1 John 5:1-5

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. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Familiar Journey With an Unexpected Destination

Have you ever taken a walk in the woods on what you thought was a familiar path and ended up in an unexpected place? That is how our text seems to me. John begins with familiar themes that capture the essence of the letter (vv.1-2a) and then in the middle of verse 3 he takes us to the unexpected. By the time we arrive at verses 4-5, he is on the theme of overcoming, conquering or being victorious.

My aim is that we will individually and collectively know and experience this victory that overcomes the world by faith in Jesus Christ.

Three Litmus Tests of the New Birth (vv.1-2)

In 1 John, the Apostle John aims to assure believers that they are genuine and that they are not like the false teachers that had arisen in their midst. Although the false teachers had now left, they had caused great harm in the form of unbelief, doubts about Christ’s divine and human nature, hatred, and disobedience.

So in this letter, John assures these believers over and over by means of what have been called three “tests” of genuine spiritual life. These tests are like litmus tests. I remember in 10th grade Biology testing liquids to see if they were acidic or alkaline. We would take a piece of litmus paper and dip it into each liquid. If it turned red, it was an acid solution. If it turned blue, it was an alkaline solution.

But in 1 John, they are not totally separate tests. John is testing for one thing, authentic rebirth. All the tests will indicate the same way. The outcomes will agree with one another. All three tests are condensed and represented in verses one and two of 1 John 5.

1. The Truth Test: “Everyone who believes that Jesus [the man] is the Christ [the Son of God] has been born of God…” (v.1a).
2. The Love Test: “…and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him” (v.1b).
3. The Obedience Test: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” (vv.2-3a).

Here’s the flow of verses 1-2, in my own words. Believing Jesus is the Christ (that’s the truth test) is the result of having been born of God. And those born of God are obviously his children, and as his children will both love God the Father and love the other children of God (that’s the love test). Third, this love for God and love for one another will be demonstrated by obeying his commandments (that’s the obedience test).

The Commandments (v.3)

I want to ask the Apostle John, “Which commands are you talking about?” If we ask John which commands, he might direct us back to 1 John 5:1-2 and say, “The commands to believe in Christ, love the Father and love one another and obey.

Or similarly, he might direct us back to 1 John 3:23 where he lumps believing in Christ and loving one another into one command, “This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” This reminds us of Jesus’ two-fold summary of the commandments, “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’” (Matt 22:37-40).

God’s Commands May Seem Burdensome

John is a good veteran pastor and apostle. He knows that what he has just written about keeping God’s commands might have the opposite of his intended effect and discourage believers. So he adds in the middle of verse 3, “And his commandments are not burdensome.” Why does he add this? Because he knows that all this talk about commandments might sound like an excessively heavy burden to sinful people.

The “Burden” of Belief—The command to believe in Jesus Christ might sound like a burden to you if you think of it as trying hard to conjure up more faith in your heart, like wringing more and more water out of a stone that yields no water at all. Apart from grace, the command to believe in Christ would certainly be burdensome.

The “Burden” of Love—The command to love one another might just sound the most burdensome to American Christians like you and me. Ours is a self-centered culture that promotes narcissism. Our culture fits the joke, “How many narcissists does it take to change a light bulb? One. He holds the bulb while the world revolves around him.” You can smell the ugly idolatry of it all: in the name of me, for the glory of me, for the sake of me. It’s having the mentality of, “Other people take too much time, and they are too much work! I won’t be able to do what I want to do! I won’t be able to watch what I want to watch! I won’t be able to read when I want to read! I won’t be able to go where I want to go, eat what I want to eat!” Self-pity, pride, and holding a grudge feel lighter than compassion.

I came across some quotes from a popular musician to the effect that he preferred the sexual life of pornography because he could turn it off or on when ever he wanted, he could pursue anybody he wanted electronically, and he could do it all by himself without anybody getting in the way. We are a self-centered culture.

And in the church, our self-centeredness might just go under the table. We might pretend to have a form of a caring, kind interest in others while at the same time feeling that all these people around us are a burden and wish we could scream, “Go away!” So, yes, the command to love might sound like a burden, too.

The “Burden” of Obedience—Like the command to believe and love, so also, the command to obey God might sound like a burden to you if you think of it in terms of more duty-driven obedience to God, more checking off the list of God’s demands, more begrudging Bible reading, more Bible memory, more going to small group when you don’t want to, and more singing when you would rather not.

This perception of the commands of God as duty-driven burden is contrary to faith—contrary to the gospel. So, please, don’t misunderstand John and take this text as burden—as spiritual push-ups—to be done in your own strength. Why not? Because in Christ, something has happened to us that changes everything.

Burden-Free Commandments (vv.4-5)

The reason the commandments are not burdensome for believers is because everyone born of God overcomes the world (v.4) by faith (v.5). This is the key. 1 John 5:4, “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” That is in the present tense, “overcomes the world today.” We presently can overcome the world. And so that we don’t miss the point, verse five asks a rhetorical question to stress the role of faith, “Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

What does John mean by “world”? He uses the word “world” again in verse 19, “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” So we can say that “the world” refers to the realm of all things that are under the domain and power of Satan. 

Turn back to 1 John 2:16 where John describes what is in the world, “For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.” Any sense of the burden of God’s commands to faith in Christ, to love and to obey him is of the Devil. And it is our sin. This is what is wrong with the world, the power of Satan, human sin and sinful desires. What verses 4 and 5 are saying is breathtaking because it is so comprehensive: By faith in Jesus Christ, we overcome the power of Satan in this world and the power of sinful desires.

Overcoming the World

How does this work? How do we overcome Satan and sinful desires? God does three things.

1. God gives us the faith he commands by the new birth.

God commands us to believe in Jesus Christ, his crucified son (1 John 3:23). But Satan, the god of this world, has blinded our minds apart from Christ to keep us from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor. 4:4).

The command to believe in Christ is not a burden because God gives it. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

In verse 1 of our text, the tenses of the verbs there are significant. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” The word translated “believes” is in the present tense and the word translated “has been born” is in the perfect tense. In other words, verse one reads like this if I stress the tenses, “Everyone who presently believes that Jesus is the Christ has already been, and continues to be, born of God.”

Why is that significant? Because it reminds us that if we believe in Christ today, it is owing to the fact that God gave us life, spiritual birth. Or to put it another way, your belief in Christ today is evidence that God has already given you the gift of spiritual life. It does not say that we were born again because we believed. It says because we believe today, we know that we have already been born of God.

He humbles us, reminding us that the evidences of spiritual life within us are not owing to ourselves but owing to the prior work of God causing us to be made spiritually alive by the Holy Spirit. God is the author of our faith and every other spiritual fruit in our lives.

2. God enables the love he commands by the new birth.

God commands us to love, but we can’t love God, or love one another, as we should apart from God. Flip back to chapter four and observe the result of our being of “born of God” in the verses. 1 John 4:7-11,

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

In other words, when God gives us spiritual birth, we come to know God and his love for us in Christ, demonstrated when he sent his Son to die to absorb his anger toward us and forgive our sins.

So the command to love is not burdensome because by faith we have come to “know and believe” the love God has for us in Christ (1 John 4:16). We have been greatly loved and cannot help but love God in return and love fellow children of God. Galatians 5:14 says, “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” and Romans 13:8 says, “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” By faith, we believe the love God has for us and thereby are enabled to love.

3. God enables our glad obedience by the new birth.

1 John 5:4-5, “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” God removes the sense that his commands are burdensome by the new birth, granting us faith to trust him through Jesus.

The thought in the word “burdensome” is not that obedience to God is always easy. But that it is not an irritating or impossible burden. But that, though God’s commands may be challenging, it is a delight to trust him, believe and live according to his word.

By the new birth we are changed. God’s Spirit is now within, enabling and sustaining our faith.  By faith, we have come to know the love God has for us in Christ. And knowing his love, we don’t see his commands as burdensome but as his counsel, his fatherly direction, for our good. Romans 8:4, “In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

The End of Dead Religion

In this text is the end of spiritually dead religion, the end of Christ-less, faithless, loveless Christianity, Word-of-God neglecting, overwhelmingly-defeated-by-the-devil-and-our-sins Christianity. Because, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” This is Christ-centered Christianity, faith enabled by regeneration, believing the love of God for us, overflowing in love for others and obeying God’s commands.

The victory of Christ Jesus over Satan, sin and death has become our victory by faith. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55-57). “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8:37). My hope and prayer is that we would have faith to overcome the world and sin today.

By way of illustration, I read the conversion account of Elijah P. Lovejoy, a printer and Presbyterian pastor in Alton, Illinois in the 1830’s. Before his conversion, he knew he was not a believer and was a typical newspaper printer. But after his conversion, the evil of slavery overcame him; he didn’t write about it before his conversion but after he did. Through his writing, he made the whole Midwest upset. He had a sense of the danger he was in but he understood the calling God had put on his life. A mob surrounded his print shop and he was shot five times with a shotgun and my third great-grandfather was there; that is the connection for me. I think it is a picture of overcoming the world. He had a settled sense of his salvation and the power of God so that he could push back on the power of Satan.

Another illustration, I think we can generalize the teaching on biblical manhood and womanhood in marriage to all of life by stating men should generally serve women. So I was at a coffee shop and noticed the toilet was clogged in the bathroom. I went to the barista and said, “Your toilet is clogged. Give me the plunger.” She was almost offended as though I was saying she was unable to do it. My effort to serve her is an illustration of pushing back the worldly, fleshly impulses of self-protection and pride; it is a humbling thing to plunge a toilet.

So my prayer is that today we would overcome Satan, sin and the world through faith in Jesus. We only are able to overcome because Jesus, who loved us, overcame sin, death and the devil. If you remember one thing about this message, remember this: the Christian life is lived from beginning to end by God-given faith in the Son of God who loves us and gave himself for us. By faith in him we overcome the world—the power of Satan and the power of our sin and sinful desires.