Look at the Book

1 John 5:1–4: The Victory That Overcomes the World

There are two major ground clauses (“for” or “because”) in 1 John 5:3–4. Pastor John focuses in on these two for’s to see the relationship between our love for God, our love for others, and our obedience to God's commands. In doing so, he uncovers our victory in Christ.

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 23 Sep 2014
Audio Format:: other

In this session of Look at the Book, we're going to focus on 1 John 5, 1 to 4. The Apostle John is a deceptively simple writer, meaning he is very complex, even though he uses very simple language, so let's pray for help. Father, I want to love the saints more. That's what this text is going to take us to, I think. And so I pray that all of us together would see what's really here in such a way that the words would be transforming in love. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world, or that has overcome the world. Our faith. Verse 1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ. So here you have faith. Where did it come from? Has been, notice the tense of the verb, born of God. So it's very clear because of the tense of this verb that new birth precedes and is the power behind the enabling power behind faith. Faith believing that Jesus is the Christ comes from being born of God. God the Holy Spirit causes our dead hearts to be made alive so that we can now see Christ in His beauty and His glory and are then irresistibly, that is freely because He is so compellingly beautiful drawn to believe. And this word that here, don't let it trip you up. The devils believe that Jesus is the Christ. They said so in the Gospels. We know you're the Christ, the Son of God. So this doesn't mean believing a mere fact. This is having your eyes open so that when you see that Jesus is the long expected, a promise fulfilling, glorious Christ, your heart is drawn out to treasure Him above all things. So you have one new birth, two faith in Christ. Keep going. And everyone who loves the Father, loves whoever has been born of Him. And now he shifts from, you'd expect him to say, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ loves those who have also believed or something like that. But he replaces love for the Father. He replaces believing in Jesus with love for the Father. So it looks like, let's put these together somehow here. It looks like either this believing that Jesus is the Christ involves or includes loving the Father or that when we're born of God and have eyes to see that Christ is trustworthy and desirable and worthy of being treasured above all things that in that very process we realize that the one who calls us to be born and God is beautiful and wonderful and loving and so love for the Father is implicit in believing that Jesus is the Christ when we know that it's the new birth from the Father that caused us to see that Christ is our Savior in the first place. And when we love the Father and I'm going to put three here, so this is two, this is one, new birth, faith in Jesus, love for the Father, then we love those who are born of Him. If you love the Father, you love the children. Now by this, he's going to explain this loving the children and what it involves. By this, we know that we love the children of God, so loving those who are born of Him means loving the children. By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. So now loving those who are born of God or loving the children of God is explained not as a mere feeling of affection for them or doing what you think is good for them, but rather loving God, making God your supreme treasure, and then doing what God says that constitutes love for the children, love for those who have been born of God. So that's what we've got in the first two verses. We've got an act of God called the new birth. New birth opens our eyes to see Jesus as infinitely valuable and the great Christ. When we realize that that has come through the new birth, we love the Father. When we love the Father, we love the children and what love the children means is that we're loving God and we're doing what God says with regard to the children. His commandments are the measure of how we love children. Now here comes two ground clauses which blow everything into bigger and glorious proportions. Four, and here's another one, four, let's take them one at a time. Four, this is the love of God. So he's just said the love of God here and the love of God here produces love for the children of God, yields obedience to the commandments which is the loving of the children of God. Four, this is the love of God that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome. Now that's huge because a lot of people, like the Pharisees, try to love people by obeying the commandments of God and those commandments are so burdensome, all they wind up doing, so burdensome. All they wind up doing is loading people with burdens so heavy that they can't have any experience of joy at all and Jesus chastised the lawyers for saying, "You load people with burdens and don't lift a single finger," and this text is about the finger that God lifts to make that not happen. So clarifying how the love of God and the obedience to His commandments results in love for children. He says, "And these commandments are not burdensome. They're joyful. When you joyfully obey the commandments of God, then you're in a position to love people. They'll feel your love as a joy giving rather than burden loading." Why is that true? How in the world do the commandments of God for us sinners cease to be burdensome? Four, everyone who has been born of God, so back now to new birth up here, born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Okay, so born of God again yields faith, we saw that up here, born of God yields believing, so new birth produces this treasuring of Christ above all things and that overcomes the world. What does that mean? Well, if you go back to 215, you realize that the world in John is loving out the world or the things that are in the world for the love of the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, it's everything that makes the commandments of God burdensome. That's what the world is, anything at all that makes the commandments of God burdensome, that's worldly, that's this world and the victory that we get through the new birth is that we become the kind of people who treasure Christ so much that the world is exposed, let's put it like this, exposed as unsatisfying. And so the commandments cease to be burdensome because the world and all of its allurements that make it look so burdensome has been exposed to be unsatisfying. So let's do this, let's go and sum it all up with a sequence that takes the pieces and puts them in the order that they happen in life. Not the bottom is the new birth, right? New birth, that's by God's sovereign miracle working power changing our hearts and what the change effects immediately is faith in Jesus or treasure in Christ above all things and that reveals God to be infinitely beautiful and valuable because he's the one who brought it about so love, love to God. And that, those two together, let's put those in the box, they're so closely related, sorry about that, faith and love yields overcoming the world. Everything in the world that makes the commandments of God look burdensome, we fall out of love for that because we have this superior love for Jesus and love for the Father. The world is exposed for the unsatisfying bauble that it is and the next thing that happens then is that we keep the commandments joyfully. They are our pleasure, not our burden and that is what John calls loving, the believers, those who are born of God. New birth brings about faith and love to God, this treasuring of God and Christ overcomes the world by exposing its unsatisfying character, that enables us to keep the commandments of God joyfully and so we don't load people with burdens and now we're in a position to do all that God says and that will be a loving of the believers and I pray for us that we will love each other that way. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]