Born Again and Overcoming
Revelation 3:21, 22 NASB
“He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I
also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
1 John 5:4, 5 NASB
“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that
has overcome the world—our faith.
A first glance interpretation
of this passage makes it look as if believing that Jesus is the Son of God is
equivalent to overcoming. In order to understand this we have to understand the
phrase “overcoming the world.” We have seen that predominantly throughout
Scripture when we have this concept of overcoming mentioned it is not related
to sin, it is related to the world. There are three enemies of the believer in
Scripture—the devil, the sin nature in the believer, and the world system. The
Lord Jesus Christ uses this same phrase in John 16:33: “I have overcome the
world.” The grammar construction is very important because it shows us that
before He went to the cross, before the issue with sin, He had already had
victory over and conquered the cosmic system, the world. It was completed
before He went to the cross. That tells us that overcoming, whatever it is
related to, is not related to the
sin/salvation/justification issue, it is related to the spiritual life issue.
Definition of worldliness:
It describes a collection of ideas, philosophies, religions, standards and
values which characterize a culture of sub-culture, as well as the goals and
methods to achieve those ends. Its purpose is to suppress truth in unrighteousness.
All worldly thinking is designed to counter the truth of God’s Word in some
way. (They include a lot of things that are true, but that is because living in
God’s creation you have to assume certain things are true. It is the way it is
put together, its orientation.) Its purpose is to redefine reality and avoid
the righteous demands of God. As such this worldview incorporates and is
expressed in every aspect of a culture’s view of the individual and social
relationships. Nothing escapes a cosmic worldview. There is not detail too
great or too small to come into this kind of system. It involves individual
relationships, social relationships, marriage, family, politics, law, theories
of knowledge and learning, expressions of reality in visual and performing
arts, aesthetics, science, technology, literature. Nothing is completely
neutral.
Our
culture sort of programs into us as we grow up a preloaded bias that is
antagonistic to the Word and fits with our sin nature. It assimilates to our sin nature so that the cosmic
system provides a rationale for the activities of our sin nature, whether it is
toward human good or whether it is towards personal sin. This affects
expression and how we express what we see and how we view reality and how it
comes out in arts, literature and law, etc. When the Christian operates within
this thought structure, even though it may overlap in many ways with a biblical
worldview, it is still classified as worldliness. This is why it is so
difficult to nail down. The thing that gives us the victory is
knowing the Word of God. That is why the very first thing Jesus
referenced when He was tempted in the wilderness was from Deuteronomy chapter
eight, that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God. Bible study and learning the Word of God isn’t really
optional in the Christian life. It is not something that is just there, it is
designed to teach us how to think within the culture of divine viewpoint which
is going to be counter to the culture of human viewpoint.
As we look at 1 John 5:4
we read: “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.” This phrase “born
of God” is a perfect tense participle in the Greek indicating completed action.
It is used as a noun to refer to the believer. We could paraphrase it as “For
whoever is a believer overcomes the world.” At faith alone in Christ alone is
when we realized the payment of the sin penalty at the cross. That is where sin
was dealt with. But here we are dealing with something subsequent to that. “…and
this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
In 1 John the phrase “the
one who is born of God” is used in three other passages. At first glance it
would indicate that what is being said about the person born of God is somewhat
characteristic of being a believer. We will look at why that won’t work.
1 John2:29 NASB
“If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices
righteousness is born of Him.”
1 John 3:9 NASB
“No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and
he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
1 John
4:7 NASB “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
We have here three
different verses (a fourth if we add in 1 John 5:4) that indicate a
characteristic about somebody who is born again. The temptation is to say that
if you are born again this is what you do; if you are not doing this then you
are not born again. So we try to apply that reverse logic to the passage, that
if you are not overcoming the world then you were not born again, if you are
not practicing righteousness then you weren’t born again, if you sin then you
weren’t born again, if you don’t love or know God or don’t love one another
then you weren’t born again. That is fallacious reasoning because you can go
from one to the other but you can’t go back. What these passages are basically
saying is that God is saying, “If you are in my family, you don’t act like this.”
It doesn’t mean that you can’t act like this, it means
you are not supposed to act like this.
There are really only two options
for interpreting these passages: a) What these passages are saying is that
genuine born again believers practice righteousness, don’t sin, and they love one
another; b) That only born again believers can practice righteousness, not sin,
and love one another; but no all who are born again will necessarily practice
righteousness, avoid sin, and love their brethren. Many who are born again will
not do that.
The point in each of these
verses is really that only a born again believer can practice righteousness. An
unbeliever can’t practice righteousness. Only believers can overcome the world;
unbelievers can’t overcome the world. It is saying that only believers who are
born again can’t sin and it is also saying that only born again believers can
love one another. It is not saying that these attributes are always there for
everyone who is born again. We can go from the fact that every believer can do
this but not every believer is going to.
1 John2:29 NASB “If you know that
He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is
born of Him.” The translation there is misleading. It uses the verb POIEO [poiew], present active participle. POIEO has a
broad meaning, like the English word “to do.” It can mean to produce, to do, to
act, to make, to manufacture something, to create, to cause to bring about, to
accomplish, to perform. It can in some cases imply practice, but the stronger
word for practice in the Greek is PRASSO [prassw],
and practice means to perform an activity or skill regularly or habitually. There
is a lot of difference between saying everyone who does righteousness is born
of Him and everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. So we have to
make sure we have a correct translation here. But the idea is that if you see
somebody and there is righteousness there, then since only a believer can
perform righteousness they must be a believer. The reverse is not necessarily implied,
that if you see someone and there is no righteousness there that that means
they are not saved. You can’t go in that direction. 1 John 2:9 says that no one
can do genuine righteousness without having been born again. Unbelievers just
can’t do it, all their righteousnesses
are as filthy rags.
1 John 3:9 NASB
“No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and
he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” This is the one everyone has trouble
with. Not only is it saying that whoever is born again doesn’t sin, it is
saying he can’t sin because he has been born of God. This verse is saying the
same thing that Paul is saying in Galatians 5:16: “But I say, walk by the
Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” When
it says “His seed abides/remains in him” it is that idea of fellowship. But
wait a minute. If I am walking by the Spirit and I can’t sin, how do I ever sin?
Paul is saying if we are walking by the Spirit it is impossible for us to sin. That
is not any different from what John is saying, that
the person who is born again doesn’t sin. It is only people who are born again
that can be in a temporal period where they don’t sin. How does that happen? According to Galatians 5:16 it happens when we are walking by the Spirit.
1 John
4:7 NASB “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” An observation: If this passage is saying that
everyone who is truly regenerate loves one another, then why is he addressing
regenerate believers to love one another? We have to grow and learn to love one
another, and John relates that to two things: everyone who loves is born of God
(if you are not born again you can’t love God); and then the last phrase, “and
knows God.” What does it mean to know God? We have to ask two questions here:
a) Is knowing God and loving God synonymous with
salvation? In other words, every believer is going to automatically love one
another, love God, and known God. Or, b) Is it the
result of spiritual growth after salvation? To understand this we have to look
at a couple of parallel passages:
1 John
What 1 John 2:14ff is
telling us is that loving the world is mutually exclusive to loving God. If
that has to do with salvation it means that before you can get saved, i.e. love
God, you have to quit loving the world. That is works salvation! None of us can
do that, it is impossible.
1 John 2:3 NASB
“By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” All
kinds of people will say, see, the way you know if you are saved is if you are
obedient. If you are disobedient you weren’t saved, because obedience to His
commandments is evidence that you were truly saved. But that has a preloaded
bias that knowing Him means to trust Christ as savior.
So what do we have here? The phrase “come to know him” is a perfect active
indicative of the verb GINOSKO [ginwskw],
meaning to know, to learn, or to acquire knowledge. The perfect tense means
that it is completed action, it is referring to something that happened in the
past and the results continue. It is completed action. So John is saying here, “By
this we know that we have come to know Him in the past with ongoing results, if
we are [present tense] keeping His commandments.” In John 14:7 Jesus is addressing
Philip and the disciples and He says, “If you had known Me,
you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen
Him.” John chapter 13, right before this, is where He gathers all of His disciples
and He says to all of these disciples, including Judas, “You are all clean [KATHARIZO/ kaqarizw],” a noun indicating they are all saved, “except one
of you [Judas].” Then He tells Judas to leave, which leaves eleven. Are those
eleven all saved? Yes. Are they all clean? Yes. So then He starts telling the
new commandment He was going to give them, “that you love one another.” Is that
addressed to unbelievers or to believers? They are believers, so at the end of
John chapter 13 He is talking to believers. He tells them He is going top leave
them. Peter tells Him they don’t know where He is going or how to get there? The
Lord’s reply was John 14:1-3, “In my Father’s house are many mansions…” Then in
verse 7 He says “If you had come to know me.” Are they saved? Yes. He is
telling born again believers that they don’t know Him. They are saved and going to heaven but they
don’t know Him yet. In other words, there is not enough post-salvation growth
to fit the category of really knowing Jesus. John 14:9 NASB “Jesus said
to him, “Have I been so long with you, and {yet} you have not come to know Me,
Philip?” Philip hasn’t grown any after salvation. The point is that in 1 John
2:3 coming to know Him is spiritual growth after salvation. How do you know
that you have reached spiritual maturity? You are obedient.
Loving God and knowing Him
are the result of growth because you are living by the Word of God day in and
day out, and as a result of that there is growth to spiritual maturity, and as
a result of that we are loving one another and are
loving God.
1 John 2:4 NASB
“The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His
commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” This is not saying he is
not saved, he is just saying he is claiming to be a mature believer and is not,
he is still an arrogant baby believer.
1 John 2:5 NASB
“but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected [TELEIOO/teleiow, to be mature]. By this we know that we are in Him.” So
what we are talking about here in terms of victory over the world is related to
knowing God and to loving God, and all this has to do with reaching spiritual
maturity, not to getting saved.
When we get back to 1 John
5:4, John is saying, whoever is born of God [and living like it] overcomes the
world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith [the body
of doctrine that we have learned from the Word of God and we apply to the
temptations related to the world].
The challenge from Revelation is that we all need to be overcomers. The incentive is that we can sit on the throne with Jesus, even as he overcame the world and sat on His Father’s throne. The incentive is to rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ in His coming kingdom.