurance, which his anxiety desired.
II. And there was another form of this witness which adhered in the fact—the witness, namely, which it gave to God the Father. Not only did the Christian fact harmonise with the human situation which it claimed to explain, but it carried with it a sudden sense of correspondence with the God in whom men had believed. St. John’s confidence in giving his witness of that which he had "seen, and heard, and handled" crowns itself in the consciousness that, through the power of this experience, he found himself brought out of a dark jungle of death into the clear light of day; he saw the face of God once more, undimmed and spotless. This was what fortified and corroborated his adherence to the fact. The light had been manifested, and with this result: that the message which he had now to declare unto his hearers was just this: "that God was indeed light," and only light, nothing but light; and that in Him was no darkness at all.
III. There is a third form of this witness to the reality of the fact. It is that which is expressed in the enigmatical reference to the three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Water and blood—these are real and concrete witnesses to Him who came in the flesh. Here on earth, among us, they are still wielded, filled, possessed by the Spirit, applied by the Spirit to the perpetual proof of the purification and redemption which were once for all made manifest in Jesus Christ. Here they still are. And through this combined concord of inward with outward, of living essence with objective factors, of witnessing Spirit with the testifying water and blood, the proof is decisively given both of the presence and power of the working will of God, and of the validity of the originating fact in which that will took form and came among us. "There are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: these three agree in one."
H. Scott Holland, Pleas and Claims for Christ, p. 67.
References: 1Jn 5:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx., No. 1187; J. Keble, Sermons from Easter to Ascensiontide, p. 160; Ibid., Sermons for Lent and Passiontide, p. 172. 1Jn 5:9, 1Jn 5:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi., No. 1213.
1Jn 5:10
The Inward Witness.
I. The nature of the witness must be first ascertained. The illustration suggests that the witness must be something clear and definite, and capable of being ascertained beyond doubt. (1) There is the conscious experience of a new force acting upon the soul, a new life circulating in every faculty. (2) This new inward force is connected invariably with a certain belief, which gathers round one unchanging form: the form of Christ upon His cross. (3) The whole man is changed, and changed in the direction of holiness. The purifying water has touched the conscience and the heart, and made them clean and Christlike—the holy reflection of a pure and holy Saviour.
II. We must glance at what it is that the witness proves. We have the witness in ourselves, but to what? (1) First, it is to the reality and solemn greatness of the world unseen—the soul, sin, the Saviour, God, heaven, and hell. The quickened soul actually sees and touches these things with an intensity so truly equal to that of bodily sight as to leave the relative importance of the two words their proper and natural value. (2) Then it is a witness to the truth of Christianity. For the man has tried it, and proved it to be what it professes to be. (3) It is a witness to the Divine authority and power of the word of God. For such a man opens his Bible, and finds there the living image of himself. (4) It is a witness to our personal acceptance before God. It is the witness of the Spirit with our spirit that we are indeed God’s children. For whence comes this inward life, this Divine force, which works upon the soul, whence this vivid sight of the cross and the new and higher life filling the soul once dead in trespasses and sins? Whence come they but from God? They are His voice, and that the voice, not of an avenging Judge, but of a gracious and reconciled Father.
E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life, p. 61.
References: 1Jn 5:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi., No. 1250; vol. xx., No. 1207; vol. xxiv., No. 1428; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 214.
1Jn 5:12
The Lord and Giver of Life.
I. If religion had nothing to do with this life, it would be enough to become religious when we are on the point of departing from life, when we are on the borders of another world; but it is never thus that the Bible speaks of religion. Rather it tells us that religion has the promise of this life as well as of that which is to come; that it is not a mere death-bed ornament, but something that beautifies, elevates, and makes noble this present life. Without it a man cannot live the highest life of which he is capable. There may be existence without religion, but not the sort of life which his Creator intended man to live. This being so, we are not surprised that the text speaks of religion as something which we should have in our present life. It does not say that he that hath the Son shall have life, but "He that hath the Son hath life." As the oak is contained in the acorn, so eternal life has its seed and first beginnings in the life we are living now.
II. Having the Son seems to mean, in the first instance, having the revelation which God gave by His Son. God taught us through Jesus Christ that sin is a very terrible thing, so terrible that it cost the death of the Son of God. But He did not stop here: He proved to us at the same time His great love to us sinners. Let a man once realise that the revelation made by Jesus Christ is true for him personally, and a new life will be communicated to his soul from the Lord and Giver of life. He has the Son now; and therefore he realises the fact that he has a share of the life, spiritual, regenerate, eternal, which Christ promised to His faithful disciples.
III. A true Christian is one who lives a double life: the ordinary life which all men live and an inner, secret life which is hid with Christ in God. This life is the scene, so to speak, of his greatest joys and sorrows, and Christ is the Sharer of both. He is the Head, and each true believer one of His members. He is the Vine, and we are His branches; and we are strong, healthy, and fruitful only by deriving sap and nourishment from the Vine.
E. J. Hardy, Faint yet Pursuing, p. 231.
1Jn 5:12
Christ the Life of the Soul.
It is a very difficult thing to define accurately what we mean by life. Perhaps we shall not be very far wrong if we say that in its highest sense life is that state of which any being is, or feels that it is, capable. So that when anything has reached its true condition, that is its life.
I. The life of every one lies in that Divine particle which man originally received. That particle is lost—quite lost. Christ is the only Son of God. Therefore in Christ the Divine particle has descended. It is only in Christ, it can only be by connection with Christ, that any son of Adam can regain the Divine particle of life wherewith he was originally endowed, and which is essentially man’s life. Therefore "he that hath the Son hath life."
II. We all have felt the difference between the cold effect of a picture we look at and the glow of the touch of its living original. We are too accustomed to deal with the holy truths of our religion as pictures. We look at them, but they do not speak to us; we admire them, but we are not influenced by them; we dream about them, but it is not action. The sentiment is strong, but there is little principle. There is much poetry, but it is not life. All this is "not to have Christ." Possession of Christ appears to me to be made up of three things. (1) The Christian has Christ’s work. Believe it, as a matter of actual historical fact, that Christ did bear the cross for you, and the life for man He has received back from the Father He now holds in heaven for you; and that assent of your heart to that great truth immediately makes that great truth your own. (2) The Christian has Christ Himself. We want a presence, an all-pervading, happy, constant presence, with us. We want a love which we can grasp, which we are conscious shall never decrease. We want the glory of an eternity thrown over us. All this we have if we have Christ (3) But a man’s life does not lie only in these things. There is a deep, secret, mystic being which every one holds—a life within life. It is the life of the Holy Ghost. There must be the real feeding upon Christ in the soul of a man if he would maintain what is, after all, his truest life. If a man would live, he must lay up Christ always in the recesses of his innermost, secret affections.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 228.
References: 1Jn 5:12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 755. 1Jn 5:13.—Ibid., vol. xxx., No. 1791. 1Jn 5:13-15.—Ibid., vol. x., No. 596.
1Jn 5:14
Right Petitions Heard by God.
The power by which we overcome the world is the Divine life which we have in the Lord Jesus Christ; but in order to our obtaining that life two conditions must be fulfilled: first, God must give it; and secondly, we must take it.
I. God must give it, for although there may be many things that we could earn or produce for ourselves, obviously there is one thing which we could neither earn nor create, into which, it is plain, we must be born—that is, our life. Now this is true of all life, whether the life that we possess by nature, or the life that we possess by grace. Nevertheless, respecting the Divine life that is in Christ Jesus a further affirmation must needs be made. It must not only be given us by God, but it must be taken through our faith. And this arises from the very nature of spiritual things, for when God is said to have made us free and responsible creatures He is said in effect to have ordained that our obedience should be of a certain quality, that it should not be that of the world, unconscious and constrained, not that of the beasts, unconscious and instinctive, but that of the holy angels, the voluntary obedience of a free and virtuous choice.
II. What is meant by asking according to God’s will? We must make both the matter and the spirit of our prayers correspond to His will. We must ask first in the right spirit, and then for the right thing. (1) We must ask in the right spirit. We must, as the Apostle says, lift up holy hands. In the hands of supplication which we raise to heaven there must be found no sinful and inordinate desires. (2) We must ask the right thing. You will find what is according to God’s will, what you not only may expect, but must expect, to receive, in the pages of God’s holy word. Lord Clive, we are told, once when he was in India was taken into a vaulted chamber which was filled from end to end with all kinds of treasure: there were heaps of gold, heaps of silver, heaps of precious trinkets, heaps of jewels; and he was told by the native ruler of Bengal to take as much as he pleased. And recalling that incident of his life, it is said that he exclaimed, "I am amazed at my own moderation!" Now the Bible is God’s treasure-house, filled from end to end with precious jewels; and we are bidden to take as many of the rarest and richest as we please, without money and without price.
J. Moorhouse, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 624.
References: 1Jn 5:14.—T. V. Tymms, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxiii., p. 181. 1Jn 5:14, 1Jn 5:15.—Homilist, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 37; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 162.
1Jn 5:14-17
The Sin unto Death.
St. John appears to speak of some one sin as standing apart from all others, as a sin unto death—a sin so fatal, so entirely beyond the possibility of pardon, that Christians should even refrain from making petitions to God on behalf of one who had committed this sin. A little consideration, however, may lead us to conclude that such was not precisely the meaning which was in St. John’s mind when he wrote. The Apostle is speaking of the power of a Christian’s prayers. He shows it to be an immediate consequence of our faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God that we should offer up our prayers in full confidence that those prayers will be heard, and that they will be answered, provided only that the petition is in accordance with God’s holy will. He then goes on to show that a Christian may obtain forgiveness for his brother by intercession, provided that the sin for which he prays has not been a deadly sin, a sin unto death. St. John is evidently anxious that his doctrine of intercession should not be abused, and therefore he limits his doctrine by saying that there is a kind of sin for which he cannot venture to encourage Christians to pray with the hope that the sin will be pardoned. St. John is not laying down a rule as to what sins can be pardoned and what not, but as to what sins form a fair and proper subject for Christian intercession. Let us learn from the subject that sin is certainly a more deadly thing than many men suppose, and that there is danger lest those whom Christ has redeemed should fall away from grace and never rise again. Therefore let him who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.
Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. iii., p. 383.
References: 1Jn 5:16.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 132. 1Jn 5:16, 1Jn 5:17.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 183. 1Jn 5:17.—Ibid., vol. vii., p. 60; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 264. 1Jn 5:18.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. vii., p. 210.
1Jn 5:18
Infirmity of Faith: its Cause and Remedy.
I. If all the Christian people about us had a clear vision of God’s face, if they distinctly heard God’s voice, if they lived and moved and had their being under the constant control of the invisible terrors and glories of the spiritual universe, you and I would not receive the existence of that universe on their authority indeed, but our whole spiritual nature would be raised and elevated by the atmosphere that we should be breathing, and our vision of that universe would become clearer too, and we too should catch the mighty tones that moved through it, and we should be stirred and agitated by all its splendours and by all its terrors. We cannot help having a weak faith in these days, or if we can, it is so hard to help it that that man must be of an heroic temper, must have the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in an altogether exceptional degree, who escapes from the general spirit of his times. The great objects for which Christ came into this world were twofold: not to bring us one by one to God merely, but to bring us all to God together, and to restore us to each other as brethren as well as to restore us to God as our Father. And if we desire to master and to escape from this infirmity of faith, this dimness of spiritual vision, that spiritual isolation of which we have been miserably guilty must cease; and if we return to union with each other, we shall then have more direct union with God.
II. Another reason may be alleged besides this spiritual isolation for the infirmity of our faith and the dimness of our vision. When the uncertainty comes we think about it; we dwell upon it; we are troubled by it; we try to answer it, instead of turning our eyes at once unto that high region in which the great spiritual realities dwell; and especially, I think, our thought is not sufficiently engaged about Him who calls Himself the Truth. Let us look up to Him who abides with the Church for evermore; and the spirit of wisdom and revelation being granted to us through Jesus Christ our Lord, then the life of Christ in this world and His life in the invisible world in which He reigns now will become vividly real to us, will be bright with a supernatural splendour, and influence us with a supernatural power.
III. As to those who are in the earlier movements of religious thought, who have just begun to serve God, and to whom these great truths are all unreal, they must be for a time content, I suppose, to remain as they are; they must be born again before they can see the kingdom of heaven; and when they are born again, the vision does not at once become bright, and clear, and distinct. Immediate and vivid consciousness of the new universe into which they have entered must not be expected. They must for a time be contented to have faith in an invisible Christ. And why should we not for a time believe in Him whom we have not seen? The testimony comes to us from innumerable souls that they trusted for a time in an invisible Christ, and that after a while His glory was revealed to them. They waited for a while, looking for His appearance; and by-and-by He appeared, and they came to live and move and have their being in Him.
R. W. Dale, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 399.
1Jn 5:21
Idols.
I. Let us glance at three forms of idolatry against which we must ever be on our guard. (1) There is the worship of other gods, or false gods: the worship of Moloch, and Baalim, and Ashtaroth, gods of gold and jewels, of lust and blood. (2) There is the worship of the true God under false and idolatrous symbols. The golden calf was meant as a visible symbol of God’s unseen presence. It was a cherubic emblem, like those woven on the curtains of the temple on Sion, or those which stretched their wings over the mercy-seat. And yet calf-worship was idolatry; it was a violation of the second commandment. (3) The third form of idolatry is the worship of the true God under the guise of false notions, false conditions.
II. Every one of us is an idolater who has not God in all his thoughts, and who has cast away the laws of God from the governance of his life. I know not that it is a much worse idolatry to deny God altogether, and openly to deify the brute impulses of our own nature, than it is in words to confess God, yet not to do, nor to intend to do, never seriously to try to do, what He commands or to abandon what He forbids. If you do not worship the public idol of the market-place, have you no personal idol of the cave?
III. But St. John will not leave us to what is abstract: he will point us to One whom he has seen and heard, and his hands have handled, even the Word of life; to One who is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. "This," he says, "is the true God and eternal life." If you rely on religious teachers, they may offer you a dead Christ for the living Christ; an agonised Christ for the ascended Christ; an ecclesiastical Christ for the spiritual Christ; a Christ of the elect few for the Christ of the sinful many; a petty, formalising, sectarian Christ for the royal Lord of the great, free heart of manhood; a Christ of the fold for the Christ of the one great flock; a Christ of Gerizim or Jerusalem, of Rome or of Geneva, of Oxford or of Clapham, for the Christ of the universal world. So long as we worship idols, so long as we take pleasure in unrighteousness, so long as we love the darkness rather than the light—so long we cannot see God, neither know Him. And because to know Him is life and eternal life, and because there is no other life, since all other life is but a living death, therefore St. John wrote as the last word of his epistle, as the last word of the whole revelation of the New Testament, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."
F. W. Farrar, Sermons and Addresses in America, p. 164.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain The Love, Obedience, and Assurance of Believers
The Love, Obedience, and Assurance of Believers
1. The reason for brotherly love.
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2. This is the converse of 1Jn_4:19-21. Love to God and love to the brethren being inseparable, each is the test of the other.
4. Whatsoever] not 'whosoever.' 'It is not the man, but his birth from God, which conquers' (Plummer).
6. This is he that came by water and blood] According to the most generally accepted interpretation of this difficult passage, the reference is primarily to our: Lord's baptism in Jordan and His death upon the Cross—the baptism of water and the baptism of blood, which together sum up His redemptive work and represent its cleansing and atoning power. There is, perhaps, some allusion also to the 'blood and water' to which St. John bore witness at the Cross (Joh_19:34), besides a symbolical reference to the two sacraments.
7, 8. All the words between that bear record in 1Jn_5:7 and the spirit in 1Jn_5:8 are omitted in RV. It is quite certain that these words did not belong to the original text. They are found in no Gk. MS earlier than the 14th cent., and axe quoted by none of the Fathers before the middle of the 5th cent. The Fathers understood the passage in its original form to symbolise the Trinity, an interpretation which may have been inserted at first as a marginal note and afterwards found its way into the text.
14, 15. The prayer of faith prevails when it is in accordance with God's will. Thus offered it is surely heard, and, though it may not have any visible effect, receives its answer. He who trusts God's love knows that the answer he receives is the best.
16, 17. There is a sin unto death] RM 'There is sin unto death,' not any special sin which can be recognised as 'unto death.' Sin cannot be divided into 'mortal' and 'venial' on the authority of this passage. Sin may be of such a character as to lead to total separation from Christ, which is spiritual death. 'Sin unto death' is not any act of sin, however heinous, but a state or habit of sin wilfully chosen and persisted in: it is constant and consummate opposition to God' (Plummer).
18. He that is begotten of God keepeth himself] RV 'he that was begotten of God (i.e. Christ) keepeth him.'
21. Taken comprehensively, this warning is directed against all that takes the place of God in man's affections.
If, as seems likely, the Epistle is St. John's latest work, these are, in point of time, the last words of Holy Scripture.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Power, Testimony, and Substance of Faith.
The Power, Testimony, and Substance of Faith.
The wonderful power of faith:
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v. 1. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.
v. 2. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.
v. 3. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous.
v. 4. For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.
v. 5. Who is he that overcomes the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
The apostle here virtually returns to the topic with which he opened his letter, showing that faith is the source of all Christian life: Every one that believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and every one that loves Him who brought [him] forth loves also him that was brought forth by Him. That is the great test of Christianity, a man’s attitude toward Jesus Christ, Mat 22:42. If he believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the promised Messiah, the eternal Son of God and the Savior of the world, then there is unmistakable evidence that he is born of God, regenerated, that he has received the new spiritual life. Such a person will love God, his heavenly Father, in a twofold sense, as a matter of fact. Just as self-evident, however, ought to be his love for all others that have been begotten of God, for all other children of God, who by virtue of their regeneration are his spiritual brethren. That is a necessary consequence of the new spiritual life: love toward God and toward the brethren. This love of the Christians is a living power; By this we find out that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. Love toward God is not a matter of sentimental feelings and consists still less in the sanctimonious talk that it is our duty to love the heavenly Father. There must be concrete evidence, also for our own satisfaction, namely, keeping of God’s commandments, living in accordance with His holy will. True children of God cannot but show their sonship in this manner. With this is most intimately connected, moreover, the love toward the brethren. This is also not a matter of specious, pious talk, but of acting toward the brethren at all times as the will of the heavenly Father desires it.
Since the knowledge of our sonship toward God is so important in our lives, the apostle repeats: For this is the love to God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. That is the essence of true love toward God, that His children find their greatest delight in fulfilling His commandments, in performing and practicing everything that pleases Him, and therefore also in loving our brethren in deed and in truth. And such conduct on our part we do not consider a grievous, bothersome burden, for love feels no loads. Faith in God, love toward God brings strength from God; and "through His love and His strength all His commandments are not only easy and light, but pleasant and delightful" (Clarke).
This fact, that to a Christian the commandments of God are not burdensome, is now explained more fully: Everything that is born of God conquers the world; and this is the victory which conquers the world, our faith. The apostle uses the very strongest expression that he can find to indicate that his statement is a universal principle, that it applies to every Christian without exception. Wherever the new birth has taken place, wherever faith has been planted in the heart, there this wonderful power exists, there the believer is able to conquer the world, all the forces in this world that are opposed to the spiritual life in him, the entire kingdom of sin and evil. This conquest, this overcoming of the world, is a continuous process; that is the work in which the regenerate are always engaged. Not in their own power, indeed, do they battle with the forces of darkness, but in and by the faith which God kindled in them in conversion. Without this faith the professed believers would be lost, no matter what prodigies of cleverness and wisdom they may be otherwise. But with this faith they are victors even in advance, for they become partakers of the victory which their Champion, Jesus Christ, won over the kingdom of darkness. He overcame sin, death, and hell, and therefore these enemies are powerless against the faith which clings to the Savior and His victory.
This faith is, of course, not a matter of the imagination: Who is he that conquers the world but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God? There are many things in our days which are labeled faith that have nothing in common with saving, justifying faith, opinions which deny the redemption of Christ and fatuously rely upon the eventual recognition of the innate goodness of man by God. There is only one true faith, namely, this knowledge and conviction, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, that God Himself was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, that He is gracious and merciful to us for the sake of Christ. This only is faith, this conviction only has that almighty power of which St. John speaks; everything else is vain imagination. As the entire Christian life is a fruit of justifying, saving faith, so also the ceaseless conquest of evil with all its power.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
John continues to teach his readers about God's love and the love believers are to have because they have this new nature from God.
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is born from God
"is a child of God"
Because of this we know that we love God's children, when we love God and do his commandments.
"When we love God and do what he commands, then we know that we love his children"
For this is love for God: that we keep his commandments
"Because when we do what he commands, that is true love for God"
his commandments are not burdensome
"what he commands is not difficult"
burdensome
"heavy" or "crushing" or "difficult"
translationWords
believe
Jesus
Christ
love
ancestor
children
command
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 5:1-5 Those who believe that Jesus is the Christ…
5:1-5 Those who believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God have been born spiritually as children of God (see John 20:31). Such people are empowered by the Spirit of God to love him and others, and by their faith to obey God and overcome the evil temptations of the world. Through faith, they can love God and live in obedience to him.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.