1 John chapter 5 and our text this morning is going to be verses 1 through 5. Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone that loves him that begat loves him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, We ask, Lord, that you would be with us this morning. We know that you oversee and you are omnipresent and you guide and we just ask for your direction. We ask for your attention on all the prayer requests that have been mentioned, those that are on the hearts of the people here, Lord. We are so thankful that you are a God who loves us and we can bring our needs to you as a heavenly Father who cares for us. We ask that you would bless the reading of your word, the proclaiming of it, that you would give us an understanding of it, Lord, to help us have clarity of the meaning of scripture and also to apply it in a way that we will live our lives through faith victoriously. Please forgive us of our sin. For it's in Christ's name we pray, amen. When you're a preacher, especially a Baptist preacher, There is a handful of men that you become close friends with even though they're dead. You get to know them through books. Once you have their confidence, you start to take their advice seriously. And so I read a quote by Charles Spurgeon earlier this week that said, growing a beard is a habit most natural, scriptural, manly, and beneficial. Spurgeon didn't mean the kind of weird goatee that I've got on my face. He was talking about the kind of full-faced, extra long, soup strainer beard. What I like to call a beard of historic Baptist proportions. I'm not sure what kind of natural or scriptural benefits he hoped to achieve, but that's just not going to happen for me because I don't like facial hair. I find it uncomfortable. I don't feel that it looks good on me. Clean shaven is what I would prefer, except If I don't leave something on my face, I've got a problem, because if I actually, on the rare occasions that I've gotten rid of all of my facial hair, if I get rid of this goatee and mustache, and when I rinse the shaving cream off of my face and look up in the mirror, it's my father's face staring back at me. Y'all, it's weird. I don't know what features it is exactly, whether it's like the bulbous Schultz nose or what, but the face in the mirror is my dad as surely as, like, I start feeling guilty because I think he's been waiting in there and he's going to scold me for something stupid that I did. I'm sure some of y'all have had the same experience, not my dad in the mirror, but some family member of your own, that DNA handed down to you through the family line can manifest itself in similar appearances and also similar habits and similar tastes. The Apostle John has that kind of idea in this letter. You know, you can know, he says, that you're part of the family of God by certain birthmarks that are visible throughout God's family. Joy and I watched a documentary earlier this week about a set of triplets that were separated at birth, and they found each other when they were 19, and they had the same face, and the same body type, and the same tastes, and the same nervous tics. And so they didn't conclude, wow, what a coincidence. They realized, look, we're family. I want you to see how John develops this idea in our text. And to do that you have to understand first a fundamental truth about salvation. Birth happens first. Look at verse one, whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. A close look at that will tell us John is not saying that by believing in Jesus, you become born of God. He's saying that it is the person who believes in Jesus who believes because he is born of God. That seems evident enough in English, but it's even more clear the way that it's worded in Greek. The word believes is the present tense. So right now, while the word is born is perfect tense. It's talking about completed action. So in other words, whoever is believing has been born of God. There's several ways we talk about this being born of God. Sometimes we say born of God, sometimes we say born again, sometimes we talk about it as the new birth. If we want to get really technical, we'll talk about regeneration or becoming a new creation. This new birth is not something that happens when you're born physically. After you are born physically, you have to be born again. In Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul describes this very same truth in a slightly different picture. In Ephesians 2, he says, you were dead in trespasses and sins, right? There was no life in you, but you have been quickened. You have been made alive together with Christ. What John wants us to know about this new life in Christ is that it comes before belief comes. We get the mistaken idea sometimes that a person is born again as the product of them believing in Jesus. But John is saying, if you believe in Jesus, it's only because you have been born of God. New life comes first. When Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus, his friend had been dead for more than three days and Jesus asked the tomb to be opened and he shouted into the grave, Lazarus, come forth. Now what happened? Did Lazarus hear the voice of Jesus and decide to obey? And so as a result of his decision to obey, he came to life and walked out of the grave? Well no, Lazarus was brought to life and as a result of being given this new life that was instilled into his formerly dead self, he heard the word of Jesus and obeyed the word of Jesus. The same thing happens with us. If you've come to faith in Jesus, that's how it happened for you. A spiritually dead person with no life is not going to choose to believe or to act in faith or to bring themselves to God. It is totally a work of God. It is God who is all life, instilling life into a spiritually dead sinner, and then as a result of having brought them to life, they hear and obey the voice of Jesus. And then, then, being born into the family of God, you begin to bear a resemblance to God's family. John says, this is how you can know, this is how you can know that you're part of the family of God, because you bear the birthmarks of being his child. Even more so than me looking into the mirror and seeing the face of my father, I ought to be able to look at my life and see the resemblance to my heavenly father. In our text this morning, in the first five verses of John 5, I want you to see he's presenting four birthmarks of being born again. Four birthmarks of being born again. First, we love our father and his children. Verse one, whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone that loves him that begat loves him also that has begotten of him. If you're born of God, if you love God, you know him as your father, and when you love the father, you'll love the children who have also been born of the father. This is a relatively short letter, but the Apostle John uses this word love, I think, 37 times. Love is a birthmark of being born again. It's how you can know you're in God's family. It's like love becomes the drumbeat, like the cadence of this letter. In 1 John 3, 1, Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God. Chapter 4, verse 7, Be loved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. In chapter four, verse 10, herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Chapter four, verse 19, we love him because he first loved us. The next verse, if a man says, I love God, but hates his brother, he's a liar. Obviously, John's been hammering this home for a while now. If you're born again, it is because God, the Father, has placed his love on you, and being brought to life, his love is not only on you, but it is now in you, and you are part of his family, and you have love for the Father because he loved you. And further, since love is a command, it is the expectation that God has of all his children. So it's not simply based on an emotion or a feeling. It is an act of volition. It is something you do because you are determined to do it. Simply stated, your brothers and sisters in Christ are not always going to be easy to love, nor are they always going to be deserving of your love. Just as the same thing is true of us. We hope for love from our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we need it most at those times where we deserve it the least. In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote an entire chapter concerning how love behaves, not just how it feels, but how it acts. And in chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians verses 4 through 7, he says, suffers long and is kind, love does not envy, love does not parade itself, love is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. This is the love that scripture demands of us, a long-suffering, kind, polite, enduring wrongs, bearing burdens, selfless, truth-based love. And if we love God, we'll have that kind of love for the children of God, not because it's easy, but because it's right. This love is the essence of obedience to God. You know, the commands of the Old Testament were summarized by Jesus into the two simple statements. First, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. That's the first. And the second, he said, is just like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Complete love for God and selfless love for others is the essence of obedience. In fact, John uses that truth to flow into our second point. So first, the first birthmark of being born again is we love the Father and His children. Second, we obey God's commands. Go to verse two, by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous. Listen to verse two again carefully. This is how we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. Obedience to God is a confirmation of your love for the Father and for His other children, which we just saw is confirmation that you are born again, you are part of His family. That is, obedience is not only confirmation about your relationship with God, but obedience is confirmation of your relationship with all the family of God. If we love God's people, our obedience to God's commands reflects our love for others. I'm stressing this because the way we think about it sometimes is that love and obedience are somehow in conflict with each other, and they're not. While I don't know that many of us would come out and say love and obedience are in conflict with each other, at least we wouldn't necessarily express it that way, we still often live like it in practice. I mean, have you ever experienced the time where you were being disobedient to God's commands and someone who loves you calls you out on it? I know the attitude that I tend to get when that happens is, well, if you loved me, you would just leave me alone. If you loved me, you would just let me do whatever it is that I wanted to do. but that's a false dichotomy. It's trying to divide love and obedience as if the two of them are in conflict and they're not. What John intends for us to understand in verse two is that we can know that we love the children of God when we love the Father himself and display that love for both him and his children through obedience to God's commands. Our interaction with the other children of God We're only being obedient to the Father if we're showing genuine, selfless, burden-bearing, long-suffering, truth-based love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. We're not always going to do that well. In fact, that old saying, love means never having to say you're sorry. It's not in the Bible anywhere. It's not like you can turn to Proverbs and find that. When we do wrong, we ought to make amends just as when we disobey the Father, we ought to repent of our sin. Now here's the other way that we misunderstand this idea of love and obedience. Sometimes... We think of God the Father as if he's like changed the rules on us, right? We think about the Old Testament God as well. Back in the Old Testament, he's strict. He's given us this list of commands, but the New Testament God is carefree, easygoing, he's permissive of all things. Really, the Old Testament God has expectations and the New Testament God doesn't? Is he a different God? Has he changed? Has his standard of morality and righteousness somehow been deleted and then rewritten? Absolutely not. And so then what's the difference between an Old Testament Hebrew who is quaking in fear at the bottom of Mount Sinai as God booms out his commands, what's the difference between that person and a New Testament Christian? God gives us the answer in verse, John gives us the answer in verse three. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous. That word grievous is the Greek word baris, and actually it's the word that means heavy or weighty. Y'all what he's saying here is incredibly helpful if we can embrace it. Obedience is not, for a Christian, for a believer, obedience is not something that weighs on you. It's not heavy. Other translations here say His commandments are not burdensome. The difference between the law-based mindset and the faith-based mindset is not a difference of obedience and disobedience. The difference between the law-based mindset and the faith-based mindset is that one obeys out of fear, carrying around the commandments of God like they're a heavy burden, and the other obeys out of joy because we love the Father who gave those commands. When we're born again, we are new creations. We get a new nature, a new outlook, a new disposition. We get new affections, a new sense of where we find joy, and we find our joy in glorifying the Father, in obedience to the Father. Not by ignoring his commands, but by picking up his commands and saying, carrying these are my delight. In our scripture reading earlier, Andrew read from Psalm 1, and it says, blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and his law does he meditate day and night. A blessed person is going to avoid the practice of disobedience and instead find delight in the law of God and the commands of God. That obedience is not a drudgery. It's not something we're begrudging to do. What kind of a child would look at their father and say, I love you, but I'm not going to obey you? Not one that's sincere in what they're saying. It's not love. You can't disconnect love and obedience. John learned this lesson directly from Jesus who said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Are you keeping the Father's commandments? Because without obedience, you are missing a vital birthmark of being born again. So these birthmarks of being born again, we've seen we love the father and his children. We obey God's commands. Third, we overcome the world. Look at verse four. For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. In your Bibles, if you're at all predisposed to writing in your Bibles, if you don't find that sacrilegious, it's not. and you like to circle words or make a note for you to see later, I would encourage you to circle these words. You'll find the word overcomes twice in verse four and once more in verse five. So circle those, or at the very least, look at your Bible and circle them in your mind if you can't bring yourself to do it in practice. And then between those words overcomes in verse four, you'll see the word victory. Circle that one too. Because overcomes is the Greek word nikaio, and victory is the Greek word nikai. You hear the similarities there? It's basically the exact same word except one is in the verb form, overcomes, is something that you do, and the other is in the noun form, victory, something that you have. Y'all, these are military terms, or we could say them's fighting words. If you overcome, you have achieved victory. John is intentionally using this play on words here, this constant repetition in those two verses to emphasize this point. There is something we are to defeat. There is something that we are to overcome. And what is it that we're to achieve victory over? Well, the answer every time in verses four and five is the world, right? Three times he writes this, overcome the world, overcome the world, overcome the world. This is what he's been building up to since the beginning of the letter. In chapter two, verse 15, don't love the world or the things in the world. In the next verse, verse 16 in chapter two, all that's in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. In chapter 2 verse 17, the world is going to pass away and whoever does the will of God is going to abide forever. Even if you glance down at verse 19 in chapter 5, the whole world lies in wickedness. The world's sinful deeds, the world's evil thinking, the world's wicked people, they are in a cosmic struggle against God and all of God's children, against everything that is good. This is not a struggle that we can afford to lose. But it's a struggle that we're in. Even when you're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and then placed in the Lord's church, you are still facing a struggle against the world. Not to spoil our early morning study in Revelation, but you understand this same Apostle John later on is going to be given a vision and a message that Jesus said, send this to the churches in Asia. And let me just give you a few phrases from that message from Revelation 2 and 3. To him that overcomes, I will give to eat of the tree of life. He that overcomes shall not be hurt of the second death. To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the hidden manna. And he that overcomes and keeps my works until the end, to him I'll give power over the nations. He that overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white clothes, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life, but I'll confess his name before my Father. He that overcomes will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, that he that overcomes I will grant to be with me in my throne even as I also overcame. So you get that as the Lord Jesus sends a message to his churches, there was a constant encouragement, you have to overcome, you must overcome the world, you must have victory. And now we're reading this message in our church, and I dare say the expectation has not changed. What is the victory that overcomes the world? Well, pretty sure we just sang about it a little bit ago. The end of verse four, John says the victory that overcomes the world is even our faith. Now we understand, and so does John, that the victory over sin and over the world is not a product of faith that we conjure up in ourselves, that it's actually the victory is in Jesus. That's another pretty good song, by the way. Jesus, He's the one who's the object of our faith. But it seems John's point here is to say that victory achieved by Jesus through His death, burial, and resurrection has to become the focal point of our daily struggles. We have to live by faith in what it is that Jesus has done. So even though The battle against sin has been won by Jesus, and our day in and day out lives, the war rages, and you are gonna have to choose sides. Are you gonna surrender to this world, or are you gonna live a life of faith that overcomes the world? Because John's already said, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. When you're born again, there's this dramatic shift in your life. Whereas you were enslaved by sin, you were infatuated with the world, you were consumed by those lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the prideful lifestyle. Now John says faith is the victory. Through faith our hearts and minds are set free from sin. We're no longer held captive to the seductive spell of this wicked world. We're free and Jesus sets you free. You are really free. Your eyes are opened. You see Jesus. You come to him in faith knowing that Jesus is better than any of the things in the world I'm leaving behind. Now there's one more birthmark of being born again in our text. We've seen we love the Father and his children, we obey God's commands, we overcome the world, and finally, we believe in Jesus. This is where John begins and ends this particular text. In verse one, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. In verse five, who is he that's overcome the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God? The primary result of being born again or being born of God is that you believe in Jesus. Again, the new birth happens first, bringing you to life, opening your eyes, and then seeing Jesus for who he is and what he has done produces faith in him. In fact, we see that exact order back in Matthew chapter 16 in an exchange that Jesus has with his disciples, particularly Simon Peter. They're traveling on foot throughout the region. Jesus asks his disciples, all those people out there, who do they say that I am? And the answers were various, right? There was a lack of certainty on the whole. The disciples told them, well, some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're Elijah, some say you're Jeremiah, some say you might be one of the other prophets. Matthew 16, verses 15 through 17, Jesus said unto them, but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, right? Peter's affirmation is identical to the two statements here in John. Believers believe that Jesus is the Christ. They believe that Jesus is the son of God. And Jesus' response to that was to say, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you, but my Father which is in heaven. Right, Peter, you didn't conjure that up inside your own heart and your own mind. Nobody believes those things except the Father which is in heaven reveals and opens those things to them. The source is God first. And because of the work of God and regeneration or new birth, being born again, the result of that is Jesus is revealed so that we believe in him. Specifically, there's two things John says, born again, people believe about Jesus. First, in verse one, we believe that Jesus is the Christ. And then, down in verse five, we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Saying that Jesus is the Christ is to say he's the Messiah. Christ is the New Testament word for the Old Testament idea of a Messiah, an anointed one. This is believing the historical truth about what Jesus has done. The Old Testament from start to finish is saturated with these promises of a coming Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one who alone was going to come and bring salvation to his people. And so to say that Jesus is the Christ is to say, well, Jesus is that serpent stomping one who was promised to Eve in the garden. He's the seed of Abraham who is going to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. He's the prophet like Moses. He's the son of David who has come to establish his throne forever. He's the servant of Isaiah who is going to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. He's going to be crushed for our sins. There are hundreds upon hundreds of Old Testament promises that are fulfilled through the work of Jesus. He is the promised Messiah. He has come to do the Father's will and save God's people so that in bearing our sins on the cross, dying in our place and then rising again to give us life, we know what he's done and we know that he has done it for us. but even more than believing in what he's done, that Jesus is the Christ, he is the Messiah. John says in verse five, we also come to know and believe who he is, right? We believe that Jesus, he says in verse five, is the son of God. For me, being my father's son just makes me a man. for Jesus being the Son of God means He's more than a man. He is the God-man. He's God in the flesh. And so those occasions where I look in the mirror and I see this passing resemblance to my Father, when we look at Jesus, we see the fullness of the Father's glory in Him. Jesus has said is the brightness of God's glory. He's the express image of God's person. He's God robed in flesh. Seeing him is seeing the Father. So to believe that Jesus is the Messiah is to believe the historical truth about what Jesus has done. To believe Jesus is the Son of God is to believe and be confident in the spiritual truth about who Jesus is. We believe in who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. But remember what we said about that word believe? In both cases, up in verse one and down in verse five, believes, present tense. So many Christians who have doubted their faith and have struggled, they've asked themselves, well, I remember back then, did I really believe in Jesus? But that's not truly the question. Look, if I asked how many of y'all in here were born, I would hope everybody would raise your hands. How many of you remember being born? I don't know about you, but that is kind of hazy to me. So look, if you don't remember it, how do you know that it happened? And I know you're looking at me right now going, Pastor Jason, that's gotta be the stupidest question I've ever heard in my life. Here I am. Of course I was born. Right, you know what happened in the past because you have a grasp on what you are today. Got it? So when it comes to being born again, why would you spend today trying to figure out what it is that you believed back then, years ago, when John is telling us that those who are born again believe, present tense, right now, today, they believe that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus is the Son of God. a preacher named Adrian Rogers said it like this. He said, the assurance of my salvation comes not from the fact that I did trust Christ, but that I am trusting Christ. You wanna know whether or not you're a child of God? John doesn't say it's because you'll have vivid memories and perfect understanding of being born again. He says, here's what you're gonna be doing right now. Here are birthmarks, here's the family resemblance of those people who have been born again. Do you love the father and his other children? Are you obedient to his word and you don't find those commands to be a heavy burden? Are you overcoming, are you achieving victory over a sinful world through faithfulness? Do you believe, right now, ask yourself, do you believe that God's Son, Jesus, took the sin of God's children on the cross, that He died in their place, that He rose again, granting them eternal life? Do you believe in who Jesus is and what Jesus has done and that He did it for you? If you can answer yes to those questions, then you are bearing the birthmarks of having been born again. You have the resemblance of someone in the family of God.