"Whoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him." (1 John 5.1)

Belief in the messiah‑ship of Jesus is the beginning and end of our Christian faith. It lies in the centre of all that Christianity means to us and it enshrouds and embraces every phase and aspect of the Christian life. In v.1.this belief is an indication that we are "born of the spirit"; that points to the beginning of our walk along the Narrow Way. In v.5 the same belief is an assurance that we shall overcome the world, that points to the end of our walk. It is true that in an accommodated sense we can say that we are overcoming, or have overcome the world, here and now, but in the strict and truest sense we cannot say we have overcome until the earthly life has ended and we have passed the final test. It may well be in this passage John is thinking more of present experience than final achievement. Nevertheless, the idea of the last judgment can never be far from his thoughts, and when in v.4 he tells us that the victory that overcomes the world is our faith he must surely be thinking of the same thing that inspired Peter to write "that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perisheth though it be tried with fire might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." (1 Pet.1.7)

It might reasonably be asked at this point if John's statement in v.1. requires us to hold that anyone who professes mere belief in Jesus and his redeeming work without going on to full consecration of life and possessions and talents to God is to be accepted as one born of God. To John, the expression "believing in Jesus" means everything that is involved in the logical consequences of belief. It means not only a mental acceptance of the truth regarding Jesus and His mission; not even justification by faith, which comes in consequence of such belief coupled with repentance and acceptance of Jesus as a personal Saviour. It means the life of consecration, the continual walking after the Spirit, the being buried with Christ by baptism into His death. All that, is what John means by believing that Jesus is the Christ.

There is a connection here with the preceding chapter. Having established the fact that we who have thus believed in Jesus are "born of God" there is a tacit assumption that our love has gone out to God, and built upon that, the reminder of what has been repeatedly said before, that we who thus love God must logically and obviously cherish feelings of love for all our fellows who are similarly "born of God."

In chapter 3 we are told that to love one another is the commandment of God. In ch.4 v.11 there comes the pleading exhortation "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another". That puts the matter on a higher plane than that of mere commandment; it now becomes a moral obligation. Now here in chapter 5 John takes it a step farther and removes the thought of command or obligation out of the argument altogether. He states as a demonstrable fact that anyone who loves God will obviously love his brother also; the two loves must go together. Love for God cannot exist unless there is love for brother. Then following up his advantage, he drives the lesson home with the second verse "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments ".

This theme has already been treated at length in the notes on chaps. 3 and 4. It cannot be stressed too much or too often. Probably that is why John returns to it time and again. Love for the brethren is a most important factor in our Christian lives and, despite the stringent urging of John here in his epistle, one that is often found exceedingly difficult to put into practice. True, we always pay lip-service to it and even when our bungling mismanagement of affairs within our fellowship has resulted in a physical separation of believers who ought still to be worshipping and working together we try to excuse ourselves by saying that we still regard our separated ones as brethren and still have Christian love for them. It is doubtful if the Almighty endorses our words; still more unlikely that He will lightly excuse a condition of things where mutually antagonistic groups of disciples maintain themselves in separate "camps" asserting doggedly that their own views of Divine things necessarily constitute "Truth" and the extent to which their opponents differ is the extent to which those opponents are in 'error'. There is certainly a case for the orderly gathering of Christians into varying groups adapted to their varying spiritual needs. Men are creatures of indeterminate characteristics. But even though one believer feels that he is brought closer to God in the reverential surroundings and ritual of a High Church service, and another only in the Puritan simplicity of a Quaker meeting-house, there can always be a oneness between such, born of mutual respect for each other's beliefs and convictions, in the sober realisation that the Holy Spirit has said "in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth" (2 Tim.2.20). Such a oneness can reveal itself in a hundred ways without any "sacrifice of principle" or "lowering of the doctrinal standard" or any of the other sops to conscience which we are so ready to invent to excuse what we know inwardly is our betrayal of our Lord's own heartfelt prayer "That they may be one, as we are".

(To be continued)

AOH