Ben Zornes

Living and Dying to Show the Preciousness of Christ

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1 John 5:1-5 | Swept Up Into Victory

1 John 5:1-5 | Swept Up Into Victory

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1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and whoever loves Him that begat also loves him that is begotten of Him. 2 In this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not grievous. 4 For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory which overcomes the world: our faith. 5 Who is he that overcomes the world? He that believes that Jesus is the son of God.

1 John 5:1-5

One way of thinking about this epistle is that it is a continuation of Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees in John 8. The ultimate question is always, “Who is your father?” The Pharisees insisted that their paternity could be traced by to Abraham. While Jesus rebuked them for rejecting Him as their Messiah, and that this rejection proved that the devil was their father. You might even call this the spiritual paternity test: what do you believe about Jesus? This first section of 1 John 5 goes over this same territory. 

Those who believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the promised deliverer of fallen man, are born of God. This salvation, of course, brings forth in us love for the God who first loved us (4:19), and lavished His love upon us (3:1). We are His children, we bear His likeness, and all who bear His likeness will likewise be beloved (5:1). He who believe that Jesus is the Christ, is God-born. 

John then answers the question, “Well, how do I love the brethren?” You love God, and keep His commandments (5:2). The New Covenant, as described in Ezekiel’s prophecy, also notes that this new birth, this new life, this new heart will impart to us the ability to keep God’s Law (Eze. 36:25-27). Once more, this isn’t a new commandment (2:7). Rather, this is new life in the old commandment. The husk has broken open, and the tree of life has sprouted in the world.

Loving God means obeying His Word (5:3). And so that we don’t sigh like a teenage boy asked to clean his room, John reminds us that these commands aren’t heavy. Jesus told His disciples if they loved Him, they would keep His commandments (Jn. 14:15). John has already told us what God’s primary commandment is: ”believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another (3:23).” God commands you to do that for which He created you. He commands you to delight in He who is Joy Himself. He commands you to love He who is Love. He commands you to be truly human. For in Christ, humanity is remade & restored. A good literary example of this can be seen in the Narnian Lion’s creational command to the newly made creatures of Narnia’s founding:

“Creatures, I give you yourselves,” said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. “I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself.”⁠1

In Christ, the entire cosmos has been made new.  From Alaskan glaciers, to Saharan deserts, from Ecuador’s jungles, to Russia’s wheat fields. It is all Christ’s. And because it is Christ’s, all is ours. This is not grievous indeed. 

This is a mentality of victory. Christ has overcome death, and so the saints of God walk with heads held high. The victory is assured, even as the battle with sore-losers still rages on around us. As Calvin said regarding 5:4, “It is not said that it will be victorious in a single fight, or a few, or some one assault, but that it will be victorious over the whole world, though it should be a thousand times assailed.”⁠2 Or as another theologian reminds us, “Victory is inseparable from the gospel (I John 5:4), because Christ is King over all creation. There is one gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and, apart from Him, life, time, and history have no victory nor reward. To proclaim the gospel means thus to proclaim Christ as Lord and Savior. All areas of life and thought must serve and magnify Him, and all must be brought under His dominion. Even more, His rule must extend into every nook and cranny of our lives and minds, and we must bring captive ‘every thought to the obedience of Christ’ (II Cor. 10:5).⁠3”

If you believe that Jesus is the Mighty Savior, who overthrew the devil’s war machines (3:8), then you are born of God, and the God-born are swept up into the conquering train of Christ the Victorious. But this victory is obtained by faith. Not by our own striving, for as Luther put it, “our striving would be losing.” Rather, the Right Man is on our side. This is how the saint should approach their individual battle with indwelling sin, and how they should view the end of the world. Their individual eschatology and the eschatology of the world are bound up together, for Christ is King of all in heaven & earth.

Finally, verse 5 contains the disjunctive particle “but”. However, I’ve opted to leave it untranslated. In English, the question, followed by the blunt answer performs essentially the same purpose as the disjunctive does in Greek. When asked how you shall overcome this world of sin and strife, your answer must be ever & always be: “Only Jesus.” Or in the words of one hymn-writer:

Even treading the valley, the shadow of death,
This “watchword” shall rally my faltering breath;
For while from life’s fever my God sets me free,
Jehovah Tsidkenu, my death song shall be.⁠4

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1 Lewis, C. S. (1970). The Magician’s Nephew. HarperCollins. Pg. 114

2 Calvin, J. (2014). Institutes of the Christian religion. Hendrickson Publishers. Pg. 369

3 Rushdoony, R. J. (1994). Systematic theology: In two volumes. Ross House Books. Pg. 521

4 Robert Murray M’Cheyne. Robert Murray MCheyne. (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2023, from http://www.mcheyne.info/jehovah-tsidekenu/

The Boss of Everything

The Boss of Everything

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This is simultaneously a meal of sacrifice and a meal of victory. Our muddled thinking prevents us from comprehending that humility and conquest can coincide. We imagine that it is either or. Either you are a meek and mild pushover, or else a warmongering tyrant.

The modern infatuation with equality wants to blur the lines of hierarchy. It wants perpetual victims, but it wants to obtain this by petulant tyrants. Equality, as currently comprehended, is the devil’s substitute for Christian charity. Instead of the generous love of a suffering King, freely given, it wants the obligatory taxation of a compliant populace, not given but taken.

The current project the cultural elites are trying carry out is an end to all rivalries by means of rivalry. It is trying to end injustice, through injustice. It is trying to build the kingdom of heaven, using the devils tools of envy, avarice, and vain ambition.

But Christ is King because Christ submitted. He was exalted on high to His rightful place, because He did not grasp at it His rightful place; He submitted to His Father, and so received from His Father the Name above all names. He became the lowest, and so became the highest.

As always, this feast of our Lord sets our thinking aright. The only way to live is to first die. The only way to the crown is through the cross. The only way to conquest is through sacrifice. Christ’s body and blood is set here before us, broken and bleeding. The victim and the feast. The lamb and the lion. The Suffering Servant and the Victorious King.

The Supper isn’t the blurring of all order and hierarchy, but is Christ’s demonstration of how to wield one’s office. Our God came down in the flesh, humbled Himself, and now He’s boss of everything. Those are the rules.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

No Time For Licking Wounds

No Time For Licking Wounds

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Today isn’t a gathering for licking the wounds of our failures this week. We aren’t here to bemoan the boot of sin upon our necks. We aren’t here to mope, sulk, or wallow in despair. Church isn’t a place to learn helpful strategies for negotiating a cease-fire with sin. This isn’t a therapy session so you can better cope with your “bad habits”. This isn’t a place to get some pointers on more positive thinking. This isn’t a support group for our mutual commiseration.

This worship service is intended to glorify God and to renew our faith. And this is our faith: Jesus Christ is King. He has conquered all His––and consequently your––enemies. He sits at the right hand of the Father, and all authorities, powers, and dominions––not only in this world, but in the world to come––are His. The Gospel we preach here is that Christ has overcome, He is ascended on high, and all things are subject unto Him. In Christ, we come today as more than conquerors. We come to a victory celebration. We come to enjoy the spoils of the war which our Lord has won. As a triumphant king, He now bestows gifts unto His people. His bounty becomes theirs. He leads His saints in a triumphal procession.    

Your sin is not the victor. Your Christ is. As you confess your sins, you are not to take your eyes off of a triumphant Christ to look at your dismal track record this week. Confession of sin is the exact opposite. It’s a refusal to let your sin keep you any longer blind to the mercy and victory found in the Lord of Hosts. Sin promises exaltation but brings humiliation. Jesus invites you to bend low and confess your sin and in doing so He lifts you up.

To the Victor Go the Spoils

To the Victor Go the Spoils

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Introduction

Our culture is infected with oath-breaking, reneged campaign promises, defaulted debts, divorced marriages, & fake news. Promises are only as good as the promiser. The Gospel promise is salvation from sin & eternal life. It insults the idolatrous religion of self-sufficiency. It tears down & defiles the altars of works righteousness. It fills the believer with swagger. And the world despises it. So, should we believe it?

Summary of the Text

Believing that Jesus is the Christ & being born of God are inseparable, you can’t have one without the other. The new birth results in both love for the Father who begot you and love for all those whom the Father begets (v1). Loving God’s people flows from love to God & obedience to His Word (v2). Loving God means obeying God. This doesn’t make God a dystopian tyrant, because His commandment—to believe upon His Son—results in our eternal life & joy (v3, cf. 1 Jn. 1:4). Whoever is born again is assured of their victory over the world, because they trust in Jesus—who has conquered sin, the devil, the world (vs.4-5).

The incarnation & death of the Word has Trinitarian fingerprints: the Father sent His Son, & the Spirit bears witness to the truth of this Gospel (vs. 6-8). God Almighty is witness to the eternal Sonship of Jesus; this doctrine wasn’t cooked up in the lab of man’s cranium (v9). Refusing to trust that Jesus is the Christ makes God out to be a liar, because God has testified that eternal life is given only through His Son. Without Jesus you do not have life (vs.10-12).

John repeats his slogan: all this is written that your faith––and assurance of eternal life––may be strengthened (v13). The practical cash-out of this assurance is that we can pray like Calvinists (vs. 14-15). Prayerful intercession for a brother in sin isn’t a hopeless cause; however, a warning is here: rejecting Jesus as the Christ is a sin that most certainly ends in eternal death (v16). Unrighteousness is sin, but Christ is our promise of cleansing (cf. 1 Jn. 1:9), our assurance of eternal life, & our salvation from the wicked one (vs.17-18). The world’s humanistic doctrine ensures it remains in league with the wicked One & his wickedness. Only through the light of Christ can we behold the truth of our union with the true God, the source of eternal life (vs. 19-20). All other saviors are idols. So John adjures his little children to forsake idolatry’s many forms (v.21).

Water & Blood

John is rebutting the rising heresy of Cerinthus: the eternal Christ merely came upon Jesus at His baptism, and left him at the cross. If Cerinthus was right, the water & blood from Jesus’ side meant the man had died, but his death was pointless & retained no promise of resurrection or eternal life.

The Jews knew that covering for sin & entrance into God’s presence were only through the ceremonial washings & bloody offerings of Moses’ Law. John sees in Jesus the fulfillment of the Law’s ceremonies & offerings. John is the only Gospel writer who recorded how after a soldier pierced Jesus’ side, blood & water came pouring out (Jn. 19:34). John pauses to add this commentary:

He that saw it [John] bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe. For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced (Jn.19:35-37).

This episode was a big deal for John. It not only showed that Jesus was a real man who had really died. It also revealed that His death was pregnant with redemptive meaning. The questions which the OT raised were answered by Jesus’ death. He was the Passover lamb (Ex. 12:46). He was the fulfillment of Zechariah’s cryptic prophecy (Zec. 12:10).

The Jews quibbled & puzzled over what in tarnation Zechariah could have meant. Surely he didn’t mean God was pierced by the sins of His people. How could you even pierce God? John’s eye-witness account of Jesus being pierced by the spear, cinches up this question. Contrary to Cerinthus, it wasn’t a phantom on the cross. It was a man who was also God. He was the final sacrifice for sins. All who look upon Him find salvation & life. John bore record that you (the reader) might believe; and then bear record yourself.

Living Like a Martyr

We think of a martyr as someone who dies for the faith, but that only describes what happens to a martyr. It doesn’t tell us what a martyr is & does. A witness (martys) declares what it is they have witnessed (martyreō)––that is their testimony (martyria); a martyr testifies regardless of personal consequences. John is bearing witness to the fact that “the life was manifested (1 Jn. 1:2).” But John makes it plain that his testimony is second fiddle to the witness of the triune God. In believing upon Jesus for salvation & eternal life, it is not man’s witness, but the witness of God which we believe (1 Jn. 5:9-10).

John calls Jesus Christ “the faithful witness/martys (Rev. 1:5).” Jesus washes us from our sins in his own blood, He makes us kings and priests unto God & his Father (cf. Rev. 1:5-6). Those who trust in Him are joined with Him, made new, & are made witnesses of the miraculous power of His life, death, resurrection, & ascension to all dominion. Christians live like living martyrs. We declare the power of the Gospel. No matter the cost. John is joined by Paul in making this clear: our testimony doesn’t come from us, nor is it about us. “You are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart (2 Cor. 3:3).” Our witness is carved on our heart by the Spirit.

The Victory Lap

The Word was made flesh (Jn. 1:2) that He might destroy the works of the devil (1 Jn. 3:8). But since we fight a sore loser, we’re told that we’ve “already overcome, in order that [we] may fight more courageously & more strenuously (Calvin).”

As John concludes this letter of assurance, he takes us on a victory lap of what Jesus—the Word made flesh, the true Christ, Whom the Father sent to be our Savior, Propitiation & eternal Life—has done for you. “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh (nikaō) the world: and this is the victory (nike) that overcometh (nikaō) the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh (nikaō) the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God (1 Jn. 5:4-5)?”

[epq-quote align=”align-left”]Your union with God is not dependent on your ability to solve the problem. Your salvation from sin & hope of obtaining eternal life are found in a man who was God in the Flesh.[/epq-quote]John doesn’t hand us the chalk, fold his arms, & watch to see if we can solve the theological calculus problem on the board. Your union with God is not dependent on your ability to solve the problem. Your salvation from sin & hope of obtaining eternal life are found in a man who was God in the Flesh. Your salvation is in Christ, who was the eternal Word, the life, the propitiation, the life, the Spirit Who indwells you, the Father Who secures you.

What does it mean to be born again or born of God? It means you believe that Jesus is the Christ. How can I be sure? Because God Almighty––Father, Son, Spirit––says so. What about the penalty of my sin? It is covered. What about when I die? You are given eternal life. What if I sin again after believing in Jesus? Look to Jesus, only, ever, always. Are you sure about all this? John’s answer, “Oh, yeah!”

Ben Zornes