Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 John 2:29

"If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him." — 1 John 2:29 (ASV)

There is a clear break in thought and a new topic—“tests for knowing the children of God”—introduced here. Attention naturally focuses on the Father (3:1) and the significance of being “born of him.” Since John never speaks of being “born of Jesus,” it makes more sense to conclude that the subject from the beginning of v.29 is the Father and that John depends on his readers to get the meaning from the total context.

Neither God’s righteousness nor that of the Son is disputed between John and his opponents (cf. 1:5; 2:1, 20; 3:7) but rather the significance of this righteousness. For John, to be born of God and to become his child means to accept as the standard for Christian conduct the Father’s righteousness as revealed through the Son (2:6; 3:7; cf. Matthew 5:48). Therefore, one must keep Jesus’ commands, especially the command to love, which also becomes the test for distinguishing who are truly born of God. Those who do his righteous will should know that they have been born of him. Righteous conduct is not a condition for rebirth but a consequence of it.

On the other hand, John’s opponents, who presumably also claimed rebirth, apparently thought of it not in ethical or moral terms but in terms of nature. They may have said that because they possessed the divine nature they could not sin (1:8) and were consequently removed from any obligation to the commandments (2:3–4). For them the proof that they were born of God lay in their new teaching, which freed them from commandments; in their knowledge, which enabled them to reject Christ’s coming in the flesh; and in their exclusivism, which allowed them to hate their brothers (3:17–20), forsake the community (2:19), and deny the commandment to love (3:10).

From the tone of the letter, we conclude that the denial of the necessity to keep the commandments had not yet led to flagrant immoral conduct among the dissidents but that the implications of their theological method were seen by John as allowing—if not encouraging—that possibility.