For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not grievous.
John ends his letter with a simple test: love for God shows itself in keeping His commandments. Two questions follow. How can obedience measure love? And how can any command be light for people who still fail?
Does the phrase mean our love for God, or His love for us? One writer takes it wider. God's own love enters the heart, and obedience is what it produces.
Claiming to love God while ignoring His expressed will can be nothing but hypocrisy. The love of God is not only love for God. It is God's love entering the heart and producing a fitting response. So the proof of it is my keeping His commandments... If someone served God only for wages, he might well find it tiresome service, as all bondage under law is. But if he serves out of real love, no resentment will be there.
Verse 2 tests love for God's children by love for God. Verse 3 turns the test around: obedience proves love for God. Neither test lets a bare claim stand.
So the Holy Spirit gives not only a test in verse 2 but a counter-test in verse 3. It is not the love of God, or of His children, if we are disobedient. True love of God obeys, while it also shows itself in loving His children, and not just our own circle but all who are His. We cannot separate obedience from love. If it is not obedience, neither is it love.
Talk of commandments can sound like the law of Moses returning. But law and grace differ in what they rest on and what they supply.
The law issued its commands without supplying either the motive or the power that would make obedience certain. Only love can supply the driving force that is needed. Still the commands of love are there... Under law God gave men commandments, and their life and position before God depended on keeping them. Under grace the believer's life and position are secure in Christ. The commandments he receives shape and direct that new life in a way that pleases God.
So calling Christian obedience "legal" gets it wrong.
Love and legality have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles... If anyone taught that our obedience earns the high position and relationship of children of God, the serious charge of legality would be fair. But to pin that label on Christian obedience is, we repeat, a serious moral mistake. Obedience could never come before sonship; but sonship should always lead to obedience.
A command becomes a burden when it cuts against what you are.
It would indeed be a burden if God commanded us to do what is completely against our natures — just as it would be for a dog to eat hay, or a horse to eat meat. The law of Moses brought "heavy burdens, hard to bear," but that was because God gave it to men in the flesh. We have received commandments. But we have also received a new nature that delights in what is commanded. That makes all the difference.
This obedience is not forced labour. It is a path already walked ahead of us.
It is not a heavy yoke lying on a stiff, unsubmissive neck. It is a new nature that obeys from an inner principle of joyful submission to the divine will... It is not brick-making service under the Pharaohs of Egypt, but a delightful path for one born of God — the path Jesus Himself walked.
If the commands are light, why does obedience often feel hard? It depends on which part of us has to obey. John's next line gives the cure.
To the natural man they are a great burden... The only thought the flesh has about these commandments is that it must never have anything its own way... pleasing itself comes naturally to the heart, and therefore His commandments are burdensome to the flesh. Obedience becomes a delight and a blessing to us in this way: "His commandments are not burdensome, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world."
One writer names both the cause and the cure.
A Christian who is under the influence of the world will find it burdensome to obey the Lord's commandments. But if he renounces the world and judges the flesh that lusted after the things of the world, the divine nature will then have free course to delight in and do the will of God.
- Birth first — the commandments come to people already born of God, with a nature that delights in them. Obedience never earns the relationship; it follows it.
- Love proved — love for God and love for His children test each other, and obedience tests both. What is not obedience is not love.
- Channels, not chains — the commands direct a life already given; they are not conditions for a life still owed.
- Light, not heavy — the law came to men in the flesh. These commands match the new nature, so the path is Christ's own path, not brick-making under Pharaoh.
- When it feels heavy — the flesh and the world make obedience hard. John's cure comes in the next breath: everyone born of God overcomes the world.
For all that has been begotten of God gets the victory over the world; and this is the victory which has gotten the victory over the world, our faith.
John has been marking out the family of God: those born of Him, who love Him and keep His commandments. Here he adds the most surprising mark of all. They beat the world. Two questions follow. How can this be true of every believer? And what is "the world" that faith defeats?
Older translations read "whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world." That "whatsoever" is deliberate. It points at the life God gives, not at the person who receives it.
The change in 1 John 5:4 from "whosoever" to "whatsoever" is unusual and worth noticing. Here John looks at the life God gives in itself, whoever receives it, as in John 3:6. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit," in contrast with that which is born of the flesh. And each nature seeks its own things: the flesh, the things of the flesh; and the spirit, the things of the Spirit (Rom. 8:5). The two natures are opposed, so their desires never agree.
So the promise leaves no believer out. Victory is not a reward for years of service.
Some of you may have been thinking that victory belongs only to older and more advanced Christians. But this word applies to all of us. Here is a wonderful fact. If you are a Christian, God has begotten you. So you have a nature that matches God who is love. That nature is completely out of keeping with the world. In fact it is far above the world, and so it gets the victory over it. The world has vast attractions for the old nature; it has none whatever for the new.
The world John means is a system. It has a head, and that head is not God.
The great difficulty is the world; but faith conquers it… There is a nature we have received which belongs to a system that is not of the world at all. "You are from below, I am from above." This world, as a system, is of the devil — not of God at all… The Father is the head, source and blessedness of a great system. The world is entirely opposed to that system. So when the Son came into the world, the world rejected Him. This has put the world, now tested, in complete opposition to the Father.
A new nature by itself does not explain the victory. That nature must feed on something outside itself.
Whatever is born of God overcomes the world (v. 4). It does not overcome just because a divine nature is there. It overcomes because this nature has an object (v. 3). A creature cannot be enough for itself; it must have an object. God alone is enough for Himself. If I have this object, Jesus the Son of God, then the flesh, Satan and the world have nothing for me. If a person is not nourished by the Lord Jesus, life stays shut up and weak.
The next verse names that object: the one who overcomes believes that Jesus is the Son of God. But John does not mean holding a correct opinion.
The victory that overcomes the world is "our faith." As the next verse shows, this means the Christian faith that "Jesus is the Son of God"… If He shines before our faith as the Son of God, we know Him as the One who came from that world — the Father's world — into this world. Who gets the victory over this world? Only the one who has discovered by faith the Centre of a far brighter and better world than this. It is not a matter of holding the Sonship of Jesus as an article of our creed, a truth we accept in theory. It must be a living power in our souls.
Many readers test themselves by this verse and fail. Commentators reply that the verse states what belongs to the new life. It does not measure your week.
It may be quite true that many a believer fails in practice to overcome the world. But that is outside John's subject. If they fail, it is because they are not living in the activity of the new nature, or in the exercise of faith through the power of the Holy Spirit… Our victory over it will show in practice just so far as we take the apostle's ground. He says, "far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."
- Born — victory starts at new birth, not at maturity. The life God gives is out of step with the world, so every believer already carries it.
- Nature — each nature seeks its own things. The two never agree, so the pull of the world meets a real rival inside you.
- Object — a nature needs something to live on. Faith wins because it holds Jesus the Son of God, and beside Him the world has nothing to offer.
- World — what faith beats is a whole system set against the Father, not just a list of bad habits. It showed itself when it rejected the Son.
- Practice — failure does not cancel the verse. It shows the new nature and faith are not at work. The cure is boasting only in the cross, which has already crucified the world to us.