April 17, 2024
Author: Pastor Bernard Ibrahim
April 17, 2024
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
1 John 5:1-5
I would like us to take a few thoughts from this passage and really break it up. There is a couple of ways to break it up because there's a lot of repeated words. You'll notice that phrase, ‘everyone who’ or ‘whoever’ in the end of verse one. Same word in the Greek, everyone or whoever, that really points to all inclusive, each human, every being and that's throughout the whole passage all the way through. You see in verse 4, “For ‘everyone who’ has been born.” There's another way to look at it and there's another theme here about love, you can see it in verses 1, 2 and 3. There's another theme about faith, believing, you see it in verse one, “Everyone who believes.” Then you see also all the way down to the end, it actually starts and closes with almost the identical idea, “Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God,” and it starts with whoever, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.
I would like us to look at this first verse on its own, looking at it from the perspective of the words of Christ. First the words, “born of God.” You may remember Jesus talking to Nicodemus in John 3:3, shocked him with this truth, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus is telling Nicodemus, this is how you get to heaven, this is how you get into the kingdom, this is how you become righteous, this is how you have a relationship with God, you must be born again. In John 3:7, “Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.” A call to the gospel. John is telling us by the Holy Spirit, “If you believe Jesus is the Christ,” anyone or everyone who believes, that means they have faith, that Jesus is the Christos, the anointed one, literally the Messiah, the promised one in the Old Testament, in all of the New Testament, Genesis through Revelation, that's the promised one. This Jesus, the person who was born, came down incarnate, lived, died and was resurrected again by the entire testimony of the New Testament; if you believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is evidence. These are several (just like in 1 John and 2 John) truths or axiom phrases. You believe Jesus is the Christos, is the anointed one, you've been born of God. This is an assurance of salvation. What do you believe about Christ? A good person? You haven’t been born of God. A historical figure, a prophet? You haven’t been born of God. If you believe he is the Messiah that was promised and evidenced in Old Testament and New Testament, you've been born of God.
And then he moves in the same sentence, “Everyone who loves the Father, loves whoever has been born of him.” Notice he uses this phrase, “born of God,” or born of him and I believe that's what ‘the him’ is referring to, God the Father. He shifts his focus, “If you love the Father, you love those who were born of him. And those that are born of God are ones that believe that Jesus is the Christ.” So you notice this chain of axioms, this chain of truths that's walking us through this passage around faith and love and Christ.
Notice in 1 John 4:20, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’” (that's why the chapter breaks are not always helpful for us because it's the same idea), “If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: (this is from Christ), whoever loves God must also love his brother.” This idea that if you love God, you love your brother assumes you're in a church, you're in relationship with your brother; the analogy of a body, we're all connected and this analogy of the church, the family, brothers and sisters together, who you can see, you can see on video now, you can see every Sunday, every time we meet. This is another axiom. Love God, you love your brother and sister. Don't love your brother and sister, you don't love God. They're equivalent.
You might ask, how do we know if we love our brethren? 1 John 5:2, “By this we know we love the children of God,” he answers the question, “When we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.” This is the definition of love. What's the definition of love? Loving God's children, loving our brother, we love God and we obey His commandments. That's the definition. What does love look like for the believer? We obey his commandments. The scriptures are full of commandments for us in how we're to love God and how we're to love one another. Remember Christ summarized the law, “Loving God with all our heart, mind and soul, strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves.” Jesus stated it best in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Love demands and produces true love, produces obedience. Yes, we fear God, we obey him because it's the right thing to do. But for the believer, we should obey out of a heart of love. We desire to please the Father, we desire to please Christ, we desire not to grieve the Holy Spirit and that should also motivate our obedience.
If you turn to 1 John 5:4 you have the same ‘everyone’ phrase, “For everyone who has been born of God,” and now he shifts the focus to overcoming, “overcomes the world.” We heard about this from Pastor Dunn in that second session in the Men’s Conference, “Overcomes the world.” This is the victory and this is the same word as overcomes. Overcomes is the verb form and this is the victory or this is the overcoming. It could be translated in the noun form ‘nike’ like the sports gear, the sports shoe, and this is the ‘nike’ that has overcome the world, our faith. Notice our relationship to being overcomers and overcoming is related to our faith. You can think to yourself, faith? What does that entail? Our faith through the scriptures and especially through the New Testament, is an enormous topic. But you can go back to verse one and say, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christos, the anointed one, the Messiah?” That's definitely included and necessary. Who is it that overcomes the world? Who is it that has victory over the world except the one who believes or has faith that Jesus is the Son of God. Our overcoming, our victory is not in our own strength. We often don't feel too victorious day to day, but that is truly our identity in Christ. In John 16:33 before Jesus begins to pray in John 17, he closes his discourse. You may remember John 13, 14, 15, 16, the upper room discourse, he closes this discourse with, “I've said these things to you,” summarizing, “that in me you may have peace, in the world you will have tribulation.” It doesn't feel like victory, it's a fight, a struggle, trial, difficulty. But he says, “But take heart, I have overcome the world.” That's where our victory is. It's in Christ, our trust, our faith, our following after him, our obedience to him, our love for the Father, our love for his children, our brothers and sisters, through obedience to his word.
My encouragement to you in these very dense passages is that our victory, our hope, our trust, our love in fact is all bound into our believing, following, and trusting God and having faith in his Son who he sent and not in our own strength. And this should encourage us when we feel differently than what we actually are in truth. We are overcomers, we are believers, we are children, we have been born of God.
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