Everybody
loves a winner and everybody loves winning.
In 1950 the head coach of the UCLA Bruins, “Red” Sanders, first uttered
his famous quote “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. Six years prior to that General George S.
Patton gave a speech to the soldiers of the U.S. Third Army on June 5, 1944;
just one day before the D-Day invasion of Normandy. In this speech he said the following:
“Americans love a winner. Americans will
not tolerate a loser. Americans despise
cowards. Americans play to win all of
the time.”
Now, I
imagine that some of the people reading this will take issue with what I’ve
just stated and with the quotes of those two men. And I would quite agree that the motivating
factors behind what Sanders and Patton said are all wrong. They were approaching the situation from the
perspective of fundamentally a Darwinian viewpoint. The strong will get stronger, crush the weak,
and rule the world. That is clearly in
opposition to the God centered worldview that we find in the Bible.
But I
contend that, given the right circumstances, anyone can find themselves rooting
for the winner and thoroughly enjoying the victory. For the Christian who disagrees I would ask the
following. Do you enjoy the thought of
Christ returning and crushing the head of the serpent, ruling the earth with a
rod of iron, and casting death and hades into the lake of fire? Yes, I thought so.
When we come
to the fifth chapter of John we find the apostle essentially doing a little
victory chant himself. In the first five
verses of the chapter he lays out an explanation of the conquest he hinted at
in chapter 4 verse 4. He’ll follow it up
with more detail in verses 6 through 12.
And ultimately John chose to end this letter with a resounding crescendo
of positive and triumphant encouragement for his readers; us. He has warned us of various dangers,
admonished us for our failures, and counseled us strongly against
sinfulness. But after all that, here at
the end, he is all positive. I think
John meant for us to finish his letter primed to immediately march into battle
with the enemy.
But before
we dig into chapter 5, I want to go back and re-visit verse 4 of the previous
chapter, where John last mentioned our victory: You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because
greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. When we looked at this verse before, I asked
the following question: How can John state that we have overcome the false
prophets he was referring to there when it seems that the situation in our
world and our country is deteriorating at a rapid fire pace?
Christians
are increasingly marginalized in the United States. We are more often than not finding ourselves
on the fringes of mainstream society.
Our views and our values seem to be trampled on through Supreme Court
decisions, Executive Orders, local ordinances, Board of Education policies, and
the “court” of public opinion. Our
natural instinct in the face of these events is to doubt, fear, and become
disgruntled.
But frankly,
to even have a rapidly fading morality issue in our country would have been
shocking to John. His understanding of
Christianity was that it was implicitly marginalized, relentlessly persecuted,
and fatally condemned by secular society.
The Roman Empire under which John lived had systematically murdered most
or all of his fellow apostles by this point.
The annihilation of Jerusalem and dissolution of Israel as a nation
state was 20 years into John’s past. He
had witnessed his lord and friend, Jesus, be plotted into execution by the
Jewish Sanhedrin, and prior to that Christ had repeatedly told His disciples
that this sort of treatment was what they should expect. John himself, as he penned this letter, was
either on or soon to be on the island of Patmos, exiled there to die a lonely
and miserable death, due to his faith.
So I think
John would not have been shocked by the moral decline of America. He would have been dumbfounded that there was
a semblance of morality to decline from in the first place. Yet, still he presses this point of
victory. First back in chapter 4 and now
he is going to add depth and nuance to his argument here in chapter 5. So what gives? When I covered this in chapter 4 I stated
that the victory John spoke of was not a temporal or material victory, it is a
spiritual one. I further stated that
this victory was future to us, having its fulfillment in the triumph of Christ
when He returns. I stand by those
conclusions. But now we are going to see
another layer to the issue come to light.
And with
that, on to chapter 5. John begins by
re-iterating, as he has done repeatedly, a twofold truth that he has already
informed us of. Verse 1 of chapter 5
reads: Whoever believes that Jesus is
the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of
Him. Even though we have covered
this ground a number of times already I think there are a couple points to be
made here. They are not necessarily new
truths. But they are important enough to
bring up again.
The first is
this. John states that anyone who
believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. By implication then, John believes that Jesus
being the Christ is a true statement.
This much is obvious. But I want
us to dwell for just a minute or two on what it means that He is the Christ. The word in Greek is “christos”. In Hebrew it’s “messiah”. Both words mean anointed one. Contextually, before an Israelite king was
crowned he was anointed on his head with oil.
The first recorded instance of this is in 1 Samuel 9:16: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to
you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince
over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the
Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to
me.” The man of whom the Lord spoke
was Saul, the first king of Israel. His
anointing by Samuel, one already having been confirmed as a special messenger
and envoy of God, was intended to convey to all Israel that Saul was likewise
chosen of God in the same manner. The
people were to know and understand that the one who had been anointed was set
apart by God for a special purpose.
But the
practice of anointing did not begin with the kings. It goes all the way back to the initial
formation of Israel as a nation state.
In Exodus 30: 22-25 God gave to Moses a very special recipe: Moreover, the Lord spoke to
Moses, saying, “Take also for yourself the finest of spices: of flowing
myrrh five hundred shekels, and of fragrant cinnamon half as much,
two hundred and fifty, and of fragrant cane two hundred and fifty, and of
cassia five hundred, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, and of olive oil
a hin. You shall make of these a
holy anointing oil, a perfume mixture, the work of a perfumer; it shall
be a holy anointing oil.
The Lord
went on in the following verses to clearly and emphatically give instructions
for the use of this oil. It was to be
used to consecrate, or symbolically mark as holy, the tent of meeting, the
lampstand and utensils, and the altar of incense. In addition, the priests, beginning with
Aaron and his sons, were to be anointed with the same mixture. In short, everything to do with the proper
and uniform worship of God was to be marked publicly as especially set aside
and special to the Lord. God was so emphatic
about these requirements that in verse 33 He warns that anyone who reproduced
the oil for a purpose unrelated to the worship of God or who put it on anyone
whom God did not specify was to be cut off, or exiled, from the nation.
Clearly,
this was a very serious matter to God. Of
course the oil itself did not make anyone physically any more holy than they
had been before. But the significance
was no less important for that fact and bore a twofold implication. First, as already mentioned, anointing a
person or a thing at God’s direction symbolically marked them as belonging to
God. Second, the exacting requirements
for both the manufacture and use of the oil was a test of obedience for God’s
people. Did they love Him enough to
follow His instructions to the letter?
Human beings are notorious for inconsistency. So the only possible way to nail this year
after year and decade after decade was to put forth a tremendous effort to
implement policies and procedures that would ensure the guidelines were
obeyed. And this labor was in itself an
act of worship that proved the worker’s dedication to His God.
So anointing,
in a Jewish context, was a big deal. And
the fact that Jesus is the messiah, the christos, the anointed one, is of
extraordinary significance. Matthew
Henry, in his commentary on 1st John, describes Jesus as the Christ
in this way:
that he is Messiah the prince, that he is the Son of
God by nature and office, that he is the chief of all the anointed world, chief
of all the priests, prophets, or kings, who were ever anointed by God or for
him, that he is perfectly prepared and furnished for the whole work of the
eternal salvation.
The
importance of Jesus of Nazareth as God’s anointed cannot be understated. And because it is true it requires more than
simply an acknowledgement of Jesus as a good man, a wise teacher, a noble
martyr, a revolutionary thinker, or anything else. One can state all of these things without
admitting the truth that Jesus was and is the holy, ordained, and anointed
messiah of Israel and christos to the rest of the world. And that is precisely John’s point. We have gone over this extensively already in
these essays. But it is worth
repeating. In order to be classified as
born of God by the apostle John, it is insufficient to mouth words of belief
about Christ’s status. It is
insufficient to attend church and nod your head at the preacher or
teacher. You MUST truthfully and
convincingly testify to your belief in Jesus as the Christ of God with your
whole life. It cannot possibly be stated
any better than Jesus Himself did it in the familiar passage of Matthew 22:37: And He said to him, “‘You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all
your mind.’
John’s
second point in this first verse is that if you qualify on the first point as a
child of God, then it is incumbent upon you as one of His loving children to in
turn love anyone else who is born of Him.
So, Christian, the question must be asked, how is your relationship with
your brothers and sisters in Christ?
I think this
is a very relevant question today. As I
write, in the latter half of 2016, we are in the midst of a quite contentious
presidential election cycle. It has been
unique in my lifetime among all the campaign seasons I have witnessed, in that
there is a distinct lack of clear direction.
Typically, although Christians may not agree with all positions a given
candidate supports, there is enough alignment for them to feel comfortable
casting a vote for one candidate or another.
But this time around there seems to be no clear answers. Black and white has been muddied into a
stagnant puddle of gray morass congealing upon the floor.
And in this
environment, perhaps fueled by the pseudo anonymity of the Internet, I have
witnessed many conversations among professing Christians that didn’t very much
look like it was being carried out by disciples of Christ. I have read accusatory tones, condemning
language, and outright hostility from people who publicly bear the mantle of a
believer. There seems to be a mindset
among some folks that if someone doesn’t agree with their perspective they are
worthy of ridicule. And I have born
witness to this going both ways; both right and left.
Friends,
this should not be! Have we
forgotten so quickly the manner in which John opened his letter? Have we forgotten the special call to
harmonious fellowship between the three persons of the godhead and all those
who, like we, have been given new spiritual birth by God? 1st John 1:3-4: what we have seen and heard we
proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed
our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy
may be made complete. John
personally bore witness to the wonders of God in the flesh. And he expressly stated that his purposes in revealing
this to us is so that we might share in the fellowship he himself enjoyed, and
in so doing fully complete both our joy and his.
Now perhaps
no one reading this is guilty of the aforementioned crime of attacking others
for their political decisions or other decisions. But let me ask you pointedly. How do you feel about the people who choose
to attack you? Maybe you are very
schooled in your public social skills and you refrain from lashing out against
people for their behavior in a public forum.
But what is the status of your view of them in the privacy of your own
heart? In other words, when a fellow
believer attacks you, snubs you, criticizes you, or in any other way
communicates negativity, do you still love them?
To come at
it from another angle, when you consider your brothers and sisters in Christ
what do you focus on? Do you concentrate
on their negative attributes that are worldly or their positive attributes that
are heavenly? I do not mean to say that
we should excuse sin. But what I do mean
is that we should give attention to the positive rather than the negative. If we approach the social situations in our
lives from that perspective, it will radically transform our love. Because when the inevitable offense comes
rather than wallowing in anger over the sinfulness of your fellow man you will
be more apt to sorrow over the lack of Christlikeness they have exhibited
toward you. The point is to look upward
to heaven rather than downward to earth.
I think that
is just what John had in mind with the next verse: By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and
keep His commandments. Did you see
what John just said? Read it again. He said that the benchmark we are to measure
ourselves against in order to determine whether we love other Christians has
nothing to do with them! The
determining factor in whether we love them or not is how well we obey God’s
commandments. That is just astonishing
to me. Now sure, some of His
commandments are to love others, to lay down our lives for them, to give them
the goods we have to help sustain their life, etc. We have looked at many of these in 1st
John already (2:10, 3:10-11, 3:16-17, 4:11).
But the focus is not on the human here.
It is upon God Himself.
The
perspective of this passage is the doing well of God’s commands as a litmus
test for how well we love His children, rather than the spotlight being cast on
the children themselves. It is
remarkable to me how consistently the Bible seeks to turn our attention away
from man and toward the Lord. In passage
after passage, on topics ranging all over the theological landscape, the
Scriptures insistently call us to focus our eyes upon Him rather than us. Just a few examples are Matthew 10:25-31, 2nd
Corinthians 1:3-4, and Jeremiah 10:23.
The authors of the Bible repeatedly and unapologetically trumpet the
pre-eminence of God over man. And our
passage today in 1st John is no exception to this pattern. Once you open your eyes to this facet of
Scripture it just refuses to stay silent.
You begin to see it all over the place.
Everywhere you turn in the Bible the glory and magnificence and majesty
of God is proclaimed and the inferiority and worthlessness of man apart from
Christ is broadcast.
All that
being said, it is critical to acknowledge another truth. Notice the order of verse 2. John precedes the keeping of the commandments
with an exhortation to love the one who issued them. In Deuteronomy 10:12-13 Moses describes for
us the pattern of God-honoring and God-pleasing obedience: “Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you,
but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways
and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul, and to
keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today
for your good? Our love for God MUST
precede the keeping of His commandments.
Anything else is legalism and unrighteous law keeping. In point of fact, it is not genuine obedience
at all.
Do you doubt
the emphasis I am giving this? Consider
the following two passages. In 1st
Samuel 15:22 the prophet chastises King Saul for his disobedience: Samuel said, "Has the LORD as much
delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. In Psalm 51:16-17 David, in the midst of
pouring out his repentant heart to God, makes the following statement: For You do not delight in sacrifice,
otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. Stack that up against what John has just said
in verse 2 and understand that if you do not love God, you cannot keep
His commandments in the first place.
I don’t want
to belabor the point. But I think we
fail at all of this so miserably so much of the time that it bears at least one
more question. Namely, do you apply your
love for God to your relationships as that which should inform and undergird
them? Or do you initiate and maintain
your relationships with an absence of consideration for your love for God? Further, does following the former path
rather than the latter path in life feel onerous to you? If it does, then the next verse in 1st
John 5 was written for you. Verse 3
reads: For this is the love of God, that
we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.
I believe
this verse, if adhered to and fully believed, will fundamentally alter our
perception of reality. Look at what John
is saying. He re-states that obeying
God’s rules are how we demonstrate our love for Him. Ok, we have seen this before; no
problem. But then he claims that God’s
commandments are not burdensome. Really
John? Are you kidding me? Have you talked to your brother in Christ
Paul lately? You know, Paul, the one who
whined and cried like a baby over his repeated sin in Romans chapter 7?
This is the
same Paul who wrote the following two passages.
Romans 4:13-15: For the
promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the
world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the Law are
heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified; for the Law brings
about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation. 2nd Corinthians 3:5-6: Not that we are adequate in ourselves to
consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our
adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of
a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter
kills, but the Spirit gives life.
The Law
(i.e. God’s commandments) brings about wrath.
The Law kills. It is the Spirit
who gives life. How can Paul write such
things while John writes that God’s commandments are not burdensome? For that matter consider King David’s
perspective on the Law. Here was a man
who lived prior to the sending of the Spirit of Truth into the world as a
helper. In Psalm 19: 7-10 he wrote the
following: The law of
the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of
the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of
the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true; they
are righteous altogether.
This man
absolutely adored the Law of God; all 613 of them presumably. He gloried in them and reveled in their
purity and light and truth. There seems
to be a fundamental disconnect between Paul’s and David’s view of the Law,
which we can easily interpret as the keeping of God’s commandments as John is
describing it. Because although
Christians may be freed from the yoke of bondage to the Law, it still describes
holy and righteous living that is pleasing to God. If we can dig past the surface of slaughtered
bulls, evildoers stoned to death, and people exiled for their infractions we
will see that the underlying factors behind all of it are the same that we face
today as Christians. In fact, it is the
same root issue that John is describing for us.
We are to love the Lord first. We
are to place our faith and trust in Him alone.
And that love should envelop our entire lives as the focal point of all
that we say and do.
So what
gives with the contrast between Paul and David?
And how does that inform our question of what John is getting at in
verse 3? Well, we need to understand
that David is not attempting to provide a doctrinal explanation for his keeping
of God’s law. He is just describing how
he feels about it. Paul, on the other
hand, is providing an exposition of man’s relationship to the Law both pre and
post conversion. The apostle didn’t stop
with Romans 4:13-15 above. He also wrote
Romans 7:5-6 and 10:1-4. He explains
through these other passages how it was sin which killed us through the
Law. The Law, in and of itself, is good. It will never kill. But when sin comes into contact with it only
death is produced by the sin. The Law of
Moses was not Israel’s problem. Their
issue was trying to forcibly keep it through their own power which resulted in
their spiritual deaths. This was the
point of Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 8 verse 14 in his book: “Then He shall become a sanctuary; but to
both the houses of Israel, a stone to strike and a rock to stumble over, and a
snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”
The reason
David was able to love the Law of God, in spite of its Old Testament rigidity,
was that God had enabled Him to overflow with love for God that overcame and
vanquished his fallen human tendency to hate the restrictive nature of it. And that brings up what I think is the crux
of this matter. Our perception is warped
beyond recognition. That is why we tend
to view obedience as burdensome even when John and Christ before him claim it
is not. Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble
in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden
is light.”
This seems
to be precisely what John is saying. We
ought to demonstrate our love for God by carefully and closely and diligently
guarding His commandments. This should
not a burden to us because Christ’s yoke is as easy as breathing and as light
as a feather. In putting his yoke around
our necks we find ultimate rest and peace for our souls.
But this is
not typically how we perceive rules, is it?
No, we tend to view it exactly the opposite. We have an upside down view of reality. We tend to think of rules and laws as burdens
weighing us down, and only by engaging in selfish acts of sinful disobedience
can we rise above them. But the reality
is that it is the sin that weighs us down like a millstone, and only by
engaging in selfless acts of righteous obedience to God’s commandments (i.e.
Christ’s yoke and burden; i.e. the Law of God) can we rise freely above the
flotsam of this world.
If you take
this teaching to heart and pursue it with vigor it will change everything in
your life. As a child you will honor
your parent’s authority with delight. As
a parent you will give and enforce rules differently. As an employee you will obey nonsensical
corporate standards with gusto. As a
citizen you will respect your government even when you disagree with them. As a disciple maker you will pour into your
disciples a zest for the laws of God that will transform their perspective of
Christianity. As a disciple you will hunger
and thirst after righteousness like never before. I think it is safe to say that no matter your
position, station, or circumstances in life, you will be radically altered by a
biblical view of rule and law.
This
transformative process will explode your ideas of Christian position in and
relation to the world as well. Here at
the end, after that lengthy build-up and preparation, we come to what I think
is the point of the passage. It is found
in verses 4 and 5: For whatever is born
of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world –
our faith. Who is the one who overcomes
the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
I want you
to observe something in verse 4. The
word overcomes is the English equivalent of the Greek “nikao”. It is the same word John used in 4:5 to
indicate our victory over the world. But
here is the interesting thing. In the
first instance John used the perfect verb tense of “nikao”. This lent it a meaning of past occurrence
with effects that propagate into the present and beyond. It has present significance without present
instance. But here in 5:5 John instead
uses the present tense for the same word.
I believe the authors of Scripture were intelligent men. I believe they meant exactly what and how
they wrote. And I further believe that
in some mysterious supernatural way we do not fully understand the Spirit of
God Himself super-intended their words.
Therefore, I
do not believe it was an accident or a random fancy that caused John to use the
present tense of “nikao” here in chapter 5.
I think he is trying to tell us something. I believe what he is teaching here is that
our victory is a living and active victory.
Yes, it is in the past. And yes,
that past victory is of such a tremendously significant nature that it’s
effects spill over into the present. But
our triumph over the world is more than that.
It is a present reality of our lives each and every day.
Again
though, how can that possibly be so in the face of the overwhelming odds
Christianity in America is facing right now?
For that matter, how would this verse apply and be relevant to the great
mass of Christians throughout the centuries and even today who have
historically been maltreated and scorned for their faith? I think it is so because everything that
transpires in our lives is of benefit.
Turn your attention to another familiar passage but one that is well
worth re-visiting; Romans 8:28: And we
know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love
God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Do you
really believe this verse? Do you trust
the truth of this promise even when the worst circumstances imaginable present
themselves to you and are thrust into your face? Do you really believe that nothing that
happens to us is “bad”? I don’t mean evil. Bad is distinct from evil. Evil is either of a physical nature
concerning the destruction of that which God has created or a moral nature
concerning the violation of that which God has decreed. Evil certainly is alive and well in this
world. And it most definitely impacts us
sometimes. But the Bible teaches that
even when we encounter evil it is for our good rather than our detriment. This is why I say nothing “bad” happens to
Christians; because “all things” are interwoven for our good.
This was
precisely Joseph’s perspective when he was re-united with his brothers after 20
years of separation brought about by the most heinous of arrangements, his
imprisonment and selling into slavery at their hands. Genesis 50:20 gives us his outlook on the situation
as he came to his final days of life: As
for you, you meant evil against me, but God
meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many
people alive. Perspective is
everything. And when our perspective is
fixed upon God it completely changes our entire world view.
That world
view should be thinking of spiritual issues rather than material ones. Ephesians 6:12: For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against
the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of
this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. That doesn’t mean you have to ignore or be
unaware of what goes on in the world.
But it does mean you have to keep those things in their proper place;
way down the totem pole of importance in life.
At the
end of all this I think we can summarize this passage with the following
outline:
- What is our relationship to the world? We overcome or conquer it.
- By what means do we accomplish this? Through our faith and love.
- Who do we love? God first, and through Him others.
- What or whom is our faith in? It is in Jesus.
- What do we believe about Jesus? That He is the Son of God and the Christ.
So Christian,
as I think John intended, go forth with confidence, not fearing what the world
may throw at you. Fight the good
spiritual fight with love, diligence, and commitment. You are a part of God’s family now and He
wins.
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