Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
1 John along with the entire Bible is a great case study in the story that unfolds and is completed in Christ of the victory of God in Christ over all the forces of evil, night (figuratively speaking) and death/Death.
I realize that on some of my posts the Scripture passage quoted at the start is long and likely to be scanned or skipped over by any reader. It is always good to discipline oneself to read it all (I plead guilty to not always doing that myself). In this post, the point made is especially germane to the words of the passage quoted above, and in this case it isn’t long.
What we find is that Christ has overcome and gained the victory (see NET footnotes on 5:4 included in the link above). This victory in 1 John was over the false teachers who watered down Christ’s coming as something other and less than what it was. The conquest has been completed both by Christ’s incarnation and death, death shorthand here for Christ’s death and resurrection, which ultimately includes his ascension with the promise of his return.
What is it in our lives as believers in Christ which puts us under, overcomes us, so to speak? Whatever that is, and there are myriads of answers depending on each person and the circumstances faced along with other factors, but whatever that is has already been overcome in and through Christ. That is key. But what is also key is our faith laying hold of that. Unless by faith we lay hold of that, we won’t experience it, and will remain submerged under “the world” so to speak, the world representing all that is in human opposition to God and God’s good will and reign on earth “as it is in heaven.”
Obeying God’s commandments is linked to this faith that overcomes. Without that faith, we can’t, but with it, we can and will believe and love as God has called us to, and reject or disregard all that is contrary to that.
We have to live in this light. By faith we conquer not in the sense of doing so ourselves, but of entering into the victory of God in Christ. Taking the text literally, we do so together and I think that’s where it starts. But it plays out in individual victory available to us all, yes over whatever plagues and ills us in this life. Something that is once for all done on Christ’s part, but not once for all done on our part. We have to keep laying hold of that victory day after day in the faith which overcomes the world.
Jesus community 