1 John 5:1-6 (NRSV)
1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of
God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. 2By this we know
that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3For the love of
God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not
burdensome, 4for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this
is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5Who is it that
conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is
the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but
with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the
Spirit is the truth.
John, in verse 1, harkens back
to the Gospel and the words of our Lord, where Jesus speaks of being ‘born from
above’ or ‘being born again’. We believe that Jesus is God’s Messiah, not just
another religious leader, but the revelation of God to the world, a one-off
event, and this reflects the fact that we have experienced a re-birth into a
new family. We have been filled with the love of God in the power of the Spirit
of God and as Barclay explains, “… the love of God and the love of man are
inseparable parts of the same experience …” This is why Jesus said that the
greatest commandments are “Love God … and love your neighbour …”
It becomes the natural thing for us, siblings of God through
re-birth, like human siblings, we will naturally love those who are part of our
new family with God as our Father. Jesus put it quite starkly (as recorded in
Mark 3:35 ): “Whoever does
the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” If we love God, then we
ought to love all the other children whom God has begotten – it is all part of
the same love. C S Lewis suggested that the purpose of life is: “To love and be
loved.” He was not alone. A E Brooke is more specific and wrote: “Everyone who
has been born of God must love those who have been similarly ennobled.”
Desmond Tutu takes this idea radically forward. While
acknowledging the singularity of Jesus as the Christ of God, Tutu claims that
‘all’ are God’s children, even those who do not accept Jesus as Lord in this
life. Tutu’s views give a real dignity to all and this inspired him to treat,
even those who did repugnant things during the Apartheid era in South Africa,
with the same love. This seems to depart from what John is saying here – but
could it mean that those who belong to the household of faith should display a
special love for each other? This does not preclude them from loving all –
without exception? I think Desmond is on to something. Did not Jesus speak
about his house as having many mansions? What about the ‘Good Samaritan’? What
about Paul’s reference to those who obey the law ‘instinctively’ (Romans 2:14 )? I include the passage below
for your reflection:
14When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do
instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a
law to themselves. 15They show that what the law requires is written on their
hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting
thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them 16on the day when, according
to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of
all.”
In verses 3-4a, we are
reminded that obedience is part of love; that being obedient to Christ and His
command to love is central to our faith. As we know, this is difficult to achieve,
because Jesus commands us not only to love the lovely, but also those who
persecute us and make our lives miserable, even our enemies. I have to confess
I often struggle with this.
But verse 3 also reminds us that ‘… his commands are not
burdensome …’ they are not like the laws of man – like those of the Scribes and
the Pharisees of Jesus’ day - which can be intolerable. John is probably
remembering the words of Jesus when he said “My yoke is easy and my burden is
light.” (Matthew 11:30)
But we also know that Jesus never commands us to ever do
anything without also equipping us with the ability and the strength to do it.
We are reminded that a word used for the Holy Spirit is the ‘paraclete’ which
literally means the friend (cleitos) that is along-side us (para – parallel).
When we struggle it is because we are trying to achieve things in our own
strength. Jesus probably reminded his disciples on countless occasions that
“What is impossible for man, is possible with God.” Jesus lives deep within us
in the power of his Holy Spirit.
Barclay also reminds us that our response to God must always
be the response of love, ‘… and for love no duty is too hard and task too great
…’ He illustrates this with a lovely example:
Someone once met a young boy
going to school before the days of public transport. He was carrying on his
back, a smaller boy who was crippled and unable to walk. The stranger said to
the boy: “Do you carry him to school every day?” “Yes,” replied the boy. “That’s
a heavy burden for you to carry,” said the stranger. “He’s no burden,” said the
boy, “He’s my brother!”
Reminds one of the song that was popular when we were
teenagers: “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother …”
Increasing I look for the ineffable in the ordinary – and
thanks be to God, I find it more and more often. Patricia Long, in her book
“Partners and Friends” writes:
“In a beautiful sermon entitled
"The Power of Love," Paul Tillich, one of the great theological minds
of the twentieth century, writes of a Swedish woman who aided prisoners and
orphans during the first World War. She ended up in a concentration camp
herself because she gave aid and comfort. Tillich writes, "It is a rare
gift to meet a human being in whom love—this means God–is so overwhelmingly
manifest. It undercuts theological arrogance as well as pious isolation. It is
more than justice and greater than faith or hope. It is the very presence of
God in the form of a human being. For God is love. In every moment of genuine
love we are dwelling in God and God in us.”
In verses 4b-5 John explains that the faith that conquers
the world is belief in the incarnation, the belief that God entered our world
and became human like one of us. Barclay explains that, if God did indeed do
this, it means that he ‘cared’ enough for humankind to take upon himself the
limitations of human life and this is an act of love that passes all
understanding. This also means that he ‘shared’ in our human experience and so
knows, intimately, the varied trials and temptations as well as the sorrows of
this world. This means that God understands everything that happens to us and
Barclay concludes: “Faith in the incarnation is the conviction that God shares
and God cares.” Once we share this faith, certain things follow:
1. We have a defence to resist
the infections of the world. There are pressures to conform to worldly
standards, there are fascinations that come with the wrong things and makes
them seem so delightful. But when we are aware of the presence of Christ with
us in the present (for his incarnation is real for us today as the Holy Spirit
moves in our lives) then we have an inoculation against temptation. Barclay
explains: “… goodness is easier in the company of good people; and if we
believe in the incarnation, we have the continual presence of God in Jesus
Christ …”
2. We are given the strength to
endure the attacks and temptations of the world. Our experience is full of
things that would dilute our faith or even take it away: sorrows, the
perplexities of life, disappointments, frustrations, failures and
discouragements, to mention but a few. But believing in the incarnation reminds
us that God himself went through all this too even to the Cross and this same
God can help us through all these things.
3. We also have the hope of a
final victory. The world did its worst to Jesus – and it failed – because after
the Cross came the resurrection. Barclay adds:
“This is the Jesus who is with
us, the one who saw life at its grimmest, to whom life did its worst, who died,
who conquered death, and who offers us a share in that victory which was his.
If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, we have with us always Christ the
Victor to make us victorious.”
It is lovely to reflect on the fact that when we pray, we
make contact with Almighty God, who is greater than anything our minds can
comprehend, but who also knows and understands intimately and personally what
our experience is like, because He took the trouble to find out first hand. I
love Barclay’s phrase but I alter it a little to read:
God can care because he shared
our human life in the incarnation; indeed God can care, because the incarnation
is a present reality as well as a past fact. Jesus is with us in the power of
his Spirit, he is with us as we gather together with the people of God in
worship, study and fellowship, he is with us as we seek to be his presence to
other people. Mother Teresa used to say that she contemplated Jesus in her
prayers and then went out to seek him in the poor and destitute in Calcutta.
God cares because he shares …
This verse is seen by some as one of the most perplexing in
the New Testament and many suggest that we can only guess at its meaning. At
one level it seems to refer to the waters of Jesus Baptism and the blood of
Christ, shed on the Cross, but we also know that John often had deeper meanings
in his writings. It probably also refers to the challenge of Gnosticism and the
belief that the body is not important, but only the Spirit. Some thought that
Jesus was just an ordinary person but that God’s Spirit entered him at his
Baptism. But we also know that, for John, the humanity of the Christ as well as
his death are central in Jesus being the Messiah of God.
It is important to add the other dimension mentioned in this
verse – the witness of the Spirit. Yes, the Spirit of God did descend upon
Jesus in a very special way at his Baptism, but this does not mean that he was
not the incarnate Son of God before then. It is also important to be reminded that,
on that occasion, it was promised that Jesus would Baptise his followers with
the Holy Spirit and this was realised in history that first Pentecost.
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