1 John 5:1-12 Knowing God Through Faith in Jesus
Notes
Transcript
The New International Version Chapter 5
5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Jesus overcame the world
Jesus overcame the world
What is faith and where does it come from?
What is the water and the blood? To what extent can we say “I don’t know what this means” and that’s ok?
How does the Spirit testify today? Firstly - through the word. All scripture is
εόπνευστος
θεόπνευστος - breathed by God.
A stark choice - believe or don’t believe. What is belief? Putting on your wellies.
What’s weird?
What’s weird?
When prepping a sermon - I look through and find the weirdest thing, and the most important thing. I see my job as highlighting the most important thing, and explaining the weirdest thing.
Why explain the weirdest? That’s what I want from an expositional sermon - I want to leave knowing what the hard bits mean. And it’s better for non-Christians.
In this passage, the weirdest to me is v6-8.
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
We always sing songs about blood when my friends and family come.
Mind the gap
Mind the gap
There is a lot that’s weird in the Bible. Not weird because it’s inherently so, but because of the GAP.
Cultural, historical, linguistic
Cultural:
Cultural:
E.g. Queueing. Standing on the left on an escalator. I’m not a fisher, or a farmer. I have never bought a field, or a pearl. For me, looking after pigs would be kind of surprising but not shameful.
E.g. Queueing. Standing on the left on an escalator.
Historical
Historical
What was going on at the time? Our era is preoccupied with Brexit.
Linguistic
Linguistic
"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had the examiner’s approval." Efficient vs. effective is an example of what not to do.
Who can cross the gap?
Who can cross the gap?
So can only experts read the Bible? NO.
So some of what we read is weird. Familiarity makes things less weird. Maybe if we’ve been a Christian a while we need to hear the weird again. It’s a bit like being in a neighbouring country - we think things will be the same but they’re not.
So I promise today we’ll look at the weird, but we must make sure we focus on the important.
What is this passage all about? What did it mean for John when he wrote it? What does it mean for us?
:1
1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.
Back on the spiral
Back on the spiral
Back on the spiral stairs, looking out of the love window
A reminder of the window we’ve looked out of before on this spiral staircase - love. Love from God to us.
Love from us to God.
Love from us to His Son.
Love from us to His children.
Indivisible. That’s where this passage starts. You can’t love God if you don’t love His children. Compare with human relationships. And notice how this passage starts with Jesus as God’s child (singular), but then radically extends that to children (plural, un-gendered). We’re reminded again of this:
1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
It’s worth repeating. I don’t know your story very well, but I know mine. I know the things I’ve done. I know the things I’ve thought. I know the way I’ve carried shame so heavy that it almost choked me.
I also know my heritage. I know that I’m nobody special, despite my dad believing that he’s the long-lost laird of a castle in Scotland that is 70% crumbled into the sea.
But I’m called a child of God. Despite those things. Not because of being a pastor. Not because of cleaning up my behaviour. Because of love.
It’s amazing what knowing your identity will do.
Love, obedience, trust - can’t be un-entwined.
So here John ties together the assurance that has been woven through out his letter. We know because we love. We love because we obey. We obey because we believe. We obey because we love. Obedience, love and trust - tied together and unable to be un-entwined. We can’t say we love God but don’t believe in Him. We can’t say we trust in Jesus but don’t obey Him.
And now John writes something that must have sounded remarkable to his first hearers:
4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
The world in the New Testament generally refers to the great system - the powers, both individual and general. You might call it The Man. To John’s readers it was the great Roman Empire, which brought peace through force. It tolerated everything but intolerance. It spanned thousands of miles. If you were on the right side of it it brought luxury and security, but on the wrong side you could be killed for entertainment.
To many readers of the New Testament, the world was the religious
The world was also the prevailing system of thought - more greek than Roman, with its dualisms of spirit and flesh.
And the world was the economy - the endless buying and selling and sometimes ripping people off. Remember who first opposed Paul in Ephesus :
23 About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. 24 A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. 25 He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. 26 And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. 27 There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.”
28 When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” 29 Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together.
Acts 19:23-
I wonder what trades would be disrupted if massive swathes of people were led “astray” to Christ here? What level of revival would it take for drug dealers to be up in arms? What level of revival would close betting shops, threaten tobacco companies, close sweatshops as people stop idolising their appearance?
John claims we can overcome it. Overcome the great empires and powers. Overcome the systems of thought. Overcome the economy built on idols and exploitation.
Visit to Byblos. All empires gone. But Christ remains.
All empires gone. But Christ remains.
Do you feel like an over-comer?
33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Sometimes preachers get a bit too excited about this stuff. You can go to conferences and pay money to learn how to overcome your boss and get a promotion. How to overcome your singleness or your lack of finance. That’s not the over-coming that Jesus is talking about, and it’s not the overcoming that John was talking about. Jesus overcame through resisting evil. He was offered the world on a plate by Satan, and He turned it down.
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
: 2
Be cautious about anyone who tries to tell you, or sell you, a picture of victory that Jesus Himself wouldn’t recognise. Yes, there is stuff about how He will ride on the clouds in majesty in the end, but that is not the point at which He overcomes. At the point at which He told His disciples that He had overcome the world, He was just a man, in a room with His friends, waiting to be betrayed unto death.
He overcame the world when He healed the sick and brought the outcasts in.
He overcame the world when He appeared before Pilate, who represented the power of the Empire, and Jesus didn’t flinch.
He overcame the world when they mocked Him on the cross, and He didn’t turn away from His mission.
You can’t overcome the world without Him. No-one can. History is littered with mighty men who met shameful ends.
So now we get to the weird bit. The water and the blood. There are three or four main ways that this has been understood but pretty much everyone soon after John and now agrees on one main interpretation. And that’s an important point in itself. How do we choose between conflicting interpretations? How do we know with confidence what scripture means?
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
1 john 5:6-
Let’s look at what we know.
We know that John is writing of historical things - he talks about the way that Jesus came. He seems keen to highlight the blood, “not by water only”.
John isn’t writing for fun. He’s writing to convince. We know that at that time there were those who said that Jesus was an ordinary man, conceived of in the normal way by Mary and Joseph, but that at His baptism “Christ” descended on Him, but then left him before his death. This was because the idea that God would be demeaned by death was inconceivable in a worldview where matter is impure and spirit is pure.
The disinfected cockroach to illustrate purity.
Most scholars believe that John is arguing against this - that he is saying that Jesus was Christ - at the baptism by water, and at the death in the blood. And he says that the Spirit of God testifies about this.
So that’s the weird. There are more layers to it which you can think about if you want to. You can think about sin, and how both water and blood are involved in rituals of atonement. You can think about how when Jesus died, blood and water flowed out of his side. But I’ve been persuaded that the main thing that John is referring to here is the materiality, the realness, the embodiedness of Christ in Jesus.
Fitting for advent.
So in what way has the Spirit testified about Jesus?
26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.
Jesus Himself said that the Spirit would testify about Him. I think the Bible gives us two answers as to how.
The internal witness of the Spirit
The recorded witness of the Spirit through the Bible
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
2 timohy 3:16
We see the early church empowered as witnesses by the Holy Spirit. The internal witness and the recorded witness work together. And the result of the witnessing Spirit
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
So I started by saying that I like to look at what’s weird, and at what’s important.
What’s weird here is the reference to blood and water. We looked at how that spoke into a key challenge to the gospel in John’s day. We face some of the same challenges.
But what’s important here? What do we take away from this passage?
I wonder if the Holy Spirit has been drawing your attention to anything in this?
I think this passage is about lots of the things that this letter has focused on. It’s about assurance in God that comes from love, obedience and trust. It’s about overcoming the world because we are children of God. It’s about who Jesus really was.
But so what? What does that all mean for you today?
If you’re a Christian, I think this passage issues a kind of challenge. What bears witness for you? Why do you believe in the Son of God? What would you say to the objections of your friends or family? What would you say to the false teachers in the church? For those of you who love people who are muslim, you might have similar answers to John here. You would actually focus on the blood. You would want to show that Jesus really did die, that He wasn’t substituted at the last minute by someone else.
What evidence are you relying on?
If you’re not a Christian - or if you’re not sure if you are one, then the important thing here is pretty much the important thing that you’ll hear every Sunday, in every passage. What are you going to do about the claims of Christ? and the claim. Some people are well-meaning and wrong (anti-vaxxers). Some people intend evil and are right. There are truth claims here - and like every other truth claim you meet, you need to evaluate the claimant and the claim.
John offers a very clear choice here - you either believe, or you don’t. John says that this is the message of God:
11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
1 John 5:
Jesus is the Son. To “have” Him in this context is to believe in Him.
Trust carries an umbrella
Trust carries an umbrella
A quick word about belief. Belief in the Met Office could simply mean that I believe there is a met office, that they exist and that they do weather forecasts. Trust in the met office means packing my umbrella when they say there’ll be rain. The kind of belief in God that the Bible talks about isn’t the former. It’s not about saying “yeah there’s a God, his address is 1 Heaven, yeah nice guy, so I’m told”. It’s packing my umbrella (or building an ark) when he says rain is coming. It’s being on my guard when he says that I’m more proud that I think I am. It’s putting all my hope in Jesus, and not in myself.
So do you have the Son? Do you believe in the Son of God? John is writing here to Christians but all are welcome to read along over their shoulders and check out the arguments.
So to the children of God - you overcome the world through faith in Jesus.
To the ones who are not sure - what do you make of the claims of God?
LAND THE PLANE!