Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 John 5

The argument parallels 4:19. Even as we love only because God first loved us, so also our belief is possible only because we have first been “born of God.” The author is not addressing the question of incorporation into the family of God but is rather looking only at its result. “Believing” in Jesus is a direct consequence of our “having been born” of God and therefore becomes a test or proof of that birth. From this the author moves to a truism from nature: whoever loves one’s progenitor will also love those similarly born, even one’s brothers and sisters.

This statement troubles commentators because it reverses what is expected. One anticipates a conclusion like this: “And this is how we know that we love God: by loving his children and obeying his commands.” Instead the author concludes: “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.” Even as one cannot love God without loving his children, so also it is impossible to truly love the children of God without loving God also. Those who claim to love their brothers and not God have not truly recognized their brothers as those born of God and have not offered them the true love that comes from the Father. The author cannot really talk of loving God, however, without also linking his words to obedience to his commands.

The connection between love for God and obedience is meant to protect us against thinking of love for God as “emotional feelings” about God. Agape love requires action. In respect to humankind, it means willingness to lay down one’s life. In respect to God, it means a life of willing obedience, a filial relationship with God, and service on behalf of God. It requires laying down one’s life as being one’s own possession and taking up a new life in response to a Lord and Master.

John now qualifies what he has just said by adding, “And his commands are not burdensome.” To the natural man the will of God is strange; the requirement for righteousness, foreign and hard. Even the law of love is a burden. But when God enters into us and we trust God’s Son, then his yoke becomes gentle and the burden light (cf. Matthew 11:30). We who have been born of God have within us a desire and a yearning for the Father. Seeking and hungering after righteousness becomes our joy (Matthew 5:6). Living the life of love becomes our delight. The commands of God bring us the freedom and the liberty we so ardently long for.

“Everyone [lit., everything] born of God overcomes the world.” Our being born of God is God’s act on our behalf, through which he moves to overcome the world. What is in view is the supernatural act by which human beings are being translated out of the kingdom of death into the kingdom of life through the Son.

The victory that overcomes the world is now identified with “our faith.” It is best to interpret this statement as referring to a past event; John is emphasizing that the victory he refers to has already been won. By faith we now have access to what was once accomplished by and through the appearance of Jesus on earth.

Observe the progression of thought in what John says about how victory over the world is gained. It begins with the new birth (v.4a). It moves on to the believer’s experience and act of faith (v.4b). It culminates in the confession that “Jesus is the Son of God.” Victory requires the whole process. It assures us that we too can love God and the children of God and that we too can obey his commands (v.3). Belief, love, and obedience are all the marks of the new birth. And the life lived in the new birth is not a burden but a life of celebration. This was the experience of the apostles and of the early church. Paul’s cry that “in all these things we are more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37) echoed throughout the Roman world. Whereas at first the victories were thought of in terms of alien powers on the outside, Christian consciousness soon perceived that the victory included the internal enemies that confront the conscience, assail Christian beliefs and standards, corrupt the soul, and negate the life of love and obedience to God.

The confession with which the victory is linked is again the confession that “Jesus is the Son of God” (cf. 2:2–4:15). This is where the author began; it is also where he will end. Every single tenet of belief in God and of knowledge about him depends on obedient confession and commitment that Jesus is the eternal life that was with the Father (1:2). He is the Son of God. This confession has in view the false teachers who acknowledge Christ the Redeemer but deny his true humanity. Verse 5 makes the transition to the final exposition regarding the Son and provides the base on which the final section develops: the witness of the Father to the Son.