1 John Chapter 5

John unites faith, love, and obedience, presents God’s threefold witness to the Son, and closes with assured life, confident prayer, and a guard against idols.

1 John 5:1-5

Born of God and Victorious

1 John 5:6-12

The Witness God Has Given

1 John 5:13-17

Assurance and Confident Prayer

1 John 5:18-21

What We Know and a Final Warning

1 John 5:1

John opens the final chapter by joining two truths he has kept close throughout the letter: right belief about Jesus and the new birth from God. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” The confession is specific. It identifies the man from Nazareth, who was baptized, taught, suffered, and died, with the promised Messiah, the Anointed One of Israel’s hope. The teachers who had left the congregation could speak warmly of a heavenly Christ while keeping him at a distance from the human Jesus. John will not allow that separation. To believe is to hold that this Jesus is the Christ.

The Greek is worded with care. “Believeth” is a present participle, describing ongoing trust, while “is born” is a perfect, “has been begotten,” pointing to a decisive act of God whose effect continues. Faith does not manufacture the new birth; it is the first visible sign that God has already been at work. John’s order guards the priority of grace while insisting that the person born of God really does believe.

The second half of the verse reasons from ordinary family life. “Every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.” Love for a father naturally reaches his children. The new birth does not produce isolated individuals who relate to God privately; it places them in a household. Anyone who claims affection for the Father while treating his other children with indifference or contempt contradicts the very relationship being claimed.

In this one verse John links the three tests that have run through the letter: belief in Jesus, love for God’s family, and, in the next verse, obedience. They are threads of a single fabric, and the new birth is the loom on which they are woven.

Study Links

Cross References

1 John 2:22-231 John 4:71 John 4:20-21

Word / Phrase Notes

γεγέννηται (gegennētai) — is born

A perfect passive of the verb “to beget.” The tense presents the new birth as a completed act of God with lasting results, and the passive voice makes God the one who acts. In 1 John the phrase “born of God” describes the source of a believer’s faith, love, and righteousness rather than a reward earned by them.

1 John 2:29

ὁ Χριστός (ho Christos) — the Christ

The title means “the Anointed One,” the Greek equivalent of Messiah. To confess that Jesus is the Christ is to identify the historical Jesus as the one in whom God’s promises to Israel are fulfilled, and it excludes any teaching that separates a divine Christ from the human Jesus.