Now, in this epistle, John has
spent a great deal of time talking about love, about love for Christ
and about love for the brethren. And in this final chapter, we're
going to see more of how you cannot separate faith and love. Where there's faith in Christ,
there will always be love. It's just an absolute necessity. Those two always go together.
So verse 1 of chapter 5, 1 John. Whosoever believeth that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God. And every one that loveth him
that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. Now John
here talks about being born of God. That's the new birth. There
are some people who are born again, those who are born of
God. They're begotten of the Father,
they're begotten by the Father. And salvation, regeneration,
is not the choice of men, it's the choice of God. We're begotten
by God. That comes from the choice of
God, by the power of God, by the will of God. Look over in
the Gospel of John, chapter 1. John 1, verse 12. Well, verse 11, he came unto
his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received
him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name, which were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. That's how they were born, of
God. And everyone who is born of God,
will be drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ. By the irresistible call
of grace, they will be drawn to Christ. That new nature will
draw them to the Lord Jesus Christ. Look over in John chapter 6. We'll see this in John 6 verse
44. No man can come to me except
the Father which has sent me draw him. And him I will raise
up at the last day." It's written in the prophets. And they shall
be all taught of God. All those that the Father gave
to Christ. All those that He gives life
in Christ. They'll all be taught of God.
And every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of
the Father cometh unto me. We will come to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And the only way that we can
believe Christ is to be born of God. Only the new man has
faith. This old man will never believe
Christ. This flesh will never have faith
or love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Only the new man that God creates
has faith in Christ. That's the only way we'll ever
believe on Him. And every single person that's born of God has
these two characteristics. Faith and love. Every one of
them. John says, whosoever believeth
that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Whoever is born of God
believes that Jesus is the Christ. Now, believing that Jesus is
the Christ, like I said last week, is a whole lot more than
just acknowledging that the man Jesus is the Christ. This man
Jesus of Nazareth is God's Son. Even the demons believe that.
They know that. This believing that Jesus is
the Christ is to look to Christ like Israel looked at that brazen
serpent in the wilderness. Those Israelites were bitten
of those fiery serpents and that poison was going all through
their body and it was killing them. Moses lifted up that serpent
on a pole and he said, look and live. And they looked to that
brazen serpent and they were made whole. They looked at that
brazen serpent believing God that if they looked, they'd be
made whole. And that's the way we look to
the Lord Jesus Christ with confidence. If I look to Him, if I put all
my trust in Him, I'll be made whole in Him. We look to Him
with confidence that He will cleanse us from all of our sin.
It's believing that Jesus is the Christ is to put all of our
hope for eternity. All of our hope for salvation
in Him. It's to put our trust in Christ. It's to trust Christ, as Jehovah
said Canaan, the Lord our righteousness. We don't trust the doctrine of
the righteousness of Christ. I trust Christ who is righteous. I trust Him. I'm made righteous
in Him. It's not trusting an idea or
a thing. It's trusting Him. Put all my
hope in Him. It's believing that Jesus is
the Christ. That He is the Christ who's the
one and only sacrifice for my sins. I have confidence that
my sin is put away under His blood because of whose blood
it is. It's not just that it's blood,
it's that it's the blood of God. It's the blood of God's Son.
Who is He? He's the one that's going to be my Savior. He's God's
Lamb and His blood puts away my sin. This believing that Jesus
is the Christ is to trust Christ as my peace with God. Not just
that He made peace with God, but that He is my peace. I'm
accepted in the Beloved. And every believer, like I said,
has this hope, has faith in Christ. And this is a good hope. Look
at Romans chapter 10. Trusting Christ is a good hope. Romans chapter 10, verse 11. For the Scripture saith, Whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed." This is a good hope.
You believe in Him, you'll never be ashamed. You'll never be confounded.
You'll never be found guilty. Now, here's the question. Where
do I get this faith? Every believer has this faith
in Christ. Now, where do I get it? I'm interested in having
this faith. Where do I get it? Well, faith is a gift of God.
Look over Romans chapter 10 and across the page here at verse
17. So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word
of God. Faith comes through the preaching
of God's word. If you want faith in Christ,
you avail yourself to where he's found in his word. Faith cometh
by hearing. So that's faith. Every believer
has this characteristic. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the second characteristic of everyone who's born of God
is love. John says here in 1 John 5, verse
1, And everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that
is begotten of him. Everyone who is born of God has
love for God and love for his people. Of course, it just is
so obvious, anyone that the Father chose loves Him. He didn't choose me because I
was any count, because I was any good. He chose me despite
how wretched and awful I am. Of course you love the Father
that chose you. Of course you love the Son who
gave His life a ransom for your souls. How could you not love
Him? Of course you do. Of course you love the Spirit
who came and gave you life, regenerated you. You must love the One who
gave Himself for your salvation. And a regenerate person loves
the Father. In God's household, there are
no rebellious teenagers. There are no teenagers sitting
over here sulking and hating everybody in the house. They
love the Father. They love Him. And God has loving
children because that's the nature of our Father. Every one of us
when we're born, we get characteristics, personality traits from our parents. It's handed down genetically.
God's children are the same way. We get His nature in the new
birth. Our Father is God who is love. And His children get that nature.
They're loving people. They're loving children. We love
Him and we love all of His other children too. We love them because
of our relationship with them. They're our brethren. We have
the same Father. They're our brothers and sisters.
We love them because children bear resemblance to their parents.
Personality traits, they bear the image of their parents. And
if you love the parents, you're going to love the child that
looks like them and acts like them. God's children bear His
image. We love Him. We love those that
bear His image. We love them and accept them
because of who they're related to. I used this illustration
years ago, but it illustrates this point. Janet and I were
first married. And she was working at a temporary
agency, going around different places working. And she went
over to Dow Chemical one morning. She was supposed to be over there
for a week or two, reported to work. And she came up to the
guard. He didn't want to really deal
with her, you know. And she told him she's here to
work for the temporary agency. And he called up there and he
came by and he said, what's your name? And she said, Janet Tate.
And he said, are you related to Frank Tate? And she said,
yeah, it's my husband. He looked at her funny, you know.
And he said, not the Frank Tate I know. And she said, well, that's
my father-in-law too. And he said, come in here. He brought her into his guard
shack, gave her a drink of cool water. He said, my wife works
for Frank Tate. Anybody that's related to him
is a friend of mine. That's what this is saying. Anybody
that's related to my father is a friend of mine. Anybody that
my Savior loves is under His Wayne is a friend of mine. That's what this is saying. If
you're begotten of Him, you love all those who are begotten of
Him. And every believer now has these two gifts, faith and love.
Now, all of us don't have the gift of teaching. All of us don't
have the gift of singing or praying publicly or reading the Word
or the ability to give maybe as much as other people do. But
every believer has these two gifts, faith and love. And you might say, They're not
strong as I like. I'm mighty ashamed of them. I'm
mighty ashamed of the strength of my faith. I'm mighty ashamed
of the strength of my love. Well, cultivate them. Cultivate
these gifts. Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God. Avail yourself to the Word. Seek
out opportunities to show your love. Cultivate these gifts,
because every believer has these gifts. Faith and love. Now, verse
2 in our text. By this we know that we love
the children of God. when we love God and keep His
commandments. Now, John, we've looked here
in the past several weeks. We've been talking a lot about
brotherly love. And here's the definition of real love. Where brotherly love comes from
or any other kind of love comes from, here's the definition of
real love. It's love to God. It's loving
Him for who He is. The nature of true love is to
hold God in the highest honor, to put Him in the place of preeminence
and to be in subjection to Him as a loving Son. Not as a Son
who's forced to be under subjection to His Father, but as a loving
Son. This love shows itself now in love for God and love for
His people. That's how it shows itself. Now,
a person can act kind to you. They may even go out of their
way to do kind things for you. And they don't really love you.
Don't be deceived now about what this love is. Because maybe they're
being kind to you because you've got something they want. Maybe
you're friends with somebody that they'd like to get close
to. You know, you're friends with some star or something, you know.
And they're just using you as a means to an end. So they'll
be kind to you. They'll do anything that they
can for you. But you just wait until you can't help them get
close to their real goal anymore. And that cuts you off. You're
out the door. There's no more kindness. Well, that's not love.
People are friendly to rich people. I mean, just rich people got
all the friends that they could ever want. But wait till the
money's gone. Suddenly, the phone never rings
anymore. Nobody's wanting to do anything
for you anymore. People are kind to someone that's physically,
naturally beautiful. And men are notorious for this.
Just being sticky sweet to a beautiful woman, I'm telling you, they'll
just do anything for her. Just anything. But wait till
the beauty's gone. or wait till the morning. No
more kindness. That's not love. It's certainly
not brotherly love. I'll tell you what it is. It's
self-love. That's what that is. And having
that kind of love is no indication that we love God. Because everybody
loves themselves. It drives me crazy. I see on
TV these psychiatrists say, well, we've just got to learn to love
ourselves. No, we don't! I promise you, the one thing
none of us has to learn is to love ourselves. We got that down. Now, we do, don't we? My soul. Well, I tell you what we need
to learn is to love ourselves less and love Christ more. That's what we have to learn.
That's why Scripture tells us these things. This is what we
have to learn. Christian love, brotherly love, is simply loving
people because they're the children of God. Now, we're to love all
men. But we're talking here about brotherly love. We love God's
children simply because they're God's children. True love is
when we love God and love those that belong to Him. And that
love cannot stop. Can't be done. Because it's of
God who's eternal. Our love to God won't stop and
our love to His people won't stop. John Gill said this, I
wrote this down. He said, the tabernacles of the
Lord are amiable and lovely. Now, believers ought to be amiable
people. We're the temples, the tabernacles
of God. We ought to be amiable. And we
will be lovely to each other. because Christ is in you. You're
lovely to me because Christ is in you. I love Him and I love
you in. I see Him in you. You just can't
help but love one another if you've been born of God. That's
what He's saying. Now, verse 3, For this is the love of God,
that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not
grievous. Now, it's such an important evidence of love, the love to
God, that we keep His commandments. You can't love somebody and not
do what they say. You can't love somebody and live
in a way that's contrary to everything that they are, everything that
they stand for. That's not love. Everyone who
truly loves the Lord desires to do His will, to obey His commandments. That's the nature of the new
man, to obey. And the commandments of the Lord
are not grievous to the believer. We love the law. We love God's
law. Look over in Psalm 119. The law is grievous if you're
trying to keep it to earn salvation. But you're not trying to do that.
You're saved in, by, and through the Lord Jesus Christ. So the
law is not grievous to you. Psalm 119, verse 97. Oh, how
I love thy law. It's my meditation all the day. Look at verse 111. Thy testimonies have I taken
from heritage forever, for they are the rejoicing of my heart.
I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes always, even unto
the end. I hate vain thoughts, but thy
law do I love. We love God's law. Look over
Romans chapter 7. Romans 7, verse 22, Paul says, For I delight in the
law of God after the inward man. That new man that God's created
loves God's law. And certainly the moral law applies
here. We love God's moral law. Even
though we can't keep it, I've never kept any bit of it, not
even for a second. In Christ I have, but not in
myself. And even though I can't keep
God's moral law, I love it. I desire to keep it. And every
believer still struggles with sin. We have sinful desires,
sinful actions. It's just a constant warfare
between the flesh and the spirit. Constant warfare. And that conflict
doesn't happen because there's a problem with the law. The law
is good and just and perfect. That conflict, the war between
the flesh and the spirit doesn't happen because there's a lack
of love for God's commandments. There's a lack of love for Christ
or the lack of love for His law. That conflict doesn't happen
because, well, really, I don't want to be like Christ. No, I
really do. So the conflict doesn't happen
because of that. That conflict arises because
of that corrupt nature that we still carry around. You're born
again. God's given you a new nature,
but that flesh is still flesh. It'll never be anything but flesh.
It'll never be anything but corrupt flesh. In Romans 7, that's what
Paul's talking about. In verse 18, he says, For I know
that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For the
will is present with me, but how to perform that which is
good, I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not. But the evil which I would not,
that I do. Now if I do that that I would not, it is no more I
that do it, but sin that dwelt in me. I find then a law, that
when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight
in the law of God after the inward man. Oh, but I see another law
in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? I thank God. God be delivered
through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind, I serve
the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin." So the
moral law certainly applies here. I love it. I can't keep it, but
I love it. I'll tell you what John, what
he's primarily talking about and referring to here is the
law of faith in Christ and the law of love for Christ. I love
that law and I can keep it. by God's grace, the law of faith
in Christ and the law of love in Christ. In 1 John 3, we read
this last week, and this is His commandment, the law, that we
should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love
one another as He gave us commandment. That's His commandment, the law
of faith and the law of love. We are commanded to come to Christ. We're commanded to believe on
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the commandment of the
gospel. We're commanded to confess Him publicly in believer's baptism.
That's not grievous. That's a joy. That is an absolute
joy for the believer to confess Him publicly. We're commanded
to observe the Lord's table with bread and wine. This is due in
remembrance of me. That's not grievous. That's not
something, oh boy, we've got to do this again. That's a joy. to identify with God's people
and worship Him around His table, His broken body and His shed
blood. That's a joy. I remember Henry
preached a message a number of years ago on the royal law of
Christ. And that's what John's talking
about here. Love is the royal law. Look over James chapter
2. James 2, verse 8. If ye fulfill the royal law according
to the scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,
ye do well. That's the royal law, to love
thy neighbor as thyself. Now look at Romans 13, and we'll
get a little explanation on this. Romans 13, verse 7. Render therefore to all their
dues. Tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom,
fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Owe no man anything. If you owe someone tribute or
custom or fear or honor, don't show it to them, you give it
to them. Owe no man anything but to love one another. For
he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, thou shalt
not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal,
thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet, and if
there be any other is briefly comprehended in this saying.
Namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill
to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling
of the law. If you love someone, you're not
going to commit adultery. If you love someone, you're not
going to kill them. You're not going to steal from them. You're not going to
covet what they have. You're not going to lie about them.
Love is the royal law. That's God's commandment. The
law of love in Christ. So now he says here, this is
God's commandment. In verse 4, he says, for whatsoever
is born of God overcometh the world, and this is the victory
that overcometh the world, even our faith. Everyone who's born
of God has the victory over the world through faith in Christ.
Now, you might think, well, I can't conquer any part of the world.
I can't tame it. I can't make any part of this
world in subjection to me. I haven't won a victory over
any of it. Well, the word world here doesn't mean the physical
world that we live in. It means everything that's contrary
to the Spirit of God. Sin, the flesh, the evil that's
in the world, Satan, those things that are contrary to the Spirit.
Now, we're exposed to all those things. All those things are
our enemies, aren't they? And we battle them every day.
But Scripture tells us that we are victorious over these things,
over this world, things that are contrary to the Spirit. Well,
how's that? Well, look over Romans chapter
8. How is it that we're victorious,
gotten a victory over the world? Romans 8, verse 35. Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril,
or sword? As it's written, for thy sake
we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the
slaughter. Now in all these things, all these things that are contrary
to God's Spirit, we are more than conquerors through Him that
loved us. We're conquerors through faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And faith gives us the victory. Look over in Hebrews chapter
11. You remember this when we were studying the book of Hebrews? has been attributed to many,
many victories down through history, great victories attributed to
faith. In Hebrews 11, verse 32, And
what shall I more say? For time would fail me to tell
of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, of Jephthah, of David
also, and Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the
mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, Escaped the
edge of the sword out of weakness or made strong. Waxed valiant
in the fight. Turned to flight the armies of
the aliens. Through faith they won all those
victories. And you will overcome the world
if you're a believer. I promise you, you will overcome
the world. All those things that are contrary
to the Spirit. Now that's a big promise, but
I make good on it. Look over in 1 John chapter 4.
We studied this just a few weeks ago. 1 John 4, verse 3. Here's how you're going to overcome
the world. 1 John 4, verse 3. And every spirit
that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is
not of God. And this is that spirit of antichrist.
This is that spirit that is anti-everything the Spirit of God. Whereof ye
have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in
the world. Now ye are of God, little children, and have overcome
him. Why? Because greater is he that's
in you than he that's in the world. That's where the victory
comes from. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the
world. We have that victory through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, verse 5. Who is he that
overcometh the world? But he that believeth that Jesus
is the Son of God. Who has this victory over the
world? Well, it's everyone who is born of God. Everyone who
has faith in Christ has this victory over the world. The unregenerate
man It's just flesh. Not only has He not overcome
the world, He doesn't even want to overcome the world. The desire
to overcome these things comes from God. The natural man doesn't
even want to overcome these things, so He hasn't done it. The victory
comes through faith in Christ. Now, our faith is not what wins
the victory, is it? Christ has won the victory. The
battle is His and He's won the victory. And it's ours through
faith in Him. We're not delivered by our faith.
We're not saved by our faith. We're saved by Christ. He redeemed
us. And we receive Him through faith.
And we don't trust in our faith. My trust is not in my faith. Is yours? No. Our trust is in
Christ, in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where our hope is found.
I don't have any hope in looking at my faith. I have hope in the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's where it's found. And
we have the victory by trusting, by resting, by relying on the
Lord Jesus Christ for everything, for life, for salvation, for
righteousness, for everything we need, both spiritual and physical. He's going to provide it all.
And we have the victory by living on the Lord Jesus Christ. And
we live on Him. We feast on Him. We partake of
Him through faith. And where there's faith, there'll
be love. All right. Well, I hope that'll
bless you.