1 John 5:1

V. (8.)FAITH THE TEST OF LOVE (1John 5:1-12). (a)Its power (1John 5:1-5). (b)The evidence on which it rests (1John 5:6-10). (c)What it contains (1John 5:11-12). (8 a.) St. John has been setting love in the supreme place which it held in our Lord’s teaching and in St. Paul’s. But there is another faculty which has to regulate, purify, direct, and stir up our weak and imperfect loving powers, and that is, faith. Without faith we cannot be certain about the quality of our love. He begins very simply with a position already laid down: genuine faith in Christ is the genuine birth from God. From that faith, through that birth, will come the proper love, as in a family: the love of our spiritual brothers and sisters. (This is specially sympathy with real Christians; but it does not exclude the more general love before inculcated.) If we are doubtful about the quality of our love, or are not sure whether any earthly elements may be mingled with it, we have only to ask ourselves whether we are loving God and keeping His commandments: the true work of faith. The love of God does, indeed, actually consist in keeping His commandments (and none can complain that they are tyrannical, vexatious, or capricious). The very object of the divine birth is the conquest of all that is opposed to God and to His commandments, and the instrument of the conquest is faith.

There can be no victory over these elements that are opposed to God, and, consequently, no pure, true, God-like love, except through faith. (8 b.) Having left the discussion about the effect of faith on love with the same thought which began it—belief in Jesus Christ—he is led to state the grounds on which that faith rests. These are here stated to be three: water, or Christ’s baptism, symbolising the complete fulfilment of the Law in His own perfect purity, and thus appealing to the Old Testament; blood, or His meritorious cross and passion, symbolising His own special work of atonement and reconciliation; and the Spirit, embracing all those demonstrable proofs of His kingdom which were from day to day forcing themselves on the attention of believers. If we accept human testimony on proper grounds, far more should we receive this divine testimony of God to His Son—the witness of the Old Testament, of the work of Christ, and of the Spirit. This witness is not far to seek, for it is actually within the true believer. (8 c.) The contents of the record which God has thus given us are at once most simple and most comprehensive: the gift of eternal life in His Son. The presence of the Word of God in the heart is the sole condition of life. (8 a.) (1) Whosoever believeth . . .—What may be the works of God among those who have not heard of His Son we do not here inquire. Enough that those who have this privilege are sons if they accept the message.

Whosoever {1} believeth that Jesus is the {a} Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth {b} him also that is begotten of him. (1) He advances in the same argument, showing how both those loves come to us, from that love with which God loves us, that is, by Jesus our mediator laid hold on by faith, in whom we are made the children of God, and do love the Father from whom we are begotten, and also our brothers who are begotten with us. (a) Is the true Messiah. (b) By one, he means all the faithful.