1 John 5

5:1) Before giving the final explanation John states who a child of God is, and who is thus a brother of a child of God, and thereby takes us back to 2:29–3:1, 9; 4:7, (“everyone having been born from God,” etc.), and at the same time back to 3:23, “believe the name of his Son” (4:16, “believe”). Only the believer is the believer’s brother; only the reborn is brother to the reborn. Everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God.

The antichrists call each other “brother, brother”; so also do men in self-made brotherhoods. When such brothers love one another, this is not evidence that they love God. I must be born from God, be born into God’s family, to be a brother to those in this family, to have them as my brothers (“the children of God,” 3:1), to love them as my brothers, and to be loved as a brother by them. The love that John speaks about in 4:20, 21 is the love that is possible only between brother and brother. This is also necessary because it at the same time means love for the Father from whom all of us brothers have been born.

Only the believer is so born. John says that the content of his faith is “that Jesus is the Christ,” and he says in 4:15 that this faith is confessed; so we can easily know who is a believer and thus a brother born from God. In 4:11 we have pointed out that John there, too, strikes at the heresies of Cerinthus and of his following. John does this from the very beginning of this epistle as we have noted throughout. John, the apostle of love as he is often called, is not a sentimental pacifist but a very strong polemicist—“liar” (1:6, 10; 2:22; 4:20) is hurled like a bolt from his pen.

Since he uses the unmodified name “Jesus” (so also in 1:7) John has in mind the man Jesus, he who walked here on earth as a man. The heretics said “that is all that he was and that he is.” To believe that the man Jesus is “the Christ,” i.e., all that is contained in this term starting from 1:1–3; 1:7; 2:1, 2 on through to 4:9, 10, 14, means to believe the deity of Jesus, the expiation of his blood, the remission and the cleansing which this blood effects, in fact, the whole love of God that is expressed in the whole Saviorhood of Jesus, the whole gospel. John is not presenting the minimum content of faith but its full, normal, true content. After all that he has said his brief wording is sufficient.

The true believer “has been born from God,” he alone. With this verb (which has the same tense it had in 2:29; 3:9) John refers to these passages. By this birth God made the true believer one of “the children of God” (3:1), a brother to all his other children. Thus John now advances to the statement: And everyone loving the One who gave birth loves also the one who has been born from him. John does not say, “He ought to love.” The truth that the child of God loves the Father who begot him as his child and thus loves also his brother whom the Father has likewise begotten, is a simple fact. To imagine the opposite, namely that one who is so begotten should not love him who has likewise been begotten, is to imagine the impossible.

This is the basis for the “ought” used in 4:11. We have the full unfolding of what is implied in 1:3, the fellowship of the readers with us (the apostles); in 1:7, the fellowship with one another; and of all that lies in 2:9–11; 3:10–18; 4:11, 12, in loving one another, loving one’s brother, not hating him. John goes to the root of it all. He weaves into one fabric all the threads of his epistle, all that he says about the Father, about Jesus, his Son, the Christ, and this Son’s blood and mission, about our connection with the Father and the Son, about life (1:1, 2; 4:9), about passing from the death into the life, and about remaining in the death (3:14). In fact, a full exegesis of our verse would include the exegesis of all that precedes. This is John’s wonderful way of writing: each brief, crystal-clear statement involves all that precedes.

Believing and love go together in 3:23, in 4:16 (God’s love), and in this passage. The believing makes confession (4:15), loving shows itself in deeds (3:18). We thus have no difficulty in knowing whether we are in God, and he in us as his children, and who are our brothers who are likewise born from God with the same faith and the same love in their hearts. All this has at the same time its polemical side against those who went out from us because they were not of us (2:19), who are not in this family, who are not believers born of God and filled with this love, who lie when they claim fellowship with God (1:6) and declare, “I love God” (4:20), lie because they deny the Son and thus also the Father (2:22, 23) and prove it by not loving us, God’s children, show their Cain-like nature, the fact that they are children of the devil not born from God (3:8–12).

1 John 5:2

2 John now weaves in our knowing, the γινώσκειν about which he has said so much. Trace the word back and note its full meaning, knowing with full affect and effect in ourselves. In connection with this we know that we are loving the children of God, those born from him (the plural now denoting all of them), whenever we are loving God and are doing his commandments. It is as simple as that.

Here are God’s commandments. Review all that John says about “commandments,” notably in 2:3–8, also in 3:22–24, finally in 4:21. By doing these commandments, gospel commandments which ask for both faith and love (3:23), you are loving God; and by loving God you are loving the children of God. Just look at what you are doing with the commandments of God, who is love, then you cannot help knowing, i.e., realizing. The negative is, of course, equally true. Not to be doing God’s commandments (3:23) leaves you with nothing but the lying claim that you are loving God (4:20) and have fellowship with him (1:6); and then any love for God’s children, in fact, any claim that you are one of them and are born from God becomes fiction.

There are three boxes. The outer one is doing what God wants. Open that, and in it is loving God, the Father of all his children. Open that, and in it is loving his children. So you know. The apposition to ἐντούτῳ is the ὅταν clause (compare the remarks on 3:24b; R. 700, and especially B.-D. 394: ὅτι to denote a fact, ἐάν or ὅταν to denote a supposition).

1 John 5:3

3 Γάρ adds the important explanation: For this is the love for God, that we keep his commandments. Just to make the claim: “I am loving God!” (4:20) amounts to nothing, is, in fact, lying (1:6). But remember 3:23 as well as 1:3, “fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” John weaves in τηρεῖν from 2:3, 4, the commandments have been given (3:22, 24) for the purpose of keeping; doing what each one says (5:2), actually loving not merely in word but in deed (3:18), when it comes to my brother, my fellow believer, is their chief aim.

Are these commandments burden-some, a heavy weight that is, if possible, to be avoided, to be complained about when it is shouldered? And his commandments are not burden-some. Is it a burden to believe in the Son of God who died in expiation of our sins (2:2; 3:23; 4:10)? There is no greater joy than this confidence and trust. Is it a burden to be called one of God’s children (3:1), children of him who is love (4:8, 16), and for the love of him who first loved us (4:10) to love him and thus also his children even as he loves us, and as they love us? Can there be any greater joy than to stand in this circle of love, to have this love poured out upon us, to be warmed into answering love by this love? No; his commandments are not burden-some!

The Seventh Circle of Facts, Centering on Testimony, Faith, Life 5:4–17

1 John 5:4

4 In 4:14 “we are testifying” recalls the beginning of the epistle: “we are testifying and are declaring to you” (1:2). John now weaves in the facts regarding this testimony. He does so at this point where he has connected believing with love. We have these two together in 3:23, and believing continues in the development in 4:1; 4:16; 5:1. John now joins testimony and believing. All testimony wants to be believed, it is offered for that purpose only. All true testimony ought to be believed; not to believe it is to make him who testifies a liar. John adds what this means for the liar.

John makes no formal division at this point. Hence one may add v. 4, 5 to the preceding. The only reason we divide here is the fact that John introduces the new terms “victory” and “winning victory” and connects these terms with “faith” and “believing,” and thus passes on to “testimony” and “bearing testimony,” which he now expands, which appear eight times and thus form the new center. The old division into chapters which is found in our versions lets the new circle begin at v. 1 although v. 1–3 still carries the key word “love,” which is dropped in v. 4.

Because everyone who has been born from God (reaching back into 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1) is victorious over the world; and this is the victory, the one that became victorious over the world, our faith. John links the thought with 2:13, 14 where he says that the youths have achieved the victory over the wicked one and then tells all his readers not to love the world. The wicked one rules the world; to be victorious over him is to be a victor over the world and over all that is in it, which is not from the Father (2:16). If the youths have achieved this victory and stand in it (perfect tenses), this is certainly also true of all who are no longer youths. John now speaks of all of them and includes himself.

Ὅτι makes this victory the reason that our keeping God’s commandments in love for God cannot be burden-some. How can victors find it hard to show their love for God by keeping his commandments which ask them to believe in the Son and to love one another (3:23)? They have been born from God, have been filled with strong, spiritual life, and are thus victorious over the world, over this power which would interfere with their keeping of God’s commandments. It should certainly be easy for us victors to go on in our victory, to trample upon any interference from the world which is opposed to God, and to love God and to keep his commandments.

This becomes clearer when we see what this victory is, “the one that became victorious over the world,” the aorist participle going back to the beginning of the victory. It is “our faith.” When God, then, asks us to believe (3:23) he is asking us only to be victorious; when he asks us to love he is asking only for the fruit of faith which it naturally bears. Both faith and love show that we have been born from God (v. 1), that the power of a new life is in us, that in believing and in loving this power of the new life is showing its activity. It does so positively in regard to God and to God’s children who are in the same victorious army with us and negatively in regard to the world, in keeping up our victory over it (present tense).

1 John 5:5

5 Here again, as in verse 1, John is not content with the words “believe” and “our faith” but adds the content of this faith. Now who is the one that is victorious over the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? The question implies that no one will think of a different answer. If our victory is our faith, the victor is the believer. This makes the abstract statement concrete. Yet everything depends on what we believe.

Believing some fiction, some lie is not victory but defeat, surrender, victory for the devil, the father of lies (John 8:44), for the world, the devil’s children (3:10) who cling to his lies and his deceptions. Not a single lie is from the truth (2:21). John has said much about the light, the truth, the Word. He now states their substance: “that Jesus is the Son of God”; in verse 1 it was: “that Jesus is the Christ.” This is what the believer believes, this is what makes him a victor over the world.

John again links into all that he has said on the deity of Jesus and on the power of his blood in 1:1–3, 7; 2:1, 2, 22, 23; 3:8, 23; 4:9, 10, 15; 5:1. Let us once more add that the truth “that Jesus is the Son of God,” “the Christ,” the “expiation for our sins,” the “Savior of the world,” is not one article of our faith but the sum of all of them, not a piece of the gospel but the whole gospel. It is necessary to say this and to cling to it because so many imagine that “the truth” and “the Word” can be cut into pieces, and that we can deny this, that, and even many pieces and yet be true to the Father and to the Son and to God’s children.

1 John 5:6

6 This One is the One who came by means of water and blood; not in connection with water alone, but in connection with the water and in connection with the blood.

The content of the faith of the victor over the world is “that Jesus is the Son of God,” a truth which Cerinthus and his adherents denied outright by making Jesus the natural son of Joseph and of Mary. That is why this epistle from beginning to end holds up the deity of Jesus, why it with such decisiveness stresses the fact that he is “the Son of God.” Deny this, and you deny and have no Father (3:22, 23), and all talk of fellowship with God (1:6), i.e., all talk of true religion, is nothing but a lie.

But these antichristian heretics had more to say. This natural son of Joseph was joined to the eon Christ (the earliest Gnostic notion) at Jesus’ baptism, but this Christ eon left the natural son of Joseph at the time of his passion so that Jesus died as a mere man who was never “the Son of God,” was never the incarnate Logos, the second person of the Godhead, but had the Christ eon only for a time. This heresy deprived the death and “the blood of Jesus, the Son of God,” of all efficacy as a ἱλασμός or “expiation” for the sins of the world (2:2; 4:10). In fact, these heretics denied that we have sins and also in this respect made God a liar (1:8–10). That is why John now says: “This One is the One,” i.e., this Jesus who is the Son of God, “who came by means of water and of blood,” and then adds specifically: “not in connection with the water alone” as Cerinthus claims, “but in connection with the water and in connection with the blood.”

Οὗτος is the subject of ἐστί, and ὁἐλθών, κτλ., is the predicate: “this One” is “the One who came,” etc. The aorist indicates the historical fact. “The One who came = 4:9, 10: “God has sent (commissioned) his Son, the Only-begotten, as expiation regarding our sins.” This One came as the one thus sent and commissioned, this One being the Only-begotten, the Son of God.

Neither διά nor the two ἐν are local; nor does ἐν indicate manner (R. 583) or accompanying circumstance akin to μετά and σύν (R. 589). Jesus, the Son of God, did not come as one who walked through (local), or in the manner of water and of blood, or with water and blood accompanying him. The mission on which God sent his Son and in which he came as “Savior of the world” (4:14) made him use these two means (διά), water and blood; when he came, it was not “in connection with” water alone (as the heretics claimed) but “in connection with the water and in connection with the blood.” The ἐν is to be understood in its original sense, the two articles are articles of previous reference to “water” and to “blood.”

The διά states what the connection indicated by ἐν was: it was the connection of means. John is not referring to John 19:34 where blood is placed before water, which also the heretics did not have in mind. The two ἐν phrases also indicate two connections and not one in which water and blood were combined. The first is the baptism of Jesus, the Son of God, in and by which he assumed his office as Savior of the world, for which God had sent him. The second is his sacrificial death on the cross where he shed his expiating blood; compare what is said on “the blood of Jesus, his Son,” in 1:7.

John utterly repudiates what the heretics made of the baptism of Jesus. Read John 1:29–34: “the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world,” the Lamb came to shed his blood for the sin and was “the Son of God” as the voice of the Father declared from heaven (Matt. 3:17; John 1:34). The heretics denied what that voice said, denied “the blood of the Son of God” (1:7), the expiation on the cross.

When the historical aorist ὁἐλθών is disregarded, symbolical and figurative ideas are allowed play, and when these are given free rein they go to extravagant lengths. We list only the one that water and blood denote the two sacraments, which is held by even a man like Besser who in addition finds a reference to John 19:34.

On whose testimony does this our victorious faith in Jesus, the Son of God, and on this fact that he came and thus carried out the mission on which God had sent him (4:9, 10) rest? John reverts to 1:2: “we are testifying,” and to 4:14 where he writes the same words. And the Spirit is the One giving testimony because the Spirit is the truth. John no longer stresses the fact that he himself and the apostles are the ones testifying as he did in 1:2 and in 4:14, but he does not do this because their apostolic testifying is not sufficient for faith. John advances from the intermediate bearers of testimony to the ultimate One who testifies. As the epistle progresses it advances with every new addition. It does so here.

The ultimate One bearing testimony, from whom all the apostles also derive their testimony, on whom their own faith also rests, is the Holy Spirit, none less. The τὸΠνεῦμα must refer to the third person of the Godhead. There is no need to mention what some, following their spiritualizing fancies, have found in this word. The Spirit is above all the One giving testimony, is thus the ultimate Testifier, “because the Spirit is the truth,” the truth itself. Jesus calls him “the Spirit of the truth” (John 15:26; 16:13). Jesus adds: “He shall testify concerning me.” To the apostles Jesus says: “And you, too, testify, because from the beginning you are with me” (John 15:27).

All of this agrees with what John says in 1:2 and in 4:14 about the apostles’ testifying and now about the Spirit as the One testifying. The relation of the apostles to the Spirit is plain: Jesus gave them the Spirit. They speak as being borne along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21), the Spirit being the ultimate Testifier.

John says more than that the Spirit is “true”; he is “the truth” just as Jesus says this regarding himself (John 14:6), the embodiment of the saving truth, which he thus also imparts by his testimony in order to save us. We do not regard ὅτι as declarative: “that he is the truth” (Luther). This would be out of the line of thought. Τὸμαρτυροῦν, “the One testifying,” is the present tense because the Spirit has never ceased testifying. We hear his voice in the Scripture, notably in the New Testament. We should not translate this participle into English by means of a neuter word or speak of a neuter being “personified.” The Greek Πνεῦμα is grammatically a neuter, but in the Greek it refers to the third person of the Godhead, and the predicate “the One testifying” is not “something testifying.”

7, 8) But the law has ever required and requires to this day that two or three testify (Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; 2 Cor. 13:1); God himself adheres to this principle, (Heb. 10:28, 29); so does Jesus (Heb. 6:18; John 5:31–37). So John adds a second causal clause: Because three are the ones giving testimony, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are for one thing, i.e., their testimony is one identical thing, the three agree without the least deviation in their one testimony in regard to Jesus and to his deity. The Spirit is the One testifying, he who is the truth itself because two others testify with him and substantiate even in a legal, formal way all that anyone can require in regard to testimony. The fact that these two others are not persons does not disqualify them. In Heb. 6:18 the second is not a second person; in John 5:36 Jesus names his “works” as testifying.

The baptism of Jesus speaks volumes about his deity and about his entire mission. We have already pointed to John 1:29–34 and to the accounts of the baptism itself. The death of Jesus does the same; remember his words on the cross, in fact, his entire passion, the whole of which is the testimony of “the blood.” The one supreme Testifier, the Spirit, has these two others to support him.

The R. V. is right in not even noting in the margin the interpolation found in the A. V. How completely spurious this insertion, often called “Comma Joanneum,” really is Horn, Introduction, 7th ed., vol. IV, pp. 448–471, shows, offering even the facsimiles of the very late texts that contain the Comma and treating the whole subject exhaustively. Zahn, Introduction, III, 372, adds a few new items in his remarks on the subject.

1 John 5:9

9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater because this is the testimony of God, (this) that he has given testimony in regard to his Son. We certainly receive the testimony of men in regard to all manner of things, many of them being most important. The testimony of God is infinitely greater because this is the testimony of God, this that (declarative ὅτι) he has been testifying, not about some small thing, but about the greatest of all, his own Son. What the Spirit, the water, and the blood say is God’s own testimony; these three testifiers are furnished by him, by him because this testimony of his deals with his own Son. This constitutes its greatness. Once given, it stands now and ever—the perfect μεμαρτύρηκε. When the Father sends us three testifiers and through them in the most legal way testifies about his own Son, can we who daily receive the testimony of men refuse to accept this great testimony, which is great because it is given by God and is given about his Son?

1 John 5:10

10 John emphasizes this thought. He repeats the term “testimony” and the verb “testify” no less than eight times, “God” seven times, his “Son” six times. See the similar repetitions of “commandment” in 2:3–8; of the verb “to remain” in 2:24–28. The one believing in the Son of God has this testimony in him (in his heart, for believing so receives it); the one not believing God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony which God has testified concerning his Son. The perfect tenses imply that he has done this from the moment when God brought his testimony to his heart and this disbeliever refused to believe God himself when he was testifying concerning his own Son.

It is making God a liar when one refuses to believe God’s testimony regarding other matters; it is making God a liar in the worst possible way when one refuses to believe God’s testimony about his own Son. Let the disbelievers in the deity of Jesus note what they have done. Compare 1:10 on making God a liar; and 2:22, the fact that only liars do this. Yet they claim fellowship with God (1:6) as though God were a liar and fellowships liars!

Note that believing is not a matter of the head and the intellect alone but that it ever appeals to the heart. Faith is the confidence of the heart, the fiducia that holds “in him,” in the believer, the objective testimony of God and thus all that God’s testimony contains as John now makes plain.

11, 12) And this is the testimony, that God gave to us life eternal, and this life is in connection with his Son. The one having the Son has this life; the one not having the Son of God does not have this life.

Understand well what this testimony of God is, which he has testified through his three testifiers, in order that you may well understand what believing this testimony is and what not believing it is. This testimony about his Son is no less than “that God gave to us life eternal”; with a simple καί John adds the thought that “this life is in connection with his Son.” The articles used with ζωή (three times) are those of previous reference: “this life.” What connection life eternal has with God’s Son, John has stated in 4:9, 10 (“that we may live through him”); in 3:14 (“we have stepped over from the death into the life”); in 1:1, 2 (Jesus, “the Logos of the Life,” “the Life that was manifested,” “the Life, the eternal one”), plus all the passages on “having been begotten from God” (2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 14, 18).

John binds everything together. God’s testimony brings us his Son; eternal life is in his Son, is in him for us; it is given us in and by this testimony; to believe it is to have the Son, and to have him is to have this life; not to believe it is not to have the Son and this life. It is all as simple and as lucid as these brief statements make it.

John can say for himself and for his readers: “God gave to us life eternal,” gave it to us when we believed his testimony and thereby received the Son into our possession with all that he is for us. Regarding the heretics he can now let the general statement suffice: “The one not having the Son does not have this life.”

1 John 5:13

13 With a direct address to his readers John now combines the three terms into one succinct statement: the name of the Son of God—believing in his name—life eternal. The name comes to us through the “testimony.” On ὄνομα and its use with “the Son of God” see 3:23. These things I wrote to you in order that you may know that you have life eternal as those believing in the name of the Son of God.

We think that it is fruitless to debate as to whether this epistolary aorist refers only to what immediately precedes or to the whole epistle; because of the way in which John writes, letting his thought spiral upward in ever-widening circles, what he just wrote is only a further advance on the rest. The whole of it, like the last sentences, is to bring to the mind of his readers the fact that they have life eternal as those who believe in the name (revelation) of the Son of God.

John uses οἶδα as he does also in the three following notable statements (verses 18–20) and not γινώσκω. His intention is not that he wants to exclude the knowing of the heart, which realizes with full effect upon the readers (γινώσκω), but that he wants his readers to know also intellectually, with a clear understanding of the mind that they have life eternal only as believers in the name of the Son of God over against all the heretics who refuse to believe in this name and revelation and deny the Son of God (2:22; 4:15). The readers must know this with a clear mental perception in order to meet and to refute these Gnostic heretics when they come with the claim that they are the ones who know. The aorist εἰδῆτε is effective: “that you may actually know.” This is the purpose of John’s instructive, clear, simple presentation. John has already said that he is writing nothing new and strange (2:7, etc.), also that his readers have for a long time realized and believed (2:13, etc.; 4:16); John writes in order to fortify his readers just as we must constantly be informed and fortified anew.

1 John 5:14

14 The fact that John is thinking of the dangers that are besetting his readers becomes evident in what he adds. And this is the boldness which we have regarding him that, if we ask anything in accord with his will, he hears us; and if we know that he hears us, (hears) whatever we ask, we know that we have the askings we have asked from him.

John links back into 3:21, 22, which he now amplifies, but he states this as a preamble to the danger that he has in mind, to what he expects his readers to do in rescuing a brother from such danger. So he once more reminds them of the great παρρησία, the boldness and confidence that they have πρὸςαὑτόν, “face to face” with God when they go to him in prayer (see 3:21 on this preposition).

It is a fact that, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. The fact that we as true believers and God’s children will never come face to face with him and ask what is against his will is in a way self-evident; hence it is not mentioned in so many of the promises of Jesus regarding prayer nor in 3:21, 22. That point is in place here because John speaks of cases when God does not want us to ask. That is the reason John does not now use the active of αἰτέω as he did in 3:22 but twice writes the middle αἰτώμεθα and then twice follows this with the simple active.

G. K. and others think that there is no difference between these forms, at least, that none is intended. But here and elsewhere, especially where the active and the middle are used side by side, a difference is apparent and certainly seems to be intended. It is admitted that the middle is used in business dealings, where one has the right to ask. Herod’s oath gave Salome a certain right to ask, a right of which she made full use (Matt. 14:7). Why should the two middle forms that are used here not include this right? Does the phrase “according to his will” (θέλημα, what God has willed and has made known as being willed by him) not imply a certain right for our asking?

1 John 5:15

15 John repeats “he hears us” by saying “we know that he hears us,” we know it as a fact; Jesus himself has told us so. The person one hears is stated with the genitive, the thing one hears is stated in the accusative: “he hears us” (genitive), hears “whatever we ask” (accusative clause). “He hears” is to be understood in its full sense: “we know that we have the askings that we have asked from him.” He hears and grants. Αἰτήματα is the cognate object (R. 477). It is a word that expresses a result like θέλημα: the askings as made by our action of asking.

“We have asked” does not need to be the middle here. R. 805 remarks that in these verses the difference between the middle and the active may well be the point; we think it is and do not follow B.-D. 316, 2 who says that the change in voice is “arbitrary” here and in James 4:2, etc. Moulton, Einleitung, 253, etc., records several wrong opinions, objects to Blass’s view regarding “arbitrary,” but seems to think that Mayor is right, who says that the active denotes that the asking is without the spirit of prayer, which is an untenable idea.

In ἐὰνοἴδαμεν we have the indicative; it is found once more in the New Testament in 1 Thess. 3:8; it occurs often in the papyri (R. 1010); in the modern Greek the indicative is used as frequently as the subjunctive.

1 John 5:16

16 Now there follows the application. If one sees a brother sinning a sin not unto death he will ask, and he (God) will give to him (that asks) for those not sinning unto death. There is sin unto death. Not concerning that do I say that he make request.

Here is a brother that is living in some sin (present, durative participle), and one of us (singular) sees it. Knowing what we all know about asking God and about God’s hearing us, one of us asks God, and God gives this one life for this brother, “for those sinning”; the plural indicates that there will be others that sin from time to time. The future tenses are perfectly regular and are not intended as imperatives. This cannot be the case as far as δώσει is concerned.

The subject of the latter is God. This is indicated by the addition of αὑτῷ which must mean “to him” who does the asking. Some, like the R. V. margin, refer it to the sinning brother, but they must then make the plural τοῖςἁμαρτάνουσι an apposition to the singular αὑτῷ, which, to say the least, is strange. In the R. V. “even” is added: “even to them that are sinning.” If we supply anything we prefer to supply “God” with the verb. This leaves us the proper Scripture thought that God gives to him who asks. The idea that you and I give life to anyone is not Scriptural. Those who accept that idea say that this person gives life to his sinning brother when God, in answer to his prayers, enables him to do so. So, after all, the Giver is God, and the circumlocution has no advantage.

John says twice that in these cases the sinning is “not unto death”; πρός is used as it was in v. 14 with the meaning not facing death as the inevitable result. Since ζωή is “life eternal” (v. 13), which, as we now “have” it, is spiritual life, “death” must be its opposite, namely the loss of spiritual life, which is spiritual death. Once having been born from God (2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:4, 18) into the new life, “death” means that this life has been lost. We are not to think of physical death, either that which is inflicted by the government (which is then conceived as punishment for a capital crime) or that which results from the effects of the sinning on the sinner’s body. What God does when he gives life for these sinners is to strengthen their damaged, declining spiritual life, which they have not as yet lost. Δώσει is used to match αἰτήσει: God shall give to him who shall ask. He also gives not to but for these sinners.

John says in elucidation: “There is (indeed) sin unto death,” and adds: “not concerning that do I say that he (the petitioner) shall make request” (aorist, to denote an actual request). This raises the question: “What is sin unto death and sinning not unto death?” When we answer this question we should not overlook the “if one sees” (aorist, actually sees). A Christian is able to see when another is not sinning unto death and thus by implication when he is. This does not mean that his sight is infallible, or that he may not fear that his brother’s sinning will bring him into death. In certain cases, however, the death will be so apparent that intercession is no longer in place “in accord with God’s will.”

Those are right who say that the answer should not be given abstractly but in the light of John’s whole epistle.

1 John 5:17

17 Every wrong is sin, all or every deviation from God’s norm of right, i.e., “all unrighteousness.” That is unquestioned by Christians. All ἀδικία, all ἁμαρτία must be guarded against by him who has been born from God (v. 18; 3:9). John writes these things so that his readers may not sin (2:1). All sin and all wrong are dangerous to our spiritual life. Who can tell what damage will result for him if he enters on a course of sinning? The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Thank God that all sins and all sinning are not unto death, that by confessing and fleeing to the intercession of our Advocate we may have our sins remitted and be cleansed (1:8–2:2)!

So we say that where the way for this is still open, the sinning is not unto death. Our intercession for each other is to the effect that God may help us to use this way. He has his means for driving us to the cross of Christ. John says ἁμαρτίαοὑπρὸςθάνατον because the phrase modifies the noun; in v. 16 he writes μή because it there modifies participles.

“Sin unto death,” is that sinning which involves the closing of the door to the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son (1:7). It is the sin which itself denies the Son of God (2:22) and all the sinning that goes with this denial. John has added the main features. One is making God a liar (1:8, 10), claiming that one has no sin; another is stated in 1:6, lyingly claiming fellowship with God while repudiating his Word. Go through the epistle. Can one see this? Yes. Bengel thinks only of a state; the state is there, but John speaks throughout of more than a mere state, he speaks of all the acts that proclaim that state. He never counsels his readers to look into a man’s heart. Clear evidence is the thing.

Confusion has resulted from making the distinction between “mortal” and “venial” sins and then listing certain gross sins as mortal. Romanists list seven: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, ira, gula, invidia, acedia (Traegheit, sloth), and then devise a penitential system that is to be applied by the church, in which the priests measure out the satisfactio operis in their sacrament of penance. The sin against the Holy Ghost has also been referred to; when it is wrongly defined it has not helped matters. See Matt. 12:31, etc.; Heb. 6:4, etc.; 10:25, etc.; also Acts 7:51.

The Final Summary, Centering on “We Know” 5:18–21

1 John 5:18

18 John sums up; he has come to the end. He does it by means of three οἴδαμεν (compare v. 15 on the verb. “We know,” these things are fixed for us, fixed as facts. Nothing can shake them in our minds.

The first is: We know that everyone who has been born from God does not go on sinning; on the contrary, the one born from God keeps himself (read ἑαυτόν). “Has been born from God” = 2:29; not sinning = 3:9. The perfect passive includes the resultant present state; the aorist passive is content to state the past fact (R. 1117). John has used τηρεῖν a number of times just as Jesus uses this word often; but only in this verse does John use it with the reflexive: “he keeps himself,” namely by the strength of the spiritual life that is born in him.

This is, indeed, a fact. This is not the place to expand but to sum up. Hence John does not add the opposite negative, which has been done sufficiently in various ways. Yet here, too, the fact is to be used in order to draw a clear line between all the antichristian heretics and all who truly keep the commandments or the Word (2:3, 5).

This means safety: and the wicked one does not fasten himself upon him, ἅπτεται, middle voice. This is John’s designation for the devil (2:13, 14; 3:12), he writes “the devil” in 3:8. The wicked one will try to fasten himself upon him but will not succeed. He and the sin unto death go together.

1 John 5:19

19 The second thing is this: We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the wicked one. ἘκΘεοῦ goes back to 4:4 and restates what is said objectively in verse 18: “everyone who has been born from God.” In “from” God (v. 18, 19) there lies the fact that all our spiritual life has its origin in God. How this origin shows itself John has just stated in v. 18, which sums up all that John has said to the same effect throughout the epistle.

Parallel to the statement about the wicked one is this about the world: “and the whole world (as in 2:2) lies in the wicked one,” lies prostrate in his power domain. Few will agree that τῷπονηρῷ is now a neuter. “Evil one” in our versions is not as good as “wicked one,” for πονηρός = actively, viciously wicked. In κεῖται there lies the idea of passivity which does not even struggle against the devil. He does not need to fasten himself on the world; he already has the whole of it completely in his power. This in no way contradicts 2:2, for John has also written 3:8.

1 John 5:20

20 What underlies the preceding two οἴδαμεν is now summed up in the third. We know, moreover, that the Son of God is come, and he has given to us understanding so that we know the real One. And we are in connection with the real One, in connection with his Son Jesus Christ. This is the real God and life eternal.

Δέ adds this final knowledge which is ours. “The Son of God has come,” ἥκει is used as a present tense. This restates 3:8. This Son “has given to us” (with permanent effect, perfect tense) διάνοιαν, Erkenntnis-vermoegen (C.-K. 767, etc.), spiritual sense and ability to understand, “so that (ἵαν to express result, it is not epexegetical to διάνοιαν) we know the real One,” namely God. John now writes the verb γινώσκω, “to realize with inner affect and effect.” Ἵνα with the indicative appears three times in the New Testament (R. 984). The Koine permits the use of this indicative, and it is employed here to indicate a result clause.

Ὁἁληθινός = “the real One” as opposed to spurious gods, “idols” (verse 21). At the end of this epistle, which has dealt with the antichrists who deny both the Son and the Father and has not dealt with pagans and with their idols or divinities, John writes “the real One” as opposed to the fictional God of the heretics, the God that they made for themselves in their unregenerate, lying dianoia as men still do today. No one knows who God really is save the Son and he to whom the Son reveals him (Matt. 11:27; John 1:18).

Just as it does in verses 18 and 19, καί now adds a separate statement. This is best indicated in the English by the use of a semicolon or by the construction of a new sentence: “And we are in connection with the real One.” The Son of God has placed us in connection with the real God by giving us dianoia and thus making us know God. There is nothing fictional about either the God with whom we are connected or about our being in him, about our fellowship and connection with him. It is the Son of God himself who made this real God known to us and joined us to him. The heretics have no Son of God, have not the Father, (2:22, 23), have only an illusion which they call “God,” so that their claim of having fellowship with God is a lie (1:6). They do not have fellowship with what they call “God” because their “God” does not exist.

John’s ἐν, “in the real One,” in union and communion with him, in living spiritual connection with him, summarizes all the similar “in” phrases that run through this epistle, cf. 2:5, 6; 3:24, all the μένεινἐν statements, our “remaining in” God, this last “in” taking us back to the κοινωνία, “the fellowship,” mentioned in 1:3, 6, 7. They express the unio mystica that is wrought for us by the Son through the light, the truth, the Word, the gift of the Spirit, when we were brought to faith, were born from God, were made “the children of God,” were filled with God’s love to us, with love to him and to all the other children of God, and were separated from the world, from the wicked one and from his children (3:9, 10). Thus the entire epistle is summed up in this final ἐν phrase.

The ἐντῷἀληθινῷ does not refer to a different person than does τὸνἀληθινόν, namely “the real God.” The article with the dative reads like an article of previous reference. Our versions translate otherwise: “And we are in him that is true (real), even in his Son Jesus Christ.” This makes the second ἐν phrase appositional to the first so that “the real One” in the phrase=“his Son Jesus Christ.” A comma is, therefore, placed between the ἐν phrases. If this were John’s meaning, he would have omitted αὑτοῦ, would have written: “And we are in the real One, (namely) in the Son Jesus Christ.” He wrote αὑτοῦ, the antecedent of which is τῷἀληθινῷ. We translate without the use of a comma: “And we are in the real One (God) in his Son Jesus Christ.”

Only in this way are we in God. Apart from the Son no one is in God (John 14:6). He who denies the Son has not the Father (2:23). This is the burden of the entire epistle. This meaning cannot be eliminated at the climax. We are in the real One in Christ; no man is in God without Christ.

But this Christ is not a mere man. The early Gnostics conceived him to be such, to them he was nothing more than the physical son of Joseph (see the introduction). That is why at the end of the epistle, in the summary, “the Son of God” is once more strongly emphasized: “The Son of God has come,” etc. He made the real God known to us. We are in the real God only in and not apart from this real God’s Son Jesus Christ; John now adds his name “Jesus Christ.” The Gnostics dreamed of an “eon Christ,” which “eon” joined Jesus at his baptism but left him before his passion so that only a poor, helpless man died on the cross. But the blood of Jesus is “the blood of his (God’s) Son” (1:7), the expiation for the world’s sin (2:2; 4:10).

When this is seen, we shall fully understand this summary statement: “And we are in the real One (i.e., God) in his Son Jesus Christ.”

Only in this verse in this epistle does John use ἐν with Jesus Christ. He ordinarily uses this “in” only with God. But note that at the beginning John has two μετά: “and we have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1:3). The two “with” are placed side by side and are connected by only a καί. Now at the end both are advanced to “in,” and now the καί disappears and the two “in” are combined: “in the real One in Christ.” This is the ultimate fact. It calls for an “in” (ἐν) also with reference to the Son.

This puts us in the clear for the clinching statement: “This One is the real God and life eternal.” Οὗτος, “the One”=“his Son Jesus Christ.” Everything depends on his deity, and his deity means no less than this, that as the Father who is made known to us by him is the only real God (1 Thess. 1:9), so also his Son Jesus Christ “is the real God” and eternal life. If the Son is less, if he is not real God even as the Father is the real God, then this entire epistle and all that it declares about his blood, expiation, our fellowship with God, etc., are futile. That, too, is the reason the predicate that refers to Jesus Christ is doubled: “This One (his Son Jesus Christ) is the real God and life eternal.” “His Son Jesus Christ” takes us back to 1:3; this Son is now defined as no less than what he is: “the real God,” God’s “Son” in no inferior sense. “And life eternal” takes us back to 1:2 and to the double designation: “the Life was made manifest”—“the Life, the eternal one, who was with (πρός, face to face with) the Father” (see the exposition of 1:2). John ends as he began.

This is the old exegesis. It played a great role in the controversy with Arius who, because of his denial of the eternal Sonship, was compelled to make John say that “this One” (οὗτος) = God and not Jesus Christ. This Arian exegesis became that of all later anti-Trinitarians, of the old Socinians, of the English deists, of the German rationalists, etc. Against them stands the exegesis of the church as it was advanced from the early days onward.

This exegesis of the church is now called a mistake by a number of commentators who believe in the full deity of Jesus as it is revealed in Scripture but feel convinced that this οὗτος clause speaks of the Father and not of his Son. The question is: “Of whom does it speak?” There are weapons more than enough elsewhere in Scripture to smite all Arians without the use of this clause. Is this also one of the weapons or not? It is unfair when those who answer “no” intimate that we who with the church answer “yes”’ are swayed by dogmatical interests. Whether we have one passage more or one less in our tremendous arsenal against Arius and his followers makes little difference to us.

In the first place, if οὗτος has as its antecedent “the real God” (the Father), then the statement is a tautology; John would say: “This real God is the real God.” He would say it after having twice said: we know the real God and are in the real God. When R. 707 thinks that the antecedent is αὑτοῦ, this makes no difference, for the antecedent of the pronoun is “the real One” (God). It is denied that, when this clause is referred to God, it is a mere tautology. But look and think for yourself. Remember, too, that not a few think that Jesus is not called “God” outright in other passages; to have Jesus here called “the real God” seems even less probable to them.

Let us ignore the tautology. Where is the Father ever called “life eternal”? John 17:3 has been referred to. But Jesus says: “This is the eternal life (for them) that they know thee, the only real God, and him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ.” The Father is, indeed, called “the only real God” as John calls him in our passage, but neither the Father nor the Son is called “the eternal life” in John 17:3, for “the eternal life” is the life which we have (John 3:15, 16) and not a designation for God or for Christ himself. A complete exegesis must go back to ἡζωή and to τὴνζωὴντὴναἰώνιον in 1:2, and must combine these designations of the Son of God with the predications made in 5:11–13; for when Jesus, too, calls himself “the Life” (John 14:6; 11:25; compare 1:4) he means that he in his person is the Life, the fountain of life for us.

It is this second predicate that is so decisive. When John 5:24, 26 is referred to, the designations of Jesus used in John 14:6; 11:25; 1 John 1:2 should not be overlooked. John 5:24, 26 contains no designation of either the Father or the Son as these other passages plus ours do; all of them are designations for what Jesus is as the eternal Son sent by the Father that we may live (4:9, 10). Instead of John 5:26 proving that in our passage the Father is called “life eternal,” the fact is that John 5:26 proves why Jesus, the Son of God, truly calls himself “the Life” and is truly so called by John in various passages.

Here at the end John calls the Father, whom he has hitherto designated only by the terms “the Father” and “God,” “the real One” (i.e., the genuine God), for John has now reached the end and the climax. He cites ἀληθινός from Jesus (John 17:3). So John has hitherto called Jesus “the Son of God” and “his (the Father’s, God’s) Son,” and now, here at the end and the climax, John duplicates and calls also Jesus Christ the real God’s Son because he is the real God’s only-begotten Son (4:9), yea, “the real God.” As the Father is the real (genuine) God, so his Son is the real (genuine) God, and this Son places us in fellowship with the Father. Need we add the words that Jesus himself spoke in John 10:30; 12:45; 14:9?

1 John 5:21

21 John closes: Little children, guard yourselves from the idols! This final hortation may surprise us. Yet it is the final stone that rests upon and stands up from the great inverted pyramid that John has built in this epistle. When we understand the structure of this epistle we shall fully appreciate this its last word. It has been thought that this is the very last word that we have from John’s pen. This assumes that all his other writings are the products of an earlier date, which is a rather hazardous assumption and not one on which to write a sermon: “The Last Words of the Last Apostle,” as has been done.

On the affectionate address “little children” see 2:1. Like so many apostolic hortations, this, too, has the effective aorist imperative: “guard yourselves,” let there be no question about it. The readers are to stand like armed guards, ready to conquer every attack (2:13, 14; 4:4; 5:4, 5, νικᾶν). We prefer the reading ἑαυτά, the neuter, to fit τεκυία, which some have changed to the masculine.

What John means by “the idols” from which his little children are to guard themselves is made plain by the context, in fact, by the entire epistle. John is not speaking of common pagan idols, which are then irrelevantly introduced at the very end of his epistle. These “idols” are the fictional conceptions of God that were held by Cerinthus and by his devotees. By calling these conceptions “the idols” John places them in the same class with all the pagan images and the imagined gods. This includes all the anti-Trinitarian conceptions of God, no matter by whom they are held.

John’s epistle is intended for many churches and thus closes without a series of salutations as it also begins without the common epistolary greeting.

Soli Deo Gloria

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

B.-D. Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neu-gearbeitete Auflage besorgt von Albert Debrunner.

G. K. Theologisches Woerterbuch zum Neuen Testament, herausgegeben von Gerhard Kittel.

C.-K. Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von Dr. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.