1 John 5

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God; everyone who loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him. Wesley: the paragraph’s sum is 5:13—know that you who believe have eternal life. Faith is first and last with John also. Loving the Begetter, a natural affection to all His brethren.

Believing and being born belong together in the text’s order as lived reality. Love of God spills to the begotten. The new birth is known in faith that receives Jesus as the Christ.

Calvin: faith and brotherly love are united; God regenerates us by faith, so He must be loved as Father, and this love embraces all His children. All born of God believe that Jesus is the Christ; Christ alone is the object of faith. To believe that He is the Christ is to hope from Him all that was promised of the Messiah. All who believe have been born of God; faith is above the human mind; we must be drawn by the Father. The singular “begotten” includes all the faithful, not Christ only (against some ancients).

No one has faith except born of God. Begin with the godly in love, and this exercise teaches love to all. Believe, born, love the begotten.

By this we know we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. Wesley: a plain proof that we love the children of God as His children.

Love to the children is not a mood detached from love to God and kept commandments. The two loves test each other.

Calvin: true love is that which is towards God. Men are rightly loved when God holds the primacy. Mutual love is to be cultivated so that God may be honored. To love of God he joins keeping the law: reverence connected with love.

It often happens that we love men apart from God. Love of the children is known in love of God and obedience.

For this is loving God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous. Wesley: the only sure proof. Not grievous to any that are born of God.

New birth makes the commands a fitting yoke, not a grind. Love is not idle. Keeping is the proof, enabled by the birth of v. 1.

Calvin: if constrained only by fear we obey, we are far from true obedience. Hearts devoted in willing reverence, then life formed to the law. Not grievous has been added lest difficulties damp zeal. The difficulty arises not from the nature of the law but from corrupt flesh. He confines “not grievous” to God’s children: it comes through the power of the Spirit. Facility also because they are sustained by pardon and do not despond when they come short.

We must fight; the world hinders. He only keeps the law who resists the world. Love keeps; commands are not grievous to the born.

Everyone born of God overcomes the world; this is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith. Wesley: the most unlimited universality. Conquers whatever allures or frights from keeping commandments. The grand means: our faith; all things possible to him that believes.

Faith is the means of overcoming, present tense as a fight faith can win. Born of God is the who; faith is the how. The world of 2:15 is beatable.

Calvin: whence comes this victory? He makes it depend on faith. Past time more emphatical: that has overcome, as though the enemy already put to flight. Warfare continues; we are already partakers of victory. This confidence does not introduce indifference. World includes whatever is adverse to the Spirit: corruption of nature, lusts, crafts of Satan. He does not teach that God only brings some help so that we, aided, are able; victory depends on faith alone, and faith receives from another that by which it overcomes.

“Victory”—they take away from God who sing triumph to their own power. The victory is our faith.

Who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Wesley: superior to all worldly care, desire, fear? Every believer, and none else.

The overcomer is the believer. There is no other candidate. The Son of God is the object that makes the world lose its mastery.

Calvin: a reason for the previous sentence. We conquer by faith because we derive strength from Christ—“I can do all things through him that strengtheneth me.” He only can conquer Satan and the world who, diffident as to himself, recumbs on Christ’s power alone. Faith is an apprehension of Christ, applying His power to ourselves.

The question “Who?” rules out self-trust. Common ground: the believer in the Son overcomes.

This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and the blood. The Spirit testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. Wesley: not with the water only wherein He was baptized, but with the water and the blood which He shed when He finished the work; when all was finished, blood and water came out of His side. The Spirit testifies by Moses, prophets, the Baptist, apostles, and the New Testament writings. The Spirit is truth—the very God of truth.

Baptism’s water and the cross’s blood together; Jesus is demonstrated to be the Christ by completing what He undertook. The Spirit’s witness is public in Scripture and inward as truth.

Calvin: the substance of the law’s shadows appears in Him. Under water and blood, the whole perfection of holiness and righteousness: water washed filth, blood made expiation. The law adumbrated; Messiah performed. Reference to baptism as the water is not probable; he thinks of the water and blood from Christ’s side, that the faithful may know cleansing and the sprinklings of blood are fulfilled in Him. The Spirit bears witness: a full firmness produced by His testimony. He calls the Spirit truth because His authority is indubitable.

“Came”—not only some part of salvation in Christ, but the whole. Held in common: water and blood, and the Spirit who is truth. (The WEB, with the Greek majority, does not include the later heavenly-witness expansion in v. 7; Wesley argued for it, Calvin was inclined to receive it but noted Greek copies disagreed. The notes follow the WEB text.)

For there are three who testify. In the WEB, this line introduces the three of v. 8. Wesley, reading the longer text, treated a heavenly three as recapitulation of the Father, Word, and Spirit.

Whatever one makes of the later clause, the apostolic point in this range is the agreeing testimony to Jesus as the Christ. Do not let a textual dispute bury the three that follow.

Calvin noted that the whole heavenly-witness verse has been by some omitted; Greek copies did not agree; he was inclined to receive it as found in copies he approved, taking “these three are one” as consent, not a separate essence-proof. He also showed how the passage flows if one refers only to witnesses on earth.

The WEB text is the three of v. 8. The doctrinal confession of Father, Word, and Spirit does not depend on this clause. The testimony that follows is enough.

Wesley (on the earthly three): the Spirit in the word, confirmed by miracles; the water of baptism, typifying purity and inward purifying; the blood represented in the Lord’s supper and applied to consciences. These three harmoniously agree in one testimony: Jesus Christ is the divine, complete, only Savior of the world.

One testimony, not three gospels. Savior of the world is Wesley’s own width here, matching 2:2.

Calvin: water and blood applied so that rejecters of Christ have no excuse. He adds the Spirit, who holds first place: without Him water and blood would flow without benefit. He seals the testimony on hearts, makes the fruit of Christ’s death come to us, makes Christ with all His blessings ours. Three agree in one.

Faith does not lay hold on a bare or empty Christ. Cleansing and expiation are distinguished for our infirmity, as the law had both washings and sacrifices.

If we receive the witness of men, God’s testimony is greater: this is the testimony God has given concerning his Son. Wesley: we receive men’s testimony continually; God’s is of higher authority—this very testimony which God the Father, together with the Word and the Spirit, hath testified of the Son as the Saviour of the world.

Refusing this testimony is not a small historical shrug. Saviour of the world again names the width of what God has testified.

Calvin: from the less to the greater. If in worldly affairs we stand to the words of men who may lie, how unreasonable that God should have less credit when sitting as it were on His own throne. Our corruption alone prevents us from receiving Christ. The witness of God is not only what the Spirit imprints but also what we derive from water and blood: that power was heavenly.

The blood of Christ is not estimated in a common human manner. God’s testimony concerning the Son is greater than men’s.

Whoever believes in the Son has the testimony in himself. He who doesn’t believe God has made him a liar. Wesley: the believer has the dear evidence in himself; the unbeliever supposes that to be false which God has expressly testified.

Faith has inward evidence, and unbelief is an accusation against God’s truthfulness. The testimony is there to be believed.

Calvin: the faithful know themselves beyond the danger of erring, because they have God as foundation. The ungodly are guilty of extreme blasphemy, charging God with falsehood. Nothing is more valued by God than His truth. This is why unbelief is so severely condemned: the glory of God is implicated. A man may be like an angel in other parts of life; if he rejects Christ, his sanctity is diabolical.

Every one of the godly feels within that God is the author of his faith. Beginning of true religion: obediently embrace this doctrine.

This is the testimony: God gave to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Wesley: a title to, and the beginning of, eternal life; purchased by and treasured up in His Son, who has all the springs and fullness to communicate to His body the church, first in grace then in glory.

Given, located in the Son, begun now. Title and beginning together. The church receives from His fullness.

Calvin: having set forth the benefit, he invites us to believe. God freely offers life; ingratitude is intolerable if we do not receive a doctrine so sweet. Three things: we are given up to death until God restores us—life is a gift, not acquired by merits; this life is conferred by the gospel; we cannot become partakers otherwise than by believing in Christ. No other way appointed.

“Life”—in the Son, not elsewhere. Eternal life given, and in the Son.

He who has the Son has the life; he who doesn’t have God’s Son doesn’t have the life. Wesley: he that hath the Son living and reigning in him by faith hath this life; he that hath not, no part or lot therein. Former clause: the Son, because believers know Him; latter: the Son of God, that unbelievers may know how great a blessing they fall short of.

Having is by faith, a living reign. Not having is not a secret exception for heroic pagans in this verse’s pastoral aim; it is the church’s public line: life is in the Son.

Calvin: confirmation. Life is in none but in Christ. He excludes all from the hope of life who seek it not in Christ. To have Christ is to possess Him by faith. All separated from the body of Christ are without life. Specious virtues from an impure heart have an ill odor to God. Purity and genuine religion come from the Spirit of Christ. Righteousness of men is in the remission of sins; Christ alone reconciles the Father.

God is propitious to none but in Christ. Shared: have the Son, have life; have not, have not.