1 John 5

John has been writing to build joyful fellowship between people, rooted in fellowship with God himself! (1. 3f)As he finishes off he wants to leave his readers utterly confident in who Jesus is and who they are in him. (v13).   Three times, John uses a very similar and slightly unusual structure and language – This is the victory – this is the testimony – this is the confidence. He's giving us three keys,  three certainties, three essentials for “confident Christian living...

This is the victory – our faith.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God (v 1) John lists a cluster of realities that are core to Christian experience. New birth, love for God and his people, obedience, victory, and faith.  It's meant to work like this:  we are born again; we literally become new people. As  a result, we love God and we love each other. Once again John insists that any other way is unthinkable, and he reminds us that this is God's command, and is not a burden.  Really? 

It doesn't always seem like that. Loving one another is at times scary; to walk in love is to make ourselves vulnerable, in the real world.  It is the world   - the fallen messed up society around us generated by humanity cut off from God. But being born again, born from God, makes us new people who ... overcome the world! Day to day, present tense, day by day, moment by moment.

This is the victory – our faith.. the faith we have within us is the victory that has overcome the world.  That's why we are overcoming the world. Now god wants everyone who knows him to be living in victory over the world...

How, we ask ourselves, can we live a life of love in an environment like we do.  The self-sacrificing life of a believer, a life of love, is potentially costly, scary.  We make ourselves vulnerable; but in so doing, we take a step of faith. As individuals, we have the call and the responsibility to be the the ones who are overcoming the world through our faith in Jesus.

This is the testimony  – we have eternal life through Jesus
Jesus is central... We overcome, through faith that Jesus is the Son of God.  We can rely on who Jesus is, because he really is the son of God.  He came by water and blood.  When he was baptised in water, his father declared “This is my Son...”  When he died on the cross, one of the soldiers said “This guy has to be the son of God” (Mk 15. 39) and John recognises that this supremely is how God shows his love to us. The Cross is the greatest miracle.  And this Spirit who came upon Jesus at his baptism, also lives in every believer... so the Spirit, the water and the blood say something: they agree together to speak of who Jesus is and what he is all about. 

It's good when we can make a witness statement about Jesus; but the greatest witness statements are the ones God makes about his son. Becoming a Christian, is receiving that testimony about Jesus.  And as we receive that testimony, we become part of the testimony.  There is in our lives the witness statement : we are part of the evidence... When God gave eternal life to us, through Jesus, he was bearing witness to who Jesus is.  

Jesus is central in his Church.  Through the fact that we are here, experiencing eternal life, living that eternal life, God is saying something: the reshaping work of the Spirit in our lives, is evidence that Jesus is the Son of God. 

This is the confidence  – as we ask, he hears
If you've got the son, you've got life and can be bold in your approach to God.   This is the confidence... having eternal life is meant to be fruitful: it is not just to be enjoyed in private, but rather to be fruitful.  It gives us a relationship with God characterised by confidence, boldness, the freedom to be outspoken...
It reminds me of the stories Jesus told – of a friend who comes at midnight, asking for bread, banging the door, because he's in an embarrassing situation and needs help – of a woman who keeps on pestering the judge, waiting to pounce every time he comes out the front door, because she wants justice.  There's a pushyness, a cheek about it, that God is actually pleased with... 

But there's a condition: “When we ask according to his will.”   There's always a condition to this promise: it's about faith – an inner knowing that we are right in line with what God plans to do (Mk 11. 24); it's about praying in Jesus' name that is, speaking as his agents (Jn 14. 13); it's about walking in intimacy with Jesus (Jn 15. 7).  It is the intimacy with Jesus that releases the faith, the confidence about what he is going to do. Sometimes we struggle with all that – we love to be in control and we're not in control!  What matters more than anything, is not getting the things we want; it is walking intimately with Jesus! 

John gives one example of a prayer we might pray: for someone going away from God, into sin.  Poem churches believe in two kinds of sins: some cut you off from God's grace, others cause only a partial loss of grace. Paul tells us the wages of sin is death (Romans ) but can be forgiven. The “Sin that leads (inevitably) to death” is what Jesus calls “blasphemy against the Spirit”, which means we are so determined to reject the way of God in our lives that we make black into white and white into black.  When we pray for someone else, we are engaging in a dynamic supernatural event which involves God's plan, our desires, and the will of the person we are praying for. I guess that is part of the reason why we don’t always get what we ask for. But the miracle and mystery is, that God hears and answers when we pray. 

In Conclusion
John finishes off his letter by saying, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”   “Little Children” is a John word.  Paul used it once. Jesus used it once in the Gospels.  And John uses is seven times in this letter. This is John being himself; and speaking to the people he loves.  The whole flavour of John's letters, and indeed the whole flavour of the NT vision of Church is about relationships and community.  How do we imagine Church?  Is it a group of individuals who love Jesus?  Is it an organisation that expects individuals to play their part and offers individuals benefits – teaching, worship, kids ministry, and so on...  Is it an institution that is there to do good in the world or get more people to sign up for Christianity, or both?  Or is it a living thing, an organism, a family, a real community that has an identity of its own, in which the members fit perfectly, fulfil their destiny, and are nurtured to growth and maturity.  That is rather nearer to the vision of “Church” we find in the New Testament. That is what Paul describes in Eph 4. 16  “the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly...  builds itself up in love.”

Every culture has its weaknesses: the weakness of our “Global capitalist” culture is its individualism. Ancient, tribal cultures are by no means perfect. Anyone who has seen on TV Bruce Parry's adventures in tribal cultures will know that tribal customs can at times be barbaric and brutal; but generally there is a strong sense of the tribe rather than the individual.   We need to dip into the culture of Biblical times and rediscover the idea of community, of the family, the village, being more important than the individual.  A Christian is someone who has asked Jesus to be his own, personal saviour. We somehow think that our Christian faith is totally personal.  But we are in community.  We are in this together.  One of the biggest idols of our world, is the cult of the individual.  “Me, me, me me!”

By contrast, I'm amazed at how John – like Paul – talks in corporate terms.  “We know... our faith... God gave us eternal life... the confidence that we have... if we ask”    Remember the game you play with tiny children? “This little piggy went to market”?   God wants us to be like the fifth little piggy....  “We, we, we ,we, all the way home.” 

© Gilmour Lilly April  2012