Victory over the world
1 John 5:4b-12
Part 10 of our series on 1 John. I realise these got a little technical and maybe a little overly-convoluted, so I tried to pare this one back a bit more….
5:4b And this is the victory that has conquered the cosmos: our faith. 5 Who is the conqueror of the cosmos, if not the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is he that came through water and blood, Jesus the Anointed: not by water alone, but by water and blood: and the spirit is the one testifying, because the spirit is Truth; 7 because there are three testifiers, 8 the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are in accord. 9 If we accept human testimony, God’s testimony is greater, because this is God’s testimony: he has testified about his son. 10 The person believing in the Son of God has the testimony in themself; the person not believing in God, makes him out to be a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony which God testified about his son. 11 And this is the testimony—God gave us eternal life; and this life is in his son. 12 The person that has the son, has Life; the person that does not have the Son of God, does not have life.
If everyone born of God conquers the cosmos, then what is that victory, and how does it relate to Jesus’ statement in John 16:33 that he has conquered the cosmos? Is it the connection between Jesus’ victory and our victory that leads us into the second half of verse four here: faith. The victory that victories, the conquest that conquers, the prevailing that prevails – it’s impossible in English to preserve the noun and the verb with the same root. But John’s point is clear: our faith has conquered the world. Wait, I thought it was Jesus who conquered? Yes, but this is the application of Jesus’ victory to the individual. In this context, how does a person overcome the world, which lacks love for God, which rejects God’s commands, and which is defined by its rebellion and hate? The person who has been (re)born of God through faith, is the one who loves God, embraces his commands, and finds joy in Christ. This looks like losing to the world, and yet paradoxically is ‘winning’. And here is the jewel in John’s crown of theology. As much as this whole letter emphasises with gravitas the need for genuine love, faithful obedience, true doctrine, it is faith that lies at the heart of this all.
In the statement of v6 is summed up a whole lot of implicit doctrine. To believe that Jesus is the Son of God, in light of the rest of the letter, and the gospel of John, is to believe no less than his unity and equality with the Father, the reality of the incarnation, his status as Messiah. Faith in this person is the faith that conquers the world.
The focus on this section seems to rest firmly on who Jesus is, and what is to be believed about him, and so it is a section packed with ‘testimony’ language. Where Matthew, Mark, and Luke all speak of ‘the coming one’, with expectation of the Messiah, John here declares that Jesus is the one that came, fulfilling all such hopes and expectations.
There have been more than a few explanations of the triplet of water, blood, spirit in 6-8. I think it seems simplest and most likely to refer water to Jesus’ baptism, blood to Jesus’ death; These two key events are the bookends and supremely witnessing moments of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and then the mention of the Spirit is not a third element, but in many ways a third witness who verifies the other two witnesses. The Spirit speaks at and through Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit speaks in preparation and witness to Jesus’ crucifixion (Jn 12:28), and the testimony of all three is verified by the ongoing presence and work of the Spirit who (Jn 13-17) continues and extends Jesus’ ministry in word and work by pointing to Jesus’ words and works.
I think v9 both brings to mind a simple human reality, that we readily accept the testimony of fellow humans, alongside an echo of the witness theme in the gospel of John in which Jesus repeatedly points to those that testify about him (Moses, the Scriptures, the Father); God’s testimony about his Son is final, definitive, and to be accepted.
The person, then, who has this testimony, who received this testimony, is the believer, and so a believer has a subjective and internal reception of the witness, by the work of the Spirit. John moves from the external and public, to the internal and private. What good is God’s testimony, except that one believes it? And, in fact, it is only through rebirth that it is possible to accept and believe it.
John, as so often, doesn’t leave the other side of the equation unspoken. The antithesis is the person that does not believe and accept God’s testimony. In effect, this is to consider God to be a liar, to call his testimony false, and to reject that.
What’s at stake is no less than this: Life. Life to the full, life eternal. A quality and quantity of life that is grounded in the eternal God, and found in and only in his Son. Everything hinges upon this, everything flows from this. John’s words are stark, the choice is sharp and decisive. To have the Son is to have Life, and every benefit and blessing wrapped up in it, to not have the Son, is not to have Life, but death and death forever.