1 John 5:1-13 - Born Again by Belief in God’s Work

1 John 5:1-13

1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. 4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

The Certainty of God’s Witness

6 This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7 For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.

9 If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which He has testified of His Son. 10 He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. 11 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.

This is the certainty we have in Christ Jesus, the Son of God in whom we have believed and received (John 1:12) as our sovereign Lord and Savior from our sin’s just reward.  If we truly believe into Him and not just have mental assent or emotional attraction, then we are born of God.  If we are so born of God in Christ, then we love not only Him for our rebirth but we also love all others who are born again to this same living hope (1 Peter 1:3) in Christ.  Loving others then results in loving God above all others and then loving others by keeping God’s word in all things.  He has written His commandments on our new hearts of flesh and blood (Deuteronomy 9:10, Jeremiah 31:33-34, 2 Corinthians 3:3) with the finger of God by grace, no longer on external cold stone tablets of rote compliance to in a vain effort to earn His favor.  To love God according to the greatest commandments (Mark 12:30-31) is to willingly and thankfully do all He has recorded in scripture and transcribed onto our renewed hearts out of love.  We have certainly over the world by the faith given us (Ephesians 2:8) in this goodness of God’s grace in His Son to reconcile us to Himself (Colossians 1:20) by trusting and taking Him at His word that Jesus is the very divine Son of God and no mere man.  This Son came of human birth and divine origin to shed sacrificial blood to pay for our sins once and forever as no yearly animal sacrifice ever could, those being just a shadow of the perfect sacrifice of God’s own Son in place of Abraham’s (Hebrews 11:17-19) as a further foreshadowing of our deliverance by faith in God’s sacrificial work for us.  The witness of God doing these things is clearly recorded for eternity in the scriptures that we may have a certain hope witnessed by faith.  If we were to doubt or reject this truth, we would be calling God a liar in our cosmic treason of disbelief in God’s own testimony to the truth.  What is the testimony?  It is eternal life (what never ends in duration or possession) in the Son of God in whom we put all our confidence and trust by taking God at His word as it is written for us to understand the mystery of Christ in us (Ephesians 1:18, Colossians 1:27) as our hope that springs eternal from knowing Him.  Simply put, if we have God’s Son we have this life.  Without Him we remain spiritually dead in our sins.  We are born again by belief in God’s work through His Son and not our efforts to earn His favor.   These words have been written to us by the Lord through John to believe in the name of Jesus Christ the Son of God in person and work that we may be assured of our eternal life in and with Him and that we do not waver or stumble in this certainty.