FAITHFULNESS

1 John 5:5-12

Genesis 1:1 HCSB

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:31 HCSB

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day.

John 1:1–3 HCSB

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created.

1 John 2:15–17 HCSB

Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything that belongs to the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s lifestyle—is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does God’s will remains forever.

John draws in his listeners by recalling the foundational beauty of God’s Creation and the role of Jesus as co-creator.

He also draws a clear contrast between the world God created (Genesis 1:1,31), and the world in which he lived (1 John 2:15-17).

The Bible, an account of God’s dealing with His world, explains the change beginning in Genesis 3 with the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Genesis 4 demonstrates the damage of sin as Adam and Eve’s sin-warped nature is passed on to their children.

Generations later, as recorded in Genesis 6, it is written that God ‘regretted’ (Gen 6:6,7) creating human beings.

After cleansing the world with a massive flood, Noah’s sons display the same in-warped nature that they inherited from their father, who had inherited it from Adam and Eve (see Genesis 5 for a detailed view).

Fast forward thousands of years and millions upon millions of people and John, writing to believers scattered throughout an unfriendly and a rapidly growing cult of emperor worship, among many other idolatrous practices, reminds his audience: the world - that is to say, that which God created - co-created with His Son, and with the Holy Spirit - has become almost unrecognizable.

For John - and most of the apostles and early believers - the world was a hostile and often overwhelming place.

Instead of advising believers to avoid the world completely, as we might expect and often wish he would do, he writes:

1 John 5:4–5 HCSB

because whatever has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith. And who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This statement of fact is John’s final ‘test’ of authenticity. In 1 John 4 he writes to encourage believers to focus on the priority of Jesus as the One and Only Son of God.

Last week we listened as John challenged his audience to love one another as God loves, evidenced in Jesus Christ.

Today, in the verses before us let’s look at one final test, one final way to identify themselves as a people of God:

HOLDING ON TO OUR FAITH

This week in my personal Bible reading - yes, through the opening chapters of 1 Chronicles - I highlighted this phrase (I’m reading from the ESV translation):

1 Chronicles 9:1 ESV

So all Israel was recorded in genealogies, and these are written in the Book of the Kings of Israel. And Judah was taken into exile in Babylon because of their breach of faith.

1 Chronicles 10:13 ESV

So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.

Breach of faith

Exactly what is a ‘breach of faith?’

The word translated ‘breach of faith,’ or ‘unfaithfulness’ in 1 Chronicles is

a term that was used earlier in the genealogies to explain the exile of the northern tribes east of the Jordan (5:25–26). Such unfaithfulness is consistently linked to illicit worship of foreign gods. The result of such behavior throughout his narrative account is divine discipline, the ultimate expression of which was the invasion by foreign armies and exile to foreign lands.

Mark J. Boda, Cornerstone Biblical Commentarya: 1-2 Chronicles, vol. 5 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2010), 98.

John, writing to a community being threatened by the overpowering presence of evil as personified by the Roman Empire, says

You can overcome the world!

Since most believers were not wealthy nor in positions of power and influence, this assurance (1 John 5:4-5)

John calls his audience to

Hold Firmly to Who Jesus Is

1 John 5:5–6 HCSB

And who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Jesus Christ—He is the One who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the Spirit is the One who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

Not to belabor the point, but an overcoming life shares the life of Jesus.

This Jesus is:

Son of God

Physically Jesus was born of a miraculous event:

Luke 1:31–35 HCSB

Now listen: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will call His name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end. Mary asked the angel, “How can this be, since I have not been intimate with a man?” The angel replied to her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

John is insistent on this truth. That Jesus physically came, that Jesus physically experienced life as we do, that Jesus died - a real, painful, death by execution: These are essentials.

John also insists on the truth: Jesus is the Christ.

The Christ: the Messiah, the Anointed One; the Promised One of God.

We know Jesus as the Son of God, as the Christ because of three witnesses:

a). The water

b). the blood

c). the Spirit

The water and the blood point to two specific points in Jesus’ life.

The water:

Listen to John’s own testimony regarding how he fully grasped the truth about Jesus:

John 1:32–34 HCSB

And John testified, “I watched the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He rested on Him. I didn’t know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The One you see the Spirit descending and resting on—He is the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and testified that He is the Son of God!”

The Blood:

Listen again to John’s own eye-witness testimony:

John 19:33–35 HCSB

When they came to Jesus, they did not break His legs since they saw that He was already dead. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows he is telling the truth.

The Spirit:

Again, John calls us to remember his own experience:

John 15:26 HCSB

“When the Counselor comes, the One I will send to you from the Father —the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father—He will testify about Me.

John 20:21–22 HCSB

Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” After saying this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

Hold Firmly to The Certainty of God’s Nature

1 John 5:9–11 HCSB

If we accept the testimony of men, God’s testimony is greater, because it is God’s testimony that He has given about His Son. (The one who believes in the Son of God has this testimony within him. The one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony God has given about His Son.) And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

Who is this God? I won’t repeat the earlier Scriptures…but this God is

CREATOR

SUSTAINER

REDEEMER

To question His self-revelation is to call Him a liar. Warren Wiersbe writes:

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Ten: What Do You Know for Sure? (1 John 5:6–21)

And if God is a liar, nothing is certain.

Hold Firmly to God’s Definition of Life

This ‘life’ originally existed - and continues to exist in the Father.

This ‘life’ is seen clearly in and through Jesus Christ.

As one writer defines it:

Eternal life is qualitative, not quantitive; it is the highest kind of spiritual and moral life, irrespective of time, which God enables the believer to share in a relationship with Jesus.

Stephen S. Smalley, 1,2,3 John, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 51 (Waco, Word Books Publisher, 1984), 287.

RESPOND AND REFLECT

What kind of life are you living?

Many believers simply go through the motions. Get up, go about their day. Go to bed. Repeat. Repeat.

The life - eternal life - that is ours through Jesus, from the very author and creator of life - is a life that overcomes the world.

We too often claim this as a ‘Someday, I’ll overcome....when Jesus comes back, then I’ll overcome.’

John, living as a prisoner, exiled to an island prison, cut off from family and friends, would have told you:

I have LIFE! I have ABUNDANT OVERCOMING LIFE!

It has nothing to do with our surroundings. It has everything to do with our relationship with God.

Do you believe?

Do you hold firmly to Jesus?

Do you fully trust in God’s character and nature…and are you growing in your understanding of who He is?

Do you live…or do you just get by?

Jesus has come, Jesus is here that you may have life…and have it abundantly!