1 John 5:1-6

We are nearing the end of Easter in this seven-week-long season designed to explore and unpack the meaning and experience of resurrection. Along with questions of language, context, genre, theology, etc., each liturgical season provides an additional set of questions we bring to any given text. Throughout the Easter season we are invited to ask: “What does this tell us about resurrection life and God’s new creation?” And in many ways, it seems this is a primary question the author of 1 John is addressing throughout this letter.

While the dense language can easily get us stuck in the weeds parsing out the exact meaning of 1 John 5.1-6, Kenneth Grayston offers a glimpse at the big picture here. “Being born of God, loving God, loving the children of God, keeping the commandments, and overcoming the world are the writer’s main concerns, and for him they depend on the primacy of Jesus.”[1] Each of these truths are interwoven, and none can stand alone or in opposition to the other. The fact that Jesus was fully human and fully divine throughout his life,death and resurrection results in a specific kind of community committed to specific kinds of actions. This may feel an unimportant thing to say (again), unless you were faced with a group of people who no longer affirmed that the divine “part” of Jesus actually suffered and died. Such thinking could quickly and easily affect the ways humans experienced the mess and suffering of one another’s humanity, creating a disconnect in the chain of love of God and love of neighbor.

The whole of 1 John was prompted by a church split, with those who did not adhere to Jesus’s full humanity leaving the community. In his introduction to 1 John, David DeSilva reminds us that with this background, this letter is “also an occasion for mourning. It is a prototype of the breach of Christian love and unity so deeply valued by the carriers of the Johanine tradition. In effect, it marks the failure of even the early church to ‘be the church.’”[2] It matters that we read these words in the context of the heartache, confusion, and grief of a community in the wake of painful division. When we do so, it can help us also navigate similar grievous circumstances in our own experience of faith community. The letter-writer offers compassionate wisdom and sound theological teaching without demonizing those who have left.

Throughout 1 John the author compares the “world” kosmos with God, the way of God, and the people of God. Yet it would be a mistake to see this as the dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual, as this is exactly the kind of argument the letter was meant to address. Grayston offers helpful context on the use of the Greek kosmos in this and other similar writings of the time. Rather than being used to talk about the world as a physical location, it is used “for a wider concept of humanity.”[3] In today’s pericope, this matters a great deal in understanding the statement in verse 4 about “victory over the kosmos,” which may be more easily understood as “victory over the ways of the world.” This puts the contrast between God’s way of self-sacrificing love, and the ways of the world which include an insatiable craving to have more of everything we like and an arrogance founded on achievements and possessions (see 1 John 2.16). This is not a victory in a battle between human good guys and human bad guys, but a victory over the unrighteous principalities and powers that draw people into the “darkness” (1 John 1.5) devoid of love. 

The final sentence of today’s text might seem a strange detour from this topic. What does water and blood have to do with all of this? But when we re-center the primary reason for the letter into this conversation, it becomes clear again. The proto-Gnostic argument asserted that the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus in his baptism, a “witness of water.” These dissidents “were interested in the symbolism of water as representing new life and preparing for the Spirit, but once the Spirit was received (no doubt thanks to Jesus), what further benefit could be alleged in his death?”[4] Blood is altogether much less pleasant to deal with than water. It conjures up images of violence, suffering, and the essential mess of human existence. The Spirit of God confirmed not only Jesus’s divinity in baptism, but also in his suffering and death – a “witness of blood.” This assertion is an essential part of the victory over the ways of the world that seek always to gain comfort and assert dominance. If God Godself showed holy love by submitting to the blood-thirsty ways of violence in order to render them powerless, it calls into question the whole line of thinking that the “dark world” relies upon.

So – what does this text have to tell us about what it means to live as a part of this resurrection story? It seems that at the very least resurrection people are those who live amidst paradox and complexity, refusing to choose between two seemingly opposing truths, but holding fast to both. Resurrection people are unwavering in their commitment to love God and each other to the full extent modeled by Jesus – with body and spirit. This kind of resurrection life lived with one another is marked by telling the whole truth and proclaiming victory even when that victory sounds like foolishness to the dominant forces in the world. In what ways is your community invited to embody this resurrection life within your own specific context?

[1] Grayston, Kenneth. The Jonannine Epistles. NCB. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. 133.

[2] DeSilva, David. An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods and Ministry Formation. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2004. 473.

[3] Grayston, 55.

[4] Grayston, 137.