1 John 5
1 John is written for believers, but was not directly addressed to anyone, so it is assumed to be a circular letter - intended to be read and then passed around to other believers. So, in a way, John wrote this letter to us. His audience is anyone who believes in Jesus, but might have heard other teachings that would lead them away from depending on faith alone in Christ alone for their salvation.
The letter is a rebuttal of the early form of what would later become known as Gnosticism. I’m not an expert on Gnosticism, but from what I can tell it basically boils down to salvation by knowledge. The Gnostics believed that the more you know, the more “saved” you are. Or, to put it another way - they believed that you had to have a “special knowledge” in order to find your way to heaven.
The Gnostics also believed that the physical world was evil - full of corruption and decay - and that the spiritual realm was pure, so, depending on which way they interpreted that, they either practiced extreme physical and moral discipline to try to purify the body, or barely any physical or moral discipline at all basically saying that since the physical body was inherently evil, there was no point in restraining it from its desires.
I heard one pastor sum this letter up in an interesting way. He said it’s like we’re listening to John talking on the phone, and only hearing one side of the conversation.
John is arguing against an early form of Gnosticism in this letter, but we are only hearing his responses to their claims, and not the claims that he is arguing against. It doesn’t make what John is saying any less true. It just means we have to dig a little deeper to really understand what John is talking about, and why he is saying what he is saying.
John is making the point that salvation only comes from faith in Jesus as the Christ sent from God, and that to truly know God is to love His Son.
In 1 John 5 the letter starts with affirming the importance of what we know as the Great Commandment. To love God and to love each other. And he says that we show our love to God by keeping His commandments.
Then he drives home that the true means of salvation only comes from faith in Jesus, the Son of God.
And he concludes the whole letter with a strong reminder that morals do, in fact, matter. That sin is not to be taken lightly. And that God does want us to be righteous and morally upright.
Let’s work our way through this chapter piece by piece.
1 John 5:1-5
1 John 5:1-5 (NASB20) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and follow His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whoever has been born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
John tells us that everyone who believes in Jesus is a child of God, and that to love the Father is to love His Son and all His children.
Love and belief are intertwined here. Your belief that Jesus is born of God directly ties in with your love of God. And your love of God directly ties in with loving His children.
This reminds me of Mark 12:30-31, where Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, body, and strength, and to love our neighbor as our self.
John points out that to believe in God is more than just to know about Him; it is to love Him and obey Him. And that we can’t just love God in isolation - or only focus our love on the spiritual realm - but that by loving God we will also love all of His children.
John calls out a few aspects of salvation here. There is belief, but belief is evidenced by love, and love is evidenced by obedience.
This echoes from what Jesus said in John 15:10 - “If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in His love.”
But the first time we hear God say that He will show favor to those who love and obey Him is all the way back in the 10 commandments. In Exodus 20:6, which is part of the second commandment - not to make or worship idols - God told Israel that He will show favor to those who love and obey Him.
In fact, this whole chapter is kind of a 2nd commandment sandwich because here at the beginning of the chapter we have this idea from the second commandment that God favors those who love and obey Him, and the last sentence in this chapter is a reminder to guard ourselves from idols.
The meat of this chapter, as we will see, is that we are only saved by faith in Jesus, but that message is wrapped in the context of the second commandment. I think maybe John did this because the Gnostics, who he was refuting, were perhaps being misled by idolizing their knowledge.
You see, loving God is not just a head and heart thing, but it is also a hands and feet thing because to love God is to also follow His commandments.
He says that we show our love for God by obeying His commands. And he points out that obedience is not a burden when it is done in faith. It is not by knowledge that we overcome the corruption and decay of the world, but by faith that Jesus is the Son of God.
And he says that it is not burdensome to keep God’s commandments for those who love Him. But how is it not burdensome to keep God’s commandments?
Well, I heard a really good analogy of that… I think we can all relate to that feeling of being head over heels for someone. You feel like you would go to the end of the world and back to show your love for that person - no matter what it cost you. You’re every thought is consumed with them. Your heart is filled with joy and satisfaction when you’re near them, and it’s filled with longing when you’re not.
I think that’s the idea that John is trying to express here. When we love God like this, then following His commands is not a burden. We believe Him, and it shows because of our love for Him, and our love for Him shows because of our willingness to do whatever He asks us to do.
1 John 5:6-8
1 John 5:6-8 (NASB20) This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
The Gnostics had this idea that Jesus was a human that was temporarily inhabited by the Spirit of God.
But John makes sure to point out that Jesus was fully man and fully God. He came by water - like a normal person, and the spirit - which is the Holy Spirit, and also by the blood, which adds this element of God’s redemptive purpose to the reason that Jesus came into the world.
John says that He did not come by water only, but by water and blood - as a way of pointing out that Jesus’s presence on earth was not merely a physical existence, but that He was born with a divine purpose.
The blood signifies this divine purpose as we can see pointed out as early as the book of Leviticus. In Leviticus 17:11 God tells Israel of the significance of the blood. It says, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.”
This is a complex passage to understand, but I think John is just trying to remind believers that Jesus was fully God and fully man, and he is rebuking the Gnostic idea that the physical and spiritual realms are somehow opposite, or opposed to each other. Jesus was not a man who was temporarily inhabited by God’s Spirit, but He was the Son of God - that is to say, God took on the form of a man, and that man was Jesus Christ.
1 John 5:9-12
1 John 5:9-12 (NASB20) If we receive the testimony of people, the testimony of God is greater; for the testimony of God is this, that He has testified concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. The one who has the Son has the life; the one who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.
The main point of this chapter is stated in verse 12 - “The one who has the Son has the life; the one who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.”
Everything else that John says in this chapter points to our need to believe in, love, and obey Jesus. And John clearly makes his point by saying that there is only one way to eternal life and that is through faith in Jesus.
And John leads us into this point by comparing God’s testimony about His Son to the testimony of men. He says that God’s testimony is that eternal life is in His Son.
And we find God’s testimony about His Son in many places throughout the Old Testament. In fact there are said to be more than 300 Old Testament prophetic scriptures that are fulfilled in the life of Jesus.
The first of which is all the way back in Genesis 3:15 where God told the serpent, “And I will make enemies of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
I looked it up and found some pretty extensive lists of these scriptures, but it would take a whole series of sermons to cover them all. There is one chapter, though, that we can look at and see a good example of God’s testimony about His Son being true. And that is Isaiah 53. It’s 12 verses, full of prophetic descriptions of God’s suffering servant, and you can easily see how all of them point to Jesus.
An interesting note about Isaiah 53 is that it causes so much confusion for the Jews who are taught not to believe in Jesus that the rabbis actually skip it in their weekly synagogue reading plan. On the week that they read Isaiah 52 they stop about half way through, right before the part about the suffering servant, and the next week they pick up with Isaiah 54. And it is perhaps just this kind of thing that John is talking about when he says we should believe God’s testimony instead of the testimony of man - otherwise we make God out to be a liar.
So, with that in mind, let’s read Isaiah 53 - and also keep in mind that Isaiah lived about 700 years before Jesus.
Isaiah 53
Isaiah 53 (NASB20)Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of dry ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we would look at Him, Nor an appearance that we would take pleasure in Him. He was despised and abandoned by men, A man of great pain and familiar with sickness; And like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.
However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore, And our pains that He carried; Yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted, Struck down by God, and humiliated. But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; The punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, And by His wounds we are healed. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all To fall on Him.
He was oppressed and afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off from the land of the living For the wrongdoing of my people, to whom the blow was due? And His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
But the Lord desired To crush Him, causing Him grief; If He renders Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, For He will bear their wrongdoings. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the plunder with the strong, Because He poured out His life unto death, And was counted with wrongdoers; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the wrongdoers.
Keeping with the idea that God’s testimony is true - even Jesus Himself said that the only means of salvation that God has made available to us is to believe that He is the Son of God. In John 14:6 He said,
John 14:6 (NASB20) "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
And again we hear the echo of the combining of love and obedience in John 3:36 where Jesus said,
John 3:36 (NASB20) "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."
All of this is meant to emphasize to us that there is no amount of good deeds, or knowledge, or anything else that can be substituted for faith. You either believe God and have faith that Jesus is the Messiah and that He died for your sins, or you do not.
Everything else that you do with your faith is to be an expression of your love for Him, by obedience to Him - not some form of payment to Him - or an attempt to earn your salvation.
1 John 5:13-15
1 John 5:13-15 (NASB20) These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.
Remember that John is talking to believers. He’s not telling people how to get saved, but assuring them of their faith. He reminds us that nobody is perfect and we all need to pray for each other.
John is telling us that we are called to righteousness through our faith, and we are empowered to be righteous by our faith. We are not expected to be perfect in order to keep our salvation, any more than we are expected to be perfect in order to receive our salvation.
We also are to pray according to God’s will, not just our own. Instead of praying for bigger houses and fancier cars we should be praying for more faith, for strength to overcome temptation, for direction and ability to serve those in need, for greater ability to love each other, and for greater capacity to glorify Him.
We should also pray for God to put His peace in our hearts so that we do not try to take matters into our own hands, but rather so that we will humbly submit to Him and agree with the work that He is doing in our lives, and in His creation.
An easy way to tell if you are praying according to God’s will is to see if anyone in the Bible prays about those things. Jesus gave us the example of the Lord’s prayer. And Jesus also talks a lot about praying. Paul records many prayers. And there are many prayers recorded throughout the whole Bible.
What I notice is that most prayers are not focused on personal gain, but rather on the benefit of others, or on the benefit of God’s nation and people, or the benefit of God’s name and glory. The Lord’s prayer is a good example of a prayer for personal benefit, but Jesus even worded it to include other people other than just the one praying.
One of the great prayers to study is Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17:1-26, which could be a whole other sermon, so we won’t dig into it right now.
1 John 5:16-17
1 John 5:16-17 (NASB20) If anyone sees his brother or sister committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will, for him, give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death; I am not saying that he should ask about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death.
John mentions the sin that leads to death - and tells us not to pray about it - and that kind of sounds a bit mysterious, but there are a few other places in the Bible where this same idea can be found.
In Numbers 15:30 it says, “But the person who does wrong defiantly, whether he is a native or a stranger, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people.”
So there’s a sin that’s done out of our weakness, and then there’s sin that’s done out of pure defiance - meaning you could resist it, and have the opportunity to resist it, but you desire the opposite of resisting it, and choose to intentionally defy God instead.
Basically it boils down to your heart in the matter. Are you committing a sin that you struggle with and will repent of, or are you habitually sinning and refusing any form of repentance?
And as for not praying about it, we see in Jeremiah 7:16 that God tells Jeremiah not to pray for Israel because He is fed up with their defiance. It says, “As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not plead with Me; for I am not listening to you.”
And in Jeremiah 14:11 you see again where God tells Jeremiah directly not to pray for Israel because He wants to put an end to them. It says, “So the LORD said to me, “Do not pray for a good outcome on behalf of this people. When they fast, I am not going to listen to their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I am not going to accept them. Rather, I am going to put an end to them by the sword, famine, and plague.”
So this idea of not praying for the sin that leads to death is very serious. It basically means that someone has chosen to intentionally oppose God. They are doing the opposite of loving God, and God doesn’t want to hear any prayers or petitions on their behalf. Instead they have made themselves an enemy of God.
We should pray for the salvation of believers, and of those who do not know God, but I think the Bible says that we should not pray for the salvation of God’s enemies - those who know Him but do not fear Him.
Remember that John is addressing ideas that were being spread by the Gnostics. The Gnostics, presumably, were willfully twisting the Gospel in ways that were contrary to God’s will. They were using their belief in the inherent evil of the physical world as justification for their lack of self-control. Rather than repenting, they were using the Gospel as an excuse to keep sinning. And John was basically saying that there is no hope for them because they are being deliberately defiant, and he echoed Jeremiah in saying not to even pray for them.
1 John 5:18-20
1 John 5:18-20 (NASB20) We know that no one who has been born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
John reminds us that the world does lie in the power of the evil one, but that God keeps us, his children, and does not allow the evil one to touch us. And he reminds us that Jesus is the Son of God who came and has given us understanding so that we may know Him and be in Him who is true. And that in Jesus we have eternal life.
He’s repeating this at the end of his letter because it’s really the main point of everything he has been talking about. There is evil in the world. We do need to guard ourselves from it, both physically and spiritually. And Jesus is the Son of God sent to us to save us from evil, and sin, and rebellion against God.
God created this world, and He created us to live in it, but He did not create us to remain defiant against Him. He knows that we have the ability to be defiant - or rather the inability not to be defiant - and He still loves us, so He made a way for us to still come to Him despite all that. And that way is through believing in His Son Jesus who died for us and cleared a narrow path for us to get to heaven.
Believing in Jesus, and following His narrow path by loving Him, obeying Him, and loving each other is all we really need to focus on. Everything else …well, it tends to turn into idols.
1 John 5:21
1 John 5:21 (NASB20) Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
John closes with a simple statement to guard yourselves from idols. And that stands out to me as a warning against what was, perhaps, at the root of the Gnostic movement. Was it that they idolized their knowledge, or their books, or their “secrets” to the point that they started twisting the Gospel to fit with the idols that they did not want to give up? If that’s the case, then we need to be careful that we do not do the same.
Do not let anything in this world lead you into a similar fate as the Gnostics. Don’t let money take hold of you so that you start looking for scriptures to justify your idolization of it - this is what we commonly call the prosperity gospel.
Don’t let power or fame take hold of you so that you start looking for scriptures to justify your chasing after it. It’s pretty clear that the lust for power has taken over many rulers in this world, but this, surprisingly, is also a fault found among some church leaders - they like the attention so much that they twist scripture in ways to justify and increase their prominence in the congregation.
What I’m saying is don’t cherry pick parts of God’s word in order to justify something you might be idolizing. Instead take that idol to the feet of Jesus and ask Him to set you free from it.
Our salvation, and our eternal life, are purely in the hands of Jesus. We are simply to believe Him, love Him, and obey Him. Not as if we’re doing chores, or providing payment, but as people who are head-over-heels in love with our God. Who can’t get enough of Him. Who would do anything to make Him happy. And who can’t wait to be with Him.
And one last thing I would like to mention about knowledge is that the Pharisees thought that they knew what the Messiah would look and act like when he came. They were not expecting someone like Jesus, so they rejected Him because He did not fit what they thought they knew He was going to be like. Don’t make that same mistake. Don’t assume that you know what Jesus will look like when He comes back. He may very well be the opposite of what you expect.
Instead of assuming that you can put God into the box of your understanding, surrender your ego and your notion of “knowing it all” to Him, and just wait to see what He is going to do, and where He wants you to follow.
The first time Jesus appeared, everyone expected Him to be a conquering ruler, but He was a humble servant. When He returns, He very well may be the conquering ruler and most people will be expecting the humble servant.
Seek knowledge and understanding like silver and gold, but - like silver and gold - don’t ever think that you have all of it that can be had.