1 John 5:1–5

5:1 John continues to insist that one who loves God must love other Christians as well. Here he does so by identifying those who have been born of God. Everyone who trusts in Jesus as the Messiah (implying the full confession just discussed in 4:14–15) has been born of God.¹ Thus, anyone who loves God will love those who are born of him. If we love him, we will love his children.

John’s point will continue with love, but it is worthwhile to pause to note that John has identified faith as another mark of conversion. Faith is central to Christian living, as John will make clear in 5:4–5. This does not mean, however, that all who simply profess faith have been converted. John makes clear that saving faith has a transformative effect. Such life-transforming faith is a mark of the children of God.

5:2 Having written earlier that love for believers proves one’s love for God, John now states that love for God proves one’s love for believers. This is not double-talk, however. John is implying that this divinely implanted love moves in both directions, necessarily producing love toward people and toward God. Furthermore, the love of others that John is commending is not merely human. We love others properly when we are also loving God. A “love” that places any human, rather than God, as primary in our affections is not proper love. As Calvin comments, “Men are rightly and duly loved, when God holds the primacy. . . . For it often happens, that we love men apart from God, as unholy and carnal friendships regard only private advantages or some other vanishing objects.”²

True love for fellow children of God is seen also in obedience to God’s commands, one of which is the requirement to love fellow believers. The first point showed that love for believers includes loving them under God, for God’s sake. This point shows that love for fellow believers is a holy, obedient love. We are not loving others well when we disobey God for them or encourage them to be disobedient in any way to God’s commands. This cuts right across our culture’s idea that loving someone requires one to affirm whatever that person does.

5:3 Having just mentioned love for God and obedience to his commands as elements of loving others, John now makes clear that these two elements are actually one. To love God is to obey God. John is not denying that affection is a part of love, but here he continues to speak of the active side of love. Proper affection for God will lead to obedience. Where there is no obedience there is no affection for God, despite claims to the contrary. This is what Jesus himself said (John 14:15, 23–24).

The statement that God’s “commandments are not burdensome” does not mean that obedience is easy. Indeed, the Bible is replete with explicit teaching and examples of the difficulty of obedience and the suffering it often entails. Rather, as the next verse will state, divine power is available to enable obedience. Furthermore, the commands of God are all for our good. They are not weights bearing us down and preventing us from attaining true life. They are just the opposite (John 6:63; Psalm 119).

5:4 Even though God’s commands cut across the desires of fallen humanity, they are not burdensome because “personal faith enables believers to break free from the world’s downward pull.”³ “Our faith,” the faith of those who have been “born of God,” provides victory over this world system, which fights against the things of God (cf. comment on 2:15).

The believer’s “victory,” in this context, would seem to be a “love for God through faith which joyfully embraces God’s commands.”⁴ This is not a triumphalism that suggests we always succeed in the world’s eyes. Rather, it is an overcoming of the temptations and seductions of the world by trusting that God’s commands are good and right (Ps. 119:137) and therefore joyfully obeying them despite our fallen flesh. Such victory over the world entails trusting God even when it hurts, even when it seems to cost us. This is true victory, and it comes by faith: trusting God in order to obey him.

5:5 John personalizes the point of verse 4 and specifies the faith mentioned there. This victory comes not merely by believing something. Our culture suggests we should “only believe,” regardless of what we believe in. As long as we have faith in something, the world claims, that is all that matters. John does not agree. Rather, what matters is faith in Jesus as the Son of God. The object of our faith is key. This is the confession that began this section and was explained in the preceding one (4:14–15). Belief in Jesus shows that one has been born of God and enables one to overcome the world.