Keeping the Commands

1 John 5:1-3
(1) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
(2) By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.
(3) For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

There is a ton to unpack in this short passage. I want to hit on a few highlights that struck me this morning. First, I think we need to keep the order straight in verse 1 and the grammar can help us. The phrase "has been born of God" is in the perfect passive tense. That means that it is a past action with present effect, but also that it is something that happens to the subject. In this case, the subject is "everyone." The word translated "who believes" is actually the present active participle, which means that it is an ongoing action. Basically, what this tells us is that we are born of God before we are able to believe in Him. Once again, Scripture speaks to the sovereignty of God in election.

Verses 2 and 3 step up the challenge. We are to keep His commandments. We do this not to merit our salvation since it is impossible to do that. However, we can see that the continual working out of our faith is proof that we are indeed born of Him. Of course, everyone has some dry periods where it feels like we couldn't do anything at all. I would maintain that simply remaining faithful is part of keeping His commandments.

I would sum up this passage by saying that God is the one who saves us since we cannot save ourselves. However, if we are truly saved we will not have a passive faith that does nothing. It will be continually evidenced by our works.