Tonight’s Bible study looked at 1 John 5:1-12. The chapter starts by looking at the connection between being born of God and love and reiterates John’s firm belief (which echoes Jesus’s words in John 14:15, 21 & John 15:10) that love is chiefly demonstrated through our obedience: in Mike Pilavachi’s words ‘our love is proved by our obedience.’ John Piper comments that ‘you can know whether you love someone by whether you let the commandments of God govern your relationship‘ and goes on to say ‘‘The love for God that can test the genuineness of our love for man is an experience of God in our relationships with people that not only causes us to submit to his commandments but also to do it freely rather than begrudgingly. When you have this experience of God—what Elizabeth Elliot calls the “glad surrender”—then you have assurance that your love toward the children of God is real and no mere self-deception.’
This belief that God’s commands are not burdensome (1 John 5:4) makes no sense to the natural mind, but to those who are born of God, there is delight in exchanging our heavy burdens for Jesus’s light yoke (see Matt 11:28-30). The Christian life makes extravagant claims: here, John tells us that our faith overcomes the world. So often, we feel that the world is squeezing us into its mould rather than our faith overcoming the world, but the Message version says ‘the conquering power that brings the world to its knees is our faith.’ It is not our victorious person, Plummer writes, but the victorious power in us which overcomes. Indeed, the amazing truth is that we are invited by God to participate in His divine nature (2 Pet 1:3-4) and it is because of our identification with Christ (in His death, burial, resurrection and exaltation as Gal 2:20, Rom 6:4, Eph 2:6 and Col 3:4 make clear) that we can have confidence in ultimate victory. Our authority is determined by our position in Christ. We don’t have to walk around defeated because Christ has made us victors.
John goes on to talk about the power of testimony. Christ’s baptism and death (‘water and blood’) testify to the Father’s redemptive heart and the Holy Spirit testifies to all that Jesus has said and done (see John 14:26, John 16:15.) The continuing presence of Jesus’ power in the Christian community is experienced by believers as they are
- made alive (by the Spirit),
- cleansed from their sins (represented by water)
- and reconciled to God (by Jesus’ death on the cross).
These three things are “witnesses” because although the opponents can deny the apostolic eyewitness testimony regarding the importance of Jesus’s earthly life and ministry they cannot deny the present effects of Jesus’ actions in the lives of believers within the congregation. God’s testimony about Jesus (eg Matt 3:17 at His baptism or Matt 17:15 at His transfiguration) is that life is in Jesus (see John 5:26) and we have been given the enormous privilege of sharing in that life: life which is eternal (see John 3:16, 36 & John 20:30-31).