1 John 5:6–13

Bible Studies for Life
Assistant Professor of Religion, Samford University

God’s Promise of Eternal Life

1 John 5:6–13

Our familiarity with the life and teachings of Jesus can easily obscure the fact that Jesus’ earthly ministry was so remarkably brief. While the Gospels themselves do not specify the exact length of Jesus’ ministry, the references to three Passover celebrations in John’s Gospel (John 2:13; 6:4; 12:1) and the weight of Church tradition suggest He spent just two to three years with His disciples. 

Though His sojourn with the disciples may have been brief, the process of reflecting on Jesus’ ministry and coming to appreciate who He was in an ultimate sense would continue for decades and even centuries beyond the resurrection. The pages of the New Testament bear witness to the challenges early Christians faced as they sought to reconcile fully both Jesus’ humanity and divinity. Two groups whose beliefs would ultimately fall outside the understanding of Jesus presented in the New Testament were known as the Ebionites and the Docetists.

The Ebionites formed a segment of early Jewish Christianity. For the Ebionites the humanity of Jesus presented no problem at all; the Messiah was supposed to be a man. But because of their rich monotheistic heritage in Judaism the Ebionites struggled with the notion that Jesus could truly be divine. Jesus as God seemed to them too much like polytheism. The Docetists who emerged from Hellenistic Christianity suffered just the opposite problem. While they embraced the notion that Jesus was divine, the very negative view of the physical body they had inherited from the Greek philosophers made it difficult for them to accept the idea that Jesus was truly human. One of the great purposes of 1 John was to challenge both of these notions.

Jesus is God’s Son. (6–9)

In rejecting the humanity of Jesus some Docetists went so far as to claim that Jesus and the Christ were two different beings. Jesus, they suggested, was indeed human but He was not the Christ. The Christ was the deity who inhabited Jesus upon His baptism and because God could not suffer, departed from Him before He experienced the cross. John argues forcefully against this idea. In 1 John 5:1, he maintains, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” When he continues in verse 5, he insists that Jesus Christ is One who came by water, referring to His baptism, and blood, referring to His death on the cross. The same person declared to be God’s beloved Son at His baptism is the One who suffered through crucifixion.

Life is found in Jesus. (10–11)

Just as important for John is the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. In years past Israel’s kings had often been declared to be sons of God (Ps. 2:7). In the New Testament this notion was extended to all of God’s people (Rom. 8:14, 19; Gal. 3:26). And yet there is a sense in which Jesus is viewed as uniquely the Son of God. Here John insists that Jesus possesses a Sonship that outstrips the too low view of Jesus held by some in His community.

We experience life when we believe in Jesus. (12–13)

The schism that had affected the community to which 1 John was addressed (1 John 2:19) had apparently taken its toll on the faithful. It is doubtless for this reason that John concludes his message with a note of confidence and hope for God’s people: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” John insists that as believers embrace the Son of God they receive the new eternal life that comes from God.