1 John 5:1-6
¹ 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.² By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.³For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.⁴For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.⁵Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Introduction
We continue to work our way though the Book of 1 John. We are basically at the finish line, chapter 5 is the final chapter. Couple more Sundays and that’s it. I hope you are not too tired of the book of John yet. In a way it might seem to be a bit repetitive. Again and again John comes back to the same topics, same concepts, same themes if you will.
And sometimes we can dislike it. We can get annoyed. Because, we already heard it. How much we can talk about it after all? We want something new, something fresh. New revelation, a new knowledge, that what we are after.
I have at least couple people in my life who not a big fans or hearing the same thing many times. If only I will dare to start telling them the same story, they will immediately go “yeah, you already told me that one”. And I get that. Typically we don’t like to hear same thing again and again. We get bored, we lose attention. We want to move on.
And unfortunately often we treat the bible same way. And not only bible but any type of learning for that matter. How many times when you learn something. You watch someone doing a thing. Probably some sort of tutorial on the YouTube. And you think to yourself “ok, I get it. It’s not that hard”. And then you go and try it yourself. I did it many times. Very quickly you get to realize that you were wrong. You have only though that you understand. But, in reality, you don’t. And you have to go back and look at it again and again, and keep trying until it “clicks”. Until you have this “a ha” moment. “Now I actually understand.”
Ever happened to you?
Happens to me all the time. So often that this days I already know. That I have to grind the basics until it “clicks”, then I’ll be ready for more advanced stuff.
Drums example?
When me and guys learn something on drums. We go though the song and start breaking it down. You know, what played where. Rhythms, drum fills. And no one ever whats to sit and do the boring part like “FIRST_VIDEO”. Painfully slow, possibly for hours on end. It is boring, it is not fun. You can probably do it first try. Why to bother. We all wanna do cool fancy stuff like “SECOND_VIDEO”.
None of us wanna do a basic boring thing. We all want cool, advanced stuff. But advanced cool stuff ONLY possible once you mastered boring basics. I’ll tell you more than that. Often cool stuff you see ARE the boring basics just speed up.
Now, I’ll tell something that is almost universally true. Not only for learning musical instrument but for learning, or solving pretty much anything. And most definitely apply to our life with God.
Repetitive practice of simple basics gives us ability to approach complex problems.
When we study Gods word. Often times what we need is NOT special revelation, NOT a new knowledge. We need start practicing what we learned. Then and only then we will be able to move forward. We should practice those very basic, very boring things that we learned the first week being a Follower of Christ. We need to do same thing again and again until it “clicks” in our head and your heart. Until it becomes our second nature. Sometimes people call it “revelation”. Whatever you call it. That is the moment when the word written becomes a living word for you, for your life.
So buckle up and let’s get to it.
1 John 5:1
¹ Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God…
We already talked a little bit about “been born of God” or “to be born again”. Remember Jesus and Nicodimus? Jesys: “You have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God!” Nicodimus(puzzled): “How can it be?”
Here we are provided with an answer “in a nutshell”. You get born again by believing that Jesus is the Christ, the messiah, YOUR messiah. Not just a messiah, not just yet another one among the other viable options. He is the only one. Period.
And it is not about just intellectual agreement. Like we would agree many thing, which has 0 impact on our life. How about: “did you know that Australia is “technically” wider than the Moon?” (PICTURE). Do you feel your life changed? Do you feel yourself a new person? Maybe it completely changes your life? Probably not.
When we say “Everyone who believe” mean something more then just acknowledgment of the fact.
James 2:19
¹⁹ You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder!
Mire intellectually agreement not gonna help you much. All demons believe in the reality or the authority of Jesus, but it doesn’t make them “children of God”
We talking about believing that becomes very foundation for your life. Your actions, and decisions, your attitudes derive from this believe.
Why not to steal? No one will ever find out… Why not to cheat when you know for sure you’ll get away with it? Why not just lie and avoid all the trouble? Why not to take advantage of this person? You’ll never get anywhere in life if you’ll always try to play fair… Everybody does it.
And so on…
We all know the right answers to this questions while sitting comfortably in the church, among other believers. But in real life scenario when the choices we make not so painfully obvious. When the consequences and what is on the line is way more serious. When you on your own and need to make up your mind. Is it suddenly not all that easy. What is your foundation will get reveled.
Almost anyone can be a good person when life is going well and you are in the good mood. But When you go through a rough times, when you go through fire, that’s when it will get clear whether you “mastered the basics”.
You’ve been born of God if you accept Jesus as YOUR Christ, YOUR Savior, YOUR Messiah. When this believe becomes your foundation. Impacts every sphere of your life. Gets into all nukes and crannies of your heart.
1 John 5:1
…and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
We’ve been talking about this for weeks now. So, hopefully this truth starts to penetrate it’s way into our hearts and minds. Because it is very important to understand that:
the love for God and love for his children is inseparable
Imagine one saying: “I love parenting. It is the best job in the world. Absolutely love it! Being the parent is such a blast.”
And you like: “Hang on, but you don’t have kids, don’t you? You not even married…”
Then the person is like “Yeah, kids. Honestly hate kids. It’s just not for me. You know, hole day long repeating the same things again and again. All this “being an example” I’m not good at it. I’m a “single” “parent”. Isn’t that a thing?”
Sounds silly isn’t it?
As silly as it is. It can be just a slightly exaggerated version of us, claiming to love God, claiming to be born again, claiming to be a true followers. When in our hearts we do not love our brothers and sisters in Christ.
1 John 4:20
²⁰ If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This scripture states that one cannot love God, if one failing to love the person next to him! Loving God and loving God’s children always go hand in hand.
But again, what is to love? Throughout the whole letter John makes it clear, that to love is not about the words or feelings. Those are good things, and they should be part of our expression of love. But they do not define whether we love. Last week we touched some practical aspects of loving God and his children.
1 John 3:17
¹⁷But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
When we participate in each other lives, Practically helping one another in our needs it indicates that God’s love abides in us. Or in other words, it shows our love for God. Naturally as people we tent to be selfish and egocentric. Look at kids, and you’ll see that that’s haw they typically behave. We have learn to care about others. We have to learn generosity. We have to practice them. Matering the basics. Naturally we think “me”, “for me” and “about me”. And when we see the need, financial need, often we turn away. Because it will take something from “ME”. I’ll not be able to get what “I” what. Therefore it is “NOT MY” problem.
More generalized way of looking at love presented in the verse 2
1 John 5:2
² By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.
If you are still with me. You can spot a little something here. You might have a question on your mind.
“Hang on, isn’t you just said that to love God is to love God’s children? And now you saying that loving God’s children is about loving God?”
Yeah, that is correct. If you think about it for a moment it makes perfect sense. There is no contradiction or confusion here. When we look into a next verse, we see that:
1 John 5:3(a)
³For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments…
This is the key to understand how it all works. We show our love for God, by keeping his commandments. And his commandments are about loving one another. So, we can say that keeping God’s commands is often about loving God’s children.
God is love. He want us to love one another. And doing this is the best way to show that we love God. That we care about what He is saying. That we care about his feelings and opinions. And if we read verse 3 to the end, it get’s even better.
1 John 5:3(b)
…his commandments are not burdensome.
Jesus says in Matthew 11:30: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”. His commandments are not to hard to understand and follow. You don’t have to spend most of your life in seminaries to understand Jesus’s commandments. Anyone can comprehend what they mean. Most of them come down to????? You guessed, to love!
In religious system, with it’s over complicated set of rules and rituals, which often people don’t even understand. You feel like you have to do whole bunch just to keep God satisfied with you. And not get punished. Such life is burdensome. That was the state of affairs when Jesus were among us. He sharply criticized this system.
He came and explained God’s heart. He reveled the meaning of it all. And when we cant understand WHY and not only WHAT. When we understand that God’s commandments are keeping us safe and secure. That they are only for our benefit. Then we happily follow them. They are not burdensome anymore.
SECURITY RULES
It is somewhat like safety rules on job site. Everybody hate them, because they are often make your work harder and more cumbersome. So,people ignore them. And only do bare minimum when boss is around.
But then if anything happen they have to suffer. I remember when me and Matt were fixing a car. We bought a part off a junk yard. Because you couldn’t find it otherwise. And due to it being the second hand part, which was taken off the other vehicle it had some extra bolts and what not that we didn’t need. We had to take those off first.
One bolt was particularly stubborn and rusty and wouldn’t budge. But, you know, I knew how to deal with those. We needed a blowtorch. You know the little gas thingy. We didn’t have one(we are in the middle of the forest, so no shops around). But we had a gas torch for working on roofs, you know the big thing that attaches to a huge gas tank.
We fired that one up. Everything was looking good. You can hear the flame roaring. You feel this power, like a wizard who can control the flame. You are on the top of the world man with a tool!
And then something exploded. To this day I have no idea what it was. But it was so loud you can’t even imagine. I was shocked. My ears ringing, I can’t hear anything. Blowtorch is on the ground. All your fight or flight mechanisms are maxing out. Adrenalin rushing through you, making it hard to think.
Making story short, ringing would not go away even after a month. I was afraid I damaged my hearing permanently. Had to go to the hospital(yes, only month later. You can tell I don’t like hospitals). And few weeks later, after some medication it was back to normal.
I have quite a few similar stories. But this time I got really scared. I regretted not wearing ear&eye protection. I realized that they are not to annoy me, not to restrict or make my work harder then it should be. They are for MY good, to protect me.
In the same way God’s commandments. They are not the set of stupid, meaningless rules that you have to follow, in order to keep God happy. No, they are there to protect you. They are there to make sure you can live freely and happily. That you do not hurt yourself and others. God gave us those rules, commandments, only because he cares for us. Because he loves us soooooo much!
Yes it is not always easy. We still live in the broken world. And remember that this world opposes God, and everyone who belongs to Him. Otherwise we wouldn’t ever sin. Our battle is not over yet. But we have hope, which is:
1 John 5:4,5
⁴For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.⁵Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
We are on the winning side! When we put our faith in Jesus Christ, then we are winners. Jesus says:
John 16:33
³ In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Hidden truth, secret knowledge that they don’t want you to know is that - we overcome the world by putting our faith in Jesus Christ! Victory doesn’t come from us. Doesn’t depend on our abilities, agility, strength, endurance. None of that. Not by what we do, but though our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. HE have overcome the world.
Conclusion
Overcoming the world is a complex problem. Life in this broken world can be complicated. Sometimes is is hard to love people around us. Especially those who get on our nerves. Sometimes things look impossible. But let’s remember, that it is not a super revelation that enables us to overcome this world. Not great spiritual power. Not some sort of the hidden, secret knowledge. But practicing simple, boring, everyday principles of God’s kingdom:
- Trust your life into God’s hands(born again)
- Love God - follow his commandments
- Love God’s children - practically, let your love be real.
- Do not rely on your abilities - rely on your faith in Jesus Christ