John’s schoolboy Greek grammar should be obvious, but people have debated for the past two millennia over what he says in this chapter. I take the position that the so-called “John’s comma” in verse 8 was not in the original letter. This refers to some added lines that don’t belong with the message, lines that showed up in the KJV based on very late manuscripts, but is clearly missing in the oldest copies we have of this letter.
John’s theme is still the distinction between those who carry the Presence of the Holy Spirit and those who do not. There is no way to reconcile the differences between those two groups. We should hardly be surprised that humans with the Holy Spirit believe in Christ as both man and God, while those without His Presence cannot possibly accept that truth. They will come up with all kinds of silly explanations for who Christ was and what He must have represented, never mind what first-hand witnesses like John could tell you.
The chapter break comes at the wrong place, splitting a paragraph. Thus, this chapter begins with John finishing his comments about how people led by the Spirit cannot avoid obeying Christ’s command that we should love each other as He loved us, something the various cults choked on. John says that if you love the Father — as many cult teachers claimed they did — then you cannot avoid loving His children. If you love the Father, you will obey the Son’s Law to love each other. It’s not a burdensome law like the Talmud; it’s entirely natural.
He’s talking about spiritual birth, the Presence of the Holy Spirit in your soul. If God is your Father in that sense, then you have escaped the authority of Satan, the god of this fallen world. He does not own you any longer because you aren’t rooted here; you are rooted in Eternity. We just happen to occupy a fleshly form for a limited time while we represent an invasive divine presence in his domain. Our commitment to Christ is how we overcome Satan’s efforts to bring us back under his power.
The people who have broken that curse will consistently proclaim that Jesus was both man and God. The fleshly nature cannot accept that truth. John was there for much of Jesus’ life since they were cousins. John was part of the same extended family as John the Baptist, too. While John probably did not witness the baptism in the Jordan (the reference to Jesus coming by water), he would have heard about it from multiple sources among his kinfolks alone. But John was there when Jesus died on the Cross, so he saw how Jesus came by blood.
And all of this is backed up by the voice of the Holy Spirit living in every person who comes to Christ. Thus, there are three witnesses: the water baptism in which the Father spoke bluntly Himself for all to hear, and blood on the Cross that shook the earth and darkened the sky, and the divine Presence of the Holy Spirit who would not have come into hearts in quite the same way without the Ascension. John believes.
And if you can swallow the testimony about the Voice of God at the baptism, and the testimony of miracles from hundreds at the Cross, then the voice of the Holy Spirit is greater still. Without His Presence, you could not make sense of the human testimonies. But with His Presence, you already have all the testimony you need, never mind whether you experienced those miraculous events yourself. God is naturally going to testify of Himself in your soul, but if you can’t embrace the truth of the Incarnation, then you are calling God Himself a liar.
Without the Spirit of the Risen Lord in your soul, you cannot claim to have eternal life.
Thus, John wrote this letter to reassure the fleshly minds of his readers that they do indeed have eternal life. Just listen for the Spirit’s witness. That Voice is the assurance you have to approach the Throne of God and make requests that He is eager to answer.
Something you should pray for is that any child of God who has gotten off the path, led astray by the lies of the cultists, would repent and return. There are limits of course. John has already specified what he means by “a sin leading to death” — denying that Jesus was the Son of God. If someone can go that far, they aren’t a child of God. Pray for them to get saved, if you feel led, but don’t pray like they are just a child of God who got off track. There are plenty of mistakes His children will make without denying Christ.
We know that those who are spiritually born are not going to make that kind of mistake. That’s what John means by saying the children of God don’t sin — that particular sin, of course. The Devil cannot reclaim your soul; the Lord forbids it. The Holy Spirit makes us aware that we belong to God, while the rest of the world belongs to Satan. The Spirit also makes us fully aware of who Christ is and that we belong to Him. All those cults are lies; they don’t know God and cannot embrace the Savior.
Finally, John says he wants his little darlings to be careful and avoid getting too close to idolatry.
