1 John 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

John writes that believing Jesus is the Christ marks a person as born of God, and that loving God and keeping his commands is how believers know they love God's children. He points to the testimony given about Jesus (by the Spirit, the water, and the blood) and says that God's testimony is that he has given eternal life, and that this life is in his Son. The letter closes with confidence in prayer, a distinction between sin that leads to death and sin that does not, three things the readers can know, and a final instruction to keep away from idols.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.
   • Everyone who loves the one who begat also loves the one begotten of him.
2. 5:2
   • We know that we love the children of God by this: when we love God and carry out his commandments.
3. 5:3
   • The love of God consists in this, that we keep his commandments.
   • God's commandments are not burdensome.
4. 5:4
   • Everything born of God conquers the world.
   • The victory that has conquered the world is our faith.
5. 5:5
   • No one conquers the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
6. 5:6
   • Jesus Christ is the one who came by water and blood.
   • He did not come by water only.
   • He came by water and by blood.
   • The Spirit is the one who bears witness.
   • The Spirit is the truth.
7. 5:7
   • There are three that bear record in heaven.
   • The three that bear record in heaven are the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost.
   • These three are one.
8. 5:8
   • There are three that bear witness on earth.
   • The three that bear witness on earth are the Spirit, the water, and the blood.
   • These three agree in one.
9. 5:9
   • We accept the testimony of men.
   • The testimony of God is greater than the testimony of men.
   • This is the testimony of God: that he has testified concerning his Son.
10. 5:10
    • The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony within himself.
    • The one who does not believe God has made God a liar.
    • The reason is that he has not believed the testimony that God gave concerning his Son.
11. 5:11
    • The testimony is this: God has given us eternal life.
    • This life is in his Son.
12. 5:12
    • The one who has the Son has life.
    • The one who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
13. 5:13
    • The writer says he has written these things to those who believe in the name of the Son of God.
    • He wrote so that they may know they have eternal life.
    • He wrote so that they may believe in the name of the Son of God.
14. 5:14
    • This is the confidence we have toward him: if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
15. 5:15
    • If we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests we have asked of him.
16. 5:16
    • If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin that is not unto death, he shall ask.
    • He shall give him life, for those sinning not unto death.
    • It is ambiguous whether the giver of life is God or the one who asks.
    • There is a sin unto death.
    • The writer does not say that he should pray concerning that sin.
17. 5:17
    • All unrighteousness is sin.
    • There is a sin that is not unto death.
18. 5:18
    • We know that everyone born of God does not sin.
    • The one begotten of God keeps himself.
    • The wicked one does not touch him.
19. 5:19
    • We know that we are of God.
    • The whole world lies in wickedness, or in the power of the wicked one.
20. 5:20
    • We know that the Son of God has come.
    • He has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true.
    • We are in him who is true.
    • Being in him who is true means being in his Son Jesus Christ.
    • This one is the true God and eternal life.
    • It is ambiguous whether 'this one' refers to the Son or to him who is true.
21. 5:21
    • The writer addresses his readers as little children.
    • He commands them to keep themselves from idols.
    • The letter closes with Amen.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

"Christ" is a title, not a surname. It is the Greek word for "anointed one" and translates the Hebrew word Messiah, the king God had promised to send. In the King James, "him that begat" means the father and "that is begotten of him" means the child; a single Greek verb covers fathering and giving birth, and John uses it for God producing new life in a person.

5:2

"Commandments" are the things God tells his people to do.

5:3

"Grievous" in 1611 did not mean causing grief. It meant heavy or burdensome, a weight hard to carry, which is the sense of the Greek word here.

5:4

"Overcometh" translates a Greek verb meaning to conquer or to win a contest; the related noun is nike, victory, the word used later in this same verse. "The world" in this letter does not mean the planet or the human race as such, but human society as it runs itself without reference to God.

5:6

What "came by water and blood" meant was evidently clear to the first readers and is not clear to us. It has been read chiefly two ways: as Jesus' baptism in water and his death by bloodshed, so that he was God's Son at the end of his public life and not only at its beginning; or as the water and blood of an ordinary human birth and death, insisting that he was physically real. The phrase "not by water only" suggests John is correcting people who accepted one of the two and denied the other.

5:7

The sentence in this verse about the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost appears in no Greek manuscript written before roughly the fourteenth century. It began as a comment in the margin of Latin copies, worked its way into the Latin text, entered a printed Greek edition in 1522, and so reached the King James translators. Modern editions of the Greek run straight from "the Spirit is truth" to "there are three that bear witness: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood." "Holy Ghost" is not a different being from the Holy Spirit: in 1611 "ghost" simply meant spirit.

5:8

To "bear witness" is to tell what you know is true, the way a witness speaks in a courtroom.

5:9

"Witness" and "record" in the King James render the same Greek word group, and the setting behind it is a law court: testimony given by someone in a position to vouch for what happened. "Bear record" in verse 7 and "the record that God gave" in verse 10 are the same idea as "the witness of God" here.

5:11

"Eternal life" means more than living forever. It means being alive with God, a life that starts now and never ends.

5:13

The King James ends the verse with a second clause, "and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." It is absent from the oldest Greek copies, which stop at "that ye may know that ye have eternal life."

5:14

"Confidence" translates a Greek word that first described a citizen's right to speak freely in the public assembly. It is not inward self assurance so much as the freedom to say what you want out loud to someone, without fear of being cut off.

5:15

"The petitions that we desired of him" means the requests we have made. In 1611 a petition was simply a thing asked for.

5:16

"His brother" here means a fellow member of the Christian community, not a blood relative; the letter uses the word for people inside the group, male and female alike. What "a sin unto death" is, John never states, and readers have never agreed. The main proposals are a sin punished by physical death, as in certain Old Testament and early Christian cases; the deliberate abandonment of the community and its confession about Jesus, which is what the people described in chapter 2 had done; or a settled refusal of the one thing that gives life. Note that John does not forbid praying in such a case; he says only that he is not telling them to.

5:17

"Unrighteousness" means anything a person does that is not right.

5:18

The Greek is ambiguous here and the manuscripts differ by a letter or two. One reading is the one the King James follows, "he that is begotten of God keepeth himself," the believer guarding his own life. The other, found in the oldest copies, is "the one born of God keeps him," where "the one born of God" is Jesus and the believer is the one protected. "That wicked one" is the evil one, that is, the devil.

5:19

"Lieth in wickedness" renders a Greek phrase that can be taken two ways: as lying in evil generally, which is how the King James read it, or as lying in the power of the evil one, a person, which matches "that wicked one" in the verse before. The Greek itself does not settle it, and every translator has to choose.

5:20

"True" in this verse carries the sense of genuine or real, the actual thing as opposed to a counterfeit, rather than the sense of truthful. That sets up the warning about idols in the next verse. The closing sentence, "This is the true God, and eternal life," is grammatically ambiguous in Greek: "this" may point back to Jesus Christ, the nearest name, or to "him that is true," the Father. Readers have taken it both ways since antiquity.

5:21

Idols were not an abstraction to the first readers. In a Greek city, images of the gods stood in temples, shops, trade guild halls and private houses, and meat sold in the market, public festivals, business associations and civic office were all bound up with honoring them. Keeping away from idols was a practical instruction with a social and financial cost. "Amen" is a Hebrew word of agreement, roughly "so be it"; the oldest Greek copies of this letter end without it.