Since Tuesday of this week (today is Friday), the first reading has been from the First Letter of John starting with the fourth chapter. John’s letters are sometimes a challenge to read and often presents challenges in listening as the letter seems to continually curl back on itself leaving you to wonder if the author is repeating for emphasis or making a new point. But then again sometimes the message is clear enough: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. If God so loved us, we also must love one another.” Before moving ahead, perhaps a summary would be helpful.
Short and sweet, 1 John is a love letter whose message is that God is love and he has first loved us. He has courted and wooed us through the ages and His greatest love letter is the gift of his Son, sent as Savior. In His letter God asks that because He has so loved us, we too must become lovers, lovers of one another. Only if we love the visible neighbor can we love the invisible God. God’s love for us and our love for Him and for one another should afford us fearless confidence. In other words, love is the root and foundation of Faith. For it is in Jesus as Savior of the world and as Son of God that we profess our faith through the Spirit. That brings us to today’s reading from 1 John 5.
1 John 5 completes the idea of love’s connection to faith with its creedal statement that Jesus is the Son of God — but a Son of God who is also thoroughly human, both at the baptism (at which the Spirit testified in John 1:33–34) that initiated the Jesus’ ministry and in the bloody death that terminated it. Son of God, yes — but a Son of God whose humanity was essential. To the Spirit as witness are added both the water and blood. The historical events of Jesus’ life are now the sacraments. The Spirit still testifies to Jesus, and so do the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. All three give their testimony in the Christian assembly: the Spirit through those who proclaim and preach and Baptism and Eucharist as signs of the eternal life that God gives us in his Son through the power of the Spirit.
To deny all of this is to direct God’s love letter to the trash bin of life. In more theological terms it is to reject God’s own witness and to claim that God is a liar: “Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar by not believing the testimony God has given about his Son” (v. 10). But for those who keep and hold dear the love letter, it is a sign that in faith they accept the testimony. And that acceptance is its own reward: “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever possesses the Son has life.”
And, indeed, the purpose of the love letter: to help all to realize that they actually possess eternal life — if, that is, they believe in the Son of God and hold fast to all that He taught.
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Summary Notes on the First Letter of John
John’s letter can seem circular, repetitive and as a result is sometimes overlooked in its contribution to Christian thought. As an “extra” to this reflection, what follows is a very fine summary on John’s contribution in terms of his understanding of faith from Howard Marshall.
He insists, first, on the character of faith as orthodoxy. He reminds us in no uncertain terms that faith must have a proper understanding of the person of Jesus as the Son of God. Faith must be based on truth; otherwise it is a sham and has no saving power. Faith is the complement to divine revelation; it is not human subjective opinion, but is based on Christian tradition, more precisely on the apostolic tradition which is now enshrined in Scripture.
Second, John insists that faith cannot be separated from love. Mere orthodoxy is not Christian faith. Christian faith must issue in brotherly love, and the absence of love is proof of the absence of faith. It is, of course, also true that love without faith is not real Christian love.
Third, John claims that faith expresses itself in righteousness and sinlessness. The believer keeps the commandments of God and does not fall into sin. There is no place for antinomianism in John’s view of things. Lack of moral concern is an indication of lack of true faith. John’s insistence on sinlessness and perfect love places before us the divine ideal for the Christian life and reminds us that this is meant to be an attainable ideal for those who have been born of God.
Finally, John links together faith and assurance. The believer can know that he has eternal life; he can have communion with God, and so he is able to come confidently before him in prayer. John’s ultimate aim in his first Epistle is to give his readers solid grounds for assurance that they have eternal life through belief in Jesus Christ.
Source credit: Marshall, I. Howard. The Epistles of John. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1978. The New International Commentary on the New Testament.