Chapter 5

1 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. [1Jo 5:1 ESV]

Another angle that tests true teaching vs false. 

2022 - Another easy self-test.  Quick confidence.  Those in church who "hate" about half the people in their Sunday School class, and who would never ever associate with them outside of class - and usually I think it would be the most Godly in the class that bothered them most - know in their hearts that they feel this way!  The saved, just as surely, know they do NOT feel this way towards others in the church.  If you think maybe the virgin birth is just a made up miracle to elevate Jesus-worship to legend worship, but didn't really  happen?  Then quite simply, you are not born of God, you are not saved, you are not Christian, you are pretender.  It is interesting that we can really never know what feeling is in the heart of others toward the saved, but we can always know what is in our own.  IF we get close enough to others, spend time with them, see them at their worst and at their best, we might get a peek at who they really are.  Most people, most normal people, will let their real feelings show when they are under stress.  That is when the truth comes out.  We also, ourselves, ought to take particular note of what came out of our mouths the last time we got in a jam.  More than one place says the tongue speaks what is in the heart.

2023 - I think the above is correct...but I don't think that's really what John is trying to tell his readers.  It just does not seem to me that John's point was to give us "self-tests" so that we can know WE are saved.  He is giving us "other-tests" so that we who are saved - and saved people are most definitely those to whom he is writing - can recognize a false teacher, and anti-Christ, when we hear him.  We can recognize them by what they say about Jesus and by how they deal with their Christian brothers and sisters.  By how they behave toward dissenters, toward those who call them on their unorthodox teachings.  These beliefs about Christ and the way we behave toward others do apply to each of us as saved.  But he is writing to us BECAUSE WE KNOW we are saved, and so we won't be unsettled by the false teachers.  That is what this verse is about.  EXCEPT...see note 2022 - 1Jn 5:13 below. 

3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. [1Jo 5:3 ESV]

John circles back to the first point.  If we live a life of wilful sin, we do not love God, nor do we feel that keeping his commandments "keeps us from the good things in life".  We know the difference.

2022 - Both 1 and 3 need to be memorized.  Why is there no "mission field" for lost church attenders?  Why does no one test the hearts of the church?  Is that what James 5:16 is about also?  Confessing truth?

2022 - This verse also:

5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? [1Jo 5:5 ESV]

This is the concept that Peterson is always trying to construct from the evolution of mankind.  He gets that we need to overcome the world - its suffering, its malice, its greed and vindictiveness.  He gets that despite all the horror that the world can and does throw at us, we need to rise above that and do good instead.  But he does not see, or refuses to acknowledge, that believing that Jesus' teachings are indeed God-sent teachings for the benefit of mankind, and that Jesus and his commandments ought to be embraced, not because they rest atop a billion years of evolution, but because they came from the One who "invented" us, and who therefore knows what is best for us...and He does not try to keep that a secret from us! 

This verse, that I am pretty sure has caused a lot of problems over the years.  Jesus born of water in natural childbirth.  Jesus born of blood when he was raised from the dead after shedding his blood. 

6 This is he who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. [1Jo 5:6 ESV]

MSB says they refer to Jesus' baptism and death.  Further, MSB says that God gave testimony to who Jesus was by his baptism (where God spoke from heaven, and the Holy Spirit descended as a dove) and by his death, from which He was raised. 

2022 - Reread the MSB notes on these verses.  They aren't all that satisfactory.  He ties all this testimony stuff to the OT Law requiring two or three witnesses.  Water and blood are each witnesses. 

I think this first part, about water and blood, establishes that Jesus was the first, and at that point the only one, raised from the dead as a result of his perfect life.  Jesus laid down his life, and it was Jesus who took it up again.  No other resurrection in the Bible prior to that time was attributed to the one who had died.  I don't see that we are talking here about water baptism.  Go back to the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus about being born again.  If John is talking about water baptism here, then wouldn't we have to say that Jesus was talking about water baptism here:  5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. [Jhn 3:5 ESV]?  And that means that to belong to the kingdom, you have to have both a water baptism and a Holy Spirit baptism.  It makes water baptism essential to look at it this way.  It makes water baptism necessary but not sufficient.  I don't think it means that because Jesus is answering Nicodemus question about re-entering his mother's womb.  They were talking about birth.  Basic, simple, straight-forward birth, always accompanied by water breaking, in both man and animals.  Jesus is saying you have to be born a person (abortion is before this????) and the Holy Spirit must indwell you....this isn't sounding any more satisfying than MSB, though. 

So go back.  Born of water is physical birth.  Born of blood is life after death.  But how are we to connect bloodshed, blood spilled, and new life?  Born of flesh as flesh, born of Spirit as spirit?  Spirit-birth is only possible after the blood is spilled?  The spilling of water isn't integral to physical birth, it is incidental it.  The shedding of blood is not integral to Spiritual birth, it is incidental to it.  This is closest.  This sounds like the right explanation.  So what comes next?

2022 - The Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is truth.

This isn't the Law.  This is only one, yet is the truth.  Unquestionably the truth, because the Spirit is God.  I searched for an OT verse that says "The Lord is Truth" or something like that, in ESV and KJV.  Didn't find it. 

Found these two: 

160 The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. [Psa 119:160 ESV]

17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. [Jhn 17:17 ESV]...

Maybe I'm making too much of it.  The MSB note says we are going beyond mere witnesses here.  The Spirit of God cannot lie, therefore the Spirit is truth, unimpeachable.

2026 - Here:

6 This is he who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. [1Jo 5:6-8 ESV].

Instead of "came by" read this as "born of" and all is clear, especially in vs 8.  Jesus was born of THE Spirit, born of water, and born of blood.  He was a Spirit, with God, before his incarnation.  So he came from - he was born of - the Spirit.  He was born of water, as a baby, when Mary's water broke and he was born as a human child, entirely physical.  He was born of blood when he came back form the dead.  He was born from his death, born of the blood, the firstfruits.  That's what these three mean.

2026 - The Greek word translated "came" in vs 6 is a form of "erchomai", Strong's G2064.  It is used 643 times in the KJV.  616 of those it means "come".  Therefore, using it as "born of" is entirely incorrect as a translation, though it works very will I think as an interpretation.

2026 - Oh my...here is an even better way of translating it, at least to my mind:

6 And Jesus Christ was revealed as God's Son by his baptism in water and by shedding his blood on the cross--not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit, who is truth, confirms it with his testimony. [1Jo 5:6 NLT].

The voice from heaven at Jesus' baptism is in view.  This was the "revealing" of Jesus as the Son.  Then remember the Roman soldier...Truly this was the Son of God, at his death on the cross.  The Spirit descended as a dove at the baptism. 

NOTE that this is NOT a translation but an interpretation.  Compare to ESV.  Look how much liberty has been taken.  I believe NLT is probably what this passage means, but I am not ok with that much interpretation.  My whole "born of" idea works quite well here too...but that is NOT what it says.

This whole section needs to be studied in more detail than I have time for on a Friday morning.  It talks about water and blood, then it talks about the three who testify.  Seems to be a lot to consider here, and it just plain needs more time.  The section ends with this verse:

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. [1Jo 5:12 ESV]

2021 - This verse seems to address a strategy of the false teachers.  The implication is that these teachers are trying to bypass the role of Christ in access to the Father.  That is what Islam does, what Roman Catholicism does.  These John is addressing seem to me more likely to be teaching that since Jesus was flesh, he was not perfect.  He was therefore not the required perfect sacrifice, and it was still imperative to go directly to God - either through the law or some new set of rituals the false teachers had set up.  John is making it absolutely clear that trying to bypass Jesus is a road straight to hell.  John's gospel is also full of these statements that if the road is going to salvation, it must, and always does, and only can, go through Christ.

2022 - Here is the very verse where John tells us to whom he is writing:

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. [1Jo 5:13 ESV]

Hmm...is my introductory note wrong then, about how this is NOT written to Christians who doubt their own salvation?  Vs 13 here pretty much says that the letter is indeed about assurance.  He IS writing to those who DO believe.  To reinforce their confidence in the face of false teachers who would instill doubt in their minds and move them away from following the commandments of God.  John wants his readers to understand that THEY have as much authority to question the false teachers as he himself has.  They need to be confident in this, not cower in the face of elitist authority.  If they will look inside themselves, they will know that they are saved by the gospel as evidenced by the internal change that went with that, and is still extant in them - and which is qualitatively different than what the false teachers have.

Another verse of assurance:

14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. [1Jo 5:14 ESV]

God answers the prayers of believers.  Not every one as we want it answered, not every one even in a way we recognize AS an answer, but there will be answers that are clearly, definitely God's answers to our prayers.  As we see more and more of these in our lives, we gain confidence that we are in Him

2023 - This verse:

16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life--to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. [1Jo 5:16 ESV]

Looked to MSB on this one.  MSB says this is not about a specific sin, but is about the "last straw" sin that leads to death.  In Acts we read about Ananias and Sapphira, who dropped dead for lying to the Holy Spirit.  That lie, for each of them, was the sin that lead God to strike them dead - to judge them - on this earth.  So this is not talking about going to hell or heaven - though we might have some suspicions about where such people end up for eternity.  We also see in Corinthians where some were eating and drinking death to themselves by profaning the Lord's Supper.  Very different from what Ananias did.  No one could have prayed for God to overlook the sins of Ananias and Sapphira and been effective.  God was done with them.  Same with the Corinthians.  There was a point beyond which some of them went that God judged immediately.  Prayer would not have helped them either.  God won't answer THIS prayer of the believer, but will answer any other.  Think of the verses in the OT where God tells Jeremiah not to even bother praying for Judah and Jerusalem, because God will not hear those prayers.  And the verses about Job, Noah, and Daniel, saying even these could only save themselves in that situation.  So this theme of sins unto death runs from OT to NT.  But any other prayer, any prayer that is thus in accordance with his will and not contradictory to it, will be answered. 

BUT, we might also speculate about whether these sins unto death are still in the world?  They were certainly there under the Law, and John tells us here that they are present under the New Covenant.  Were they like the miracles of the apostles though?  Did they only stay until the church age was kicked off?  I don't see that being the case because their presence in the OT does not fit that criteria.  I think we have to believe such sins are still here, they still happen.  Perhaps not as dramatically as with Ananias and Sapphira, but we see people in the church die unexpectedly quite often.  We just usually don't know them well enough to even suspect that it was because of sin unto death, but I have to believe that some, a few or a lot, are because of that.

2023 - In light of 1Jn 5:18 We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. [1Jo 5:18 ESV], where the words "keep on" are added, and the word translated sinning, as a participle, is NOT a participle at all in Greek, I think this section of Romans helps us in translating what John means.  In the NASB95, the verse starts this way, more clearly translating what the text says:    18 We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. [1Jo 5:18 NASB95].  How do we explain this?

When we are saved, we are baptized by the Spirit.  We are immersed, by the Spirit, into Christ.  So we who are in Christ were in him when he died.  In like manner, when Christ rose, we who are in him by virtue of our salvation also rose from the dead.  Now after Christ rose, did he sin?  NO!!!  And we who are saved are now IN HIM so far as God sees us?  Yes, of course.  Then being IN CHRIST, we NO LONGER SIN.  Note that in 1Jn 5:18 the verb for "born" is in perfect tense, meaning something done in the past with continuing results which need never be repeated.  John goes to some trouble with verb tense here to make sure we understand that he isn't talking about people who CLAIM to be saved, but about those who ACTUALLY ARE.  And such people, truly saved, according to Romans 6, are IN CHRIST, who does not sin, and therefore the saved DO NOT SIN!  This is how John means it.  This whole paragraph came up the morning after a Wednesday night when the speaker talked on this verse in 1John, using the NIV, which interprets the Greek as "those born of God will not continuously sin".  But continuously is not in the Greek and not implied by the verb tense.  I argued in the discussion after that we ought not read it with "continuously" in there, but look deeper to understand why John said it the way he ACTUALLY SAID IT!  And I think in Romans 6 this morning, I can now explain why he said it that way.  John was telling those he was writing to that neither men, nor angels, nor things above...and so on....can separate us from God, because there is never ANY BASIS on which to accuse us. Because the saved do not sin!  Once saved, always saved!

And as I am writing this, Dwight called and gave me this...we all have an experience of Christ, and we all have a position in Christ.  Here, I think John is focused exclusively on our position in Christ.  In Christ we have no sin.  In our daily lives, we sin.  A help in this is that in Ephesians, we are already "seated in the heavenlies with Christ".  But when I look out the window today, I do not see the heavenlies, I see that the neighbors mowed their yard finally!! 

The reservation I would still maintain, though, is that even though there are different perspectives here,  I THINK the ESV translators went too far when they snatched "keep on" right out of the air in 1Jn 5:18.  It is neither there in the Greek, nor implied in the Greek.  AND, if we just take the ESV interpretation of the verse, portrayed as if it is translation, we miss that entire "position" vs "experience" contrast!  We cannot go there, because the "answer" has already been fed to us with a spoon!

And one more thing...I do not know whether John spoke this verse in fisherman's Hebrew, and some stenographer/translator immediately converted it into Greek, based on HIS understanding of Hebrew, such that saying "it isn't there" is just an exercise.  And that charge is valid unless you believe that God has preserved his word - in many different translations - such that it is still NEVER WRONG, even in the NIV, though perhaps it is a little distilled.  So all I am doing, and I need to consider whether it is worth the time I spend on it, is putting the water back into the product.  Some translations make beef jerky out of ribeye steak.