1 John 5

Jesus Was The True Testimony of God

In the final section of this sermon, the apostle John emphasized again that God had provided ample evidence that His redemptive plan for the world would be accomplished through His Son Jesus.  It was through the acceptance of this truth that Christians could resist false teaching, “conquer the world,” and be confident before God. 

Faith And Obedience

Believe Jesus is Christ

Vs. 1 - Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him.

In verse 1, John continued his train of thought from the previous section  He reminded these believers that their position as a child of God was evidenced by their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, and that their love for God was evidenced by their love for one another. 

Obey His Command of Love

Vs. 2 - This is how we know that we love God’s children: when we love God and obey his commands.

Throughout this sermon, John asserted that the evidence of knowing God and living in a right relationship with Him was loving as He loves.  To love God and others was the greatest commandment, and the apostle returned to this over and over in this letter.  Loved people will love people. 

Conquer The World

Vs. 4-5 - Everyone who has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith. Who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Earlier in this sermon, John advised these Christians to resist loving the “world” around them. 

1 John 2:15 -  Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

In other words, the apostle called them to receive and reflect the love of God rather than aligning their affections to the priorities and perspectives of their present culture.  The Apostle Paul said it this way, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2).

Here in chapter 5, John spoke again of “kosmos” and how these Christians could conquer or overcome it.  He used the phrase 3 times here to emphasize that a Christian’s trust in God’s redemptive plan accomplished through Jesus enables him to love God and others rather than to set his affections on what is fleeting and foolish. 

The “Testimony” of God

Since our faith overcomes the world, then we need to know exactly what we must believe to build our lives upon. John is going to give us the foundations for faith, what we need to believe concerning Jesus.         - Brent Kercheville

Water and Blood

Vs. 6 - Jesus Christ—he is the one who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood.

No doubt, if we knew the circumstances in which John was writing and had full knowledge of the heresies against which he was defending his people, the meaning would become clear but, as it is, we can only guess.                   - William Barclay

Many commentators speculate that John pivoted here to address very specific heresy affecting his audience.  One of his purposes for writing this sermon seems to have been to clarify misconceptions or false teaching concerning Jesus’ humanity and deity and the sufficiency of His death and resurrection as the atoning sacrifice necessary to accomplish God’s redemptive plan for the world. 

Those who taught Gnostic-type theories did not believe that the person who died on the cross was Jesus Christ the Son of God. They claimed that ‘the Christ’ (i.e. God) descended on Jesus (the man) in the form of a dove after his baptism and empowered him to do miracles, but departed before his crucifixion. According to them, the Jesus who suffered and died was merely a man. He was not ‘the Christ’. In other words, ‘the Christ’ came through water (his baptism) but not through blood (his death).

John emphatically denies this by saying that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, through both experiences. John quotes three witnesses as evidence to support this. The first is the water, for Jesus was already both God and man when he was baptized. The second is the blood, for the person who died on the cross was both God and man. The third is the Spirit, for Christ’s indwelling Spirit is the one who confirms this truth to the Christian (1 John 2:20; 1 John 3:24; 1 John 4:13). When the testimonies of three witnesses are in agreement, they must be accepted as evidence that cannot be disputed.                 - Donald C. Fleming

Testimony

The words “testify or testimony” are used 8 times in this short section.  They are translated from different forms of the Greek word “martyrian,” meaning witness or evidence.  John’s point was that God had provided ample witness/evidence that His redemptive plan for the world would be accomplished through His Son Jesus.

There Are Three

Vs. 7-8 - For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and these three are in agreement.

Three primary evidences are given to “testify” that Jesus was sent from God to bring eternal life: the baptism of Jesus (water), the vicarious death of Jesus (blood), and the confirmation of the Holy Spirit.

John was present at both the baptism and the crucifixion of Jesus. Moreover, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to John and other believers to aid their understanding (John 16:13).            - Robert W. Yarbrough

It is interesting to note that the presence of this short section about “three that testify” is not present in all manuscripts. 

Not a single manuscript contains the Trinitarian addition before the fourteenth century, and the verse is never quoted in the controversies over the Trinity in the first 450 years of the church era.       - Ryrie

The English Revised Version omits this verse, and does not even mention it in the margin, and none of the newer translations includes it. It is quite certain that it does not belong to the original text.

The facts are as follows. First, it does not occur in any Greek manuscript earlier than the 14th century. The great manuscripts belong to the 3rd and 4th centuries, and it occurs in none of them. None of the great early fathers of the Church knew it. Jerome's original version of the Vulgate does not include it. 

Originally it must have been a scribal gloss or comment in the margin. Since it seemed to offer good scriptural evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity, through time it came to be accepted by theologians as part of the text, especially in those early days of scholarship before the great manuscripts were discovered.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with it; but modern scholarship has made it quite certain that John did not write it and that it is a much later commentary on, and addition to, his words; and that is why all modern translations omit it.                       - William Barclay

God’s Testimony: Life Through Jesus

Vs. 11-12 - And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. The one who has the Son has life. The one who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

This is the content of God’s testimony. Eternal life is inseparable from the person of Jesus Christ. Some of the false teachers seem to have tried to separate them. Jesus Christ and eternal life are one gift from God.              - Thomas Constable

False teachers were apparently attempting to parse Jesus from God’s salvific promise of eternal life. Throughout this sermon, John continued to bring his audience back to this simple truth.  

1 John 2:25-26 - And this is the promise that he himself made to us: eternal life. I have written these things to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.

God’s Son is the source of eternal life, and those who accept God’s testimony and believe in his Son have eternal life also.       - Donald C. Fleming

So That You May Know

Vs. 13 - I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

John made similar statements of purpose again and again in this sermon, reminding these Christians how they could have assurance that they belonged to God and confidence they were living in communion (right relationship) with Him and others.  His primary emphasis was the necessity of placing trust in Jesus as the Son of God, the perfect atoning sacrifice for sin, and the Giver of eternal life.  It was through the acceptance of this truth that Christians could “conquer the world” and be confident before God. 

Confidence Before God

This was the fourth time that John addressed fear, shame, or lack of confidence in this sermon.  Because of false teaching, these Christians were apparently confused as to how they could be confident in their present position as children of God and ready for Jesus’ return.

Prayer

Vs. 14 - This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

Prayer is another expression of the believer's trust in Jesus Christ and "confidence" before God.  Trust in Jesus Christ is therefore as basic to success in living the Christian life as it is to obtaining eternal life.    - Thomas Constable

Jesus and the apostles spoke often about praying in the name, or in the authority, of Jesus, but John’s instruction to pray “according to the will of God” is somewhat rare in the apostles’ teaching. 

Jesus teaches us to pray: "Thy will be done," not, "Thy will be changed." Jesus himself, in the moment of his greatest agony and crisis, prayed, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt.... Thy will be done" ( Matthew 26:39; Matthew 26:42). Here is the very essence of prayer. C. H. Dodd writes: "Prayer rightly considered is not a device for employing the resources of omnipotence to fulfill our own desires, but a means by which our desires may be redirected according to the mind of God, and made into channels for the forces of his will." 

Here is something on which to ponder. We are so apt to think that prayer is asking God for what we want, whereas true prayer is asking God for what he wants. Prayer is not only talking to God, even more it is listening to him.                 - William Barclay

Vs. 16 - If anyone sees a fellow believer committing a sin that doesn’t lead to death, he should ask, and God will give life to him—to those who commit sin that doesn’t lead to death.

John spoke of praying for the will of God in the lives of others, but added a caveat here that “God's aim and our prayer can be frustrated by the man for whom we pray” (Barclay).  In other words, there are some instances where both God and a believer may desire something for another brother or sister that he or she refuses to accept.  

Over and over in scripture, we see that God does not force Himself on humans.  He reveals Himself to the receptive and conceals Himself from the calloused.  A man who resists the truth is allowed to choose the path that leads to death.  

Commentators note that there is almost no mention in scripture of specific sins “that lead to death.” Most of the apostle’s teaching reserved this judgment for rejection of Jesus as the Son of God.  Perhaps, it was this denial of the sufficiency of Jesus’ Messianic ministry that was in view here, a refusal to accept what John had just described as the clearly revealed testimony of God (1 John 5:11-12). 

John may have been speaking about apostasy (denying the apostolic truth).  John called on his readers to leave these offenses and offenders in God’s hands rather than agonizing in prayer about them.        - Robert W. Yarbrough

Protection

Vs. 18 - We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin

Here, John repeated the same seemingly contradictory call to sinlessness that he had already made earlier in the sermon (1 John 3:4-10).  The plain reading of these passages can be jarring and feel contradictory not only to John’s own teaching but also to the rest of scripture. 

John had clearly communicated that Christians would continue to experience temptation and sin, and that, when this occurs, we should confess our guilt to God Who is faithful to offer forgiveness through Jesus, our “atoning sacrifice” and “advocate” (1 John 1:8-10, 2:1-2).

But the apostle wrote in chapter 3 that the person who sins is a child of the devil who has not seen or known God.  And here, he repeated that children of God do not sin.  

Many commentators believe this entire sermon was written to correct Revisionists’ teaching, some of which may have included false ideas about the theology of the body and the seriousness of sin.  With this view in mind, John must have been addressing some specific false teaching around ongoing sin in the lives of Christians.  

There are multiple interpretations of these passages in 1 John, but two are prevalent. (More detailed notes in 1 John 3 commentary)

Verb Tense View

John is repeating his idea from 1 John 3:6: Whoever abides in Him does not sin. The grammar in the original language makes it plain John is speaking of a settled, continued lifestyle of sin. John is not teaching here the possibility of sinless perfection. As Stott says, “The present tense in the Greek verb implied habit, continuity, unbroken sequence.”                    - David Guzik

Abiding View

As in 1 John 3:9, John affirmed that the basic nature of one who has God for his spiritual Parent is not to sin. The regenerate person as such is incapable of any sin. Furthermore because the new man in Christ possesses the sinless nature of the indwelling Christ, John could say that Christ keeps him from sin          (John 17:12; Revelation 3:10). Evidently John restated this fundamental truth because people normally behave in harmony with what they believe themselves to be. Our behavior as Christians will be more holy when we view ourselves as children of God rather than as children of the devil.       - Thomas Constable

One interpretation holds that genuine Christians struggle with sin rather than surrendering to it.  The other view holds that all Christian surrender to sin at times, but the believer who is abiding or remaining in God is not sinning.  And when he does sin, he does so because he is not practicing God’s presence. 

Regardless of preferred interpretation, what is not debated is that John taught that, though Christians will sin, they should strive to avoid it. Perhaps false teachers had minimized and rationalized all kinds of destructive behaviors, but John reminded these believers that their spiritual condition was directly related to their response to God’s law of love.

Vs. 18 - but the one who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.

Another potentially confusing component of this passage is that John used the phrase “everyone who has been born of God” to describe Christians and then the phrase “the one who is born of God” to describe, according to most commentators, Jesus, as Protector of His people.  John was likely referring to the believer’s security in Christ, his preservation from the power of his spiritual enemy. 

What John probably means here is that He who has been born of God (that is, Jesus Christ) keeps him (that is, the believer). John means that we are kept by Jesus and protected from Satan by Him.     - David Guzik

Jesus, The True God And Eternal Life

Vs. 20-21 - We are in the true one—that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols. 

John ended his sermon with one final challenge.  It was his desire to remind these Christians of the sufficiency of Jesus as God’s Messiah and the dangers of believing otherwise.  He desired that his “little children” in the faith would continue to walk in the light of the truth they had accepted from the apostles so that they could live in communion with God and with others and be confident and ready for Jesus’ return. 

John repeats that Jesus Christ, the Son of God who died for sinners, is the true God and he gives believers eternal life. The substitutes invented by the false teachers are false gods and must be avoided.      - Donald C. Fleming

It is hard for us to imagine how much Ephesus was dominated by the Temple of Diana. It would not be easy for a Christian to keep himself from idols in a city like that. But John demands that it must be done. The Christian must never be lost in the illusions of pagan religion; he must never erect in his heart an idol which will take the place of God; he must keep himself from the infections of all false faiths; and he can do so only when he walks with Christ.                  - William Barclay