1 John 5:1, Regeneration, Faith, and Tradition Driven Eisegesis

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Live at Nine from London, February, 2010

00:11

Well, greetings from Wandsworth, London, England. I'm on the last day of a 10 -day trip over here to the

00:19

United Kingdom. I've had a wonderful opportunity of ministry here. I'm sitting in my hotel room about,

00:26

I don't know, 150 yards or so from the Thames River. There's a cold breeze blowing today.

00:32

I'm actually enjoying it. It's been hard to get this room cooled down, actually. But now it's blowing in from the north, and so I'm getting some nice, cool air in here.

00:41

You might see the wind blowing in once in a while, moving the curtains around a bit.

00:46

And since the window is open, you might hear some London traffic outside. That's one thing that's pretty consistent in London, is traffic.

00:54

But it's a beautiful city, great people, and I've really enjoyed my time here. I want to look at some texts of scripture and then make some application here in this video.

01:04

Specifically, looking at 1 John 5, verse 1. 1 John 5, verse 1.

01:11

I recently saw a video clip of John Piper dealing with this text, and I noted that his interpretation is very much similar to my own.

01:20

I haven't been able to track it down. Maybe I will later today, Lord willing. But I want to look at the text and look at what it's saying, and then look at how, sadly, tradition causes certain evangelicals to avoid what the text has to say.

01:37

I'm specifically considering the very first portion of the verse, which has a description there of believers.

01:45

And it specifically says, "...everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God."

01:51

Now, that's not an overly complicated statement, but unfortunately, so often, we tend to assume it has certain meanings based upon our predilection, our presuppositions, our traditions, the

02:09

English language, whatever else it might be. Specifically, what I'm referring to is when you really dig into the text and ask the question, what did the

02:18

Apostle John wish to communicate with these words, and what would his original readers have understood him to be saying?

02:25

That's when you really start dealing with the text. Unfortunately, many people today do not want to try to deal with the text in a meaningful fashion.

02:33

They want to stay very much on the surface, and in fact, if you invite them to look deeper, they have some sort of a concern, maybe, that you are misleading them, or that you are trying to pull one over on them.

02:48

Specifically, the question of 1 John 5, 1 has to do with the relationship of the one believing, and their having been born from God.

02:58

What action comes first? The Greek is pas hapistuam hati

03:04

Jesus est in hacristas, ectu theiu gegeneitai, pas hapistuam, every one believing.

03:12

Now, that is common John language, Johannine language, all the way back to, oh, how about John 3 .16,

03:21

a very popular passage. This idea of describing the believer as one with this present tense participle, ongoing faith, true believers continue believing.

03:34

That's the nature of their faith. It's not because they're better than someone else. It's because of the nature of the faith that is theirs, they are believing.

03:43

But John says, everyone who is believing, that ongoing faith, first of all, they believe a certain thing, that Jesus is the

03:53

Christ. You cannot edit who Jesus is, there is a minimum requirement of knowledge of who

04:00

Jesus is. Everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

04:08

Now, in many people's minds, being born of God is the result of my believing.

04:13

I believe and therefore I am born again. But that's not what you would get if you just listened to what

04:20

John had to say here. Because that verb, gegeneitai, is a perfect tense verb, a perfect tense in the

04:29

Greek language. Normally, and again, you always have to examine context, you always have to examine syntax, relationship of words to one another, grammatical forms to one another.

04:39

A lot of people miss this because, you know, they buy a nice Bible program and, oh, that's what this is, not realizing there are things like periphrastic constructions and all these other things.

04:49

But in this case, we have a pretty straightforward usage of a perfect tense verb.

04:55

Perfect tense is referred to completed actions in the past that have abiding results of the present. And so there is an emphasis upon the completedness of the action and the continuing results of that action into the present time.

05:10

But as I mentioned, the participle used to describe the believer is ongoing, present tense.

05:18

Now, when you have a perfect tense verb with a present tense participle, what's the relationship of the time?

05:26

In the vast majority of instances, that action accomplished in the perfect tense verb is going to precede, it's antecedent to, the action of the participle.

05:39

What that would mean here is that being born of God preceded this saving faith, and in fact,

05:47

I would argue, gives rise to it. One might be able to argue in some cases for a contemporaneous action, but that wouldn't make much sense here, and as we will see, it doesn't make any sense in John's repeated usage of this particular grammatical form.

06:05

And that's what's very important. Unfortunately, many people don't do exegesis of the text looking at context or looking, for example, at an author's normal style.

06:17

There are two other texts in 1 John that are very, very important to look at.

06:25

Let's take a look at two verbal parallels to 1 John 5 .1,

06:30

see how we would interpret them, have some conclusions then on 1 John 5 .1, and then listen to a modern day example of exegesis based upon tradition found from a

06:43

Calvary chapel leader. So let's look at 1 John chapter 2, verse 29.

06:50

Now here in 1 John 2 .29, the important text, the phrase is, and we know that everyone doing righteousness has been born of him.

07:03

And you can see what the parallel is immediately, I've used color to try to show where the parallel is in the

07:08

Greek text. You have the exact same perfect tense verb, gegenitai, been born of him, also in reference to God, so though it doesn't say

07:18

God specifically, that's the contextual meaning. But the parallel then is pascha poion, everyone doing, in 1

07:28

John 5 .1 it's everyone believing. So here is the question for Brian Broderson, if, the gentleman we will be reviewing, if in point of fact we can't tell, that's going to be one of the arguments he makes, it could go either way, it's going to be his argument.

07:46

If we can't tell what the order here is, then it's possible, 1 John 2 .29

07:52

says, that by doing righteousness we cause ourselves to be born of God.

08:00

If by doing belief, if by believing we cause ourselves to be born again, that's the

08:07

Arminian Synergistic Interpretation, 1 John 5 .1, then to be consistent, 1

08:14

John 2 .29 we mean, by doing righteousness we cause ourselves to be born again. Now I can see a

08:19

Roman Catholic going there, but I can't see Calvary Chapel going there.

08:25

Something tells me, that if we were to invest a little time looking at Calvary Chapel sermons from Chuck Smith, maybe even

08:32

Brian Broderson on this text, we would find them recognizing that being born of God is what causes us to be ones who are doing righteousness, not the other way around.

08:44

But when we encounter the exact same verbal parallel in 1

08:49

John 5 .1, all of a sudden we don't even see it, let alone let the possibility exist that it might be teaching that God's work of regeneration is what causes us to believe.

09:02

I can only think of a very clear parallel to this in how Jehovah's Witnesses deal with the

09:07

Granville Sharp Constructions in 2 Peter, there are at least three or four in 2 Peter, and they correctly translate the ones that say,

09:15

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, because that doesn't impact their theology, but in 2 Peter 1 .1 when it says, Our God and Savior Jesus Christ, they mistranslate it because, well, their theology won't allow that.

09:25

That's the exact same attitude of those who look at 1 John 5 .1 and they look at 2 .29

09:32

and go, Yeah, in 2 .29 obviously being born from God precedes our doing righteousness, but can't be in 1

09:41

John 5 .1 because, well, we know that, and then off they go to some other text, some other context, just repeating their traditions over and over again.

09:55

There's another text, though, we need to look at in 1 John that also presents us a verbal parallel to 1

10:02

John 5 .1 and 1 John 2 .29. Here we're looking at 1

10:07

John 4 .7, 1 John 4 .7, Beloved, let us love one another because love is of God and everyone loving has been born of God and is knowing

10:19

God. Now, half of us can sing those, can sing that text fairly easily, but once again, looking at the

10:25

Greek, notice, Pas ha agapon, just like we've seen in the other two texts, we have this phrase, everyone loving, present tense participle, has been born of God.

10:40

So again, if we take the synergistic interpretation of 1 John 5 .1, which makes the present tense participle the grounds of being born of God, then not only do we do works of righteousness to be born of God, now we love to be born of God.

10:59

And yet, I really do believe that every redeemed believer in their more honest moments of reflection recognize that we love because he first loved us, we love because we have been born of God.

11:13

That action is what makes us capable of loving. This is that divine action where that heart of stone is taken out and we're given a heart of flesh.

11:25

And that's a tough text for synergists to deal with, who think that the heart of stone can believe and repent, and as a result, it's taken out and made into a heart of flesh.

11:39

These texts make it very clear that we're not just simply playing games with the

11:44

Greek language in 1 John 5 .1. I can understand if there were not verbal parallels to be found in the rest of 1

11:53

John that someone might argue that, but I think these are not only, there's no question that they are verbal parallels, but they also demonstrate a pattern of syntactical usage on the part of the author of 1

12:06

John that simply cannot be ignored. They clearly indicate to us that we are properly understanding the writer in 1

12:15

John 5 .1. In light of this, I'd like to play a brief clip from a recent

12:20

Pastor's Perspective radio program where a Reformed caller called in and asked about 1

12:27

John 5 .1. I would like you to listen to the response of the host,

12:33

Brian Brodersen. Now, Mr. Brodersen has, in a later call, mentioned he doesn't like to listen to me.

12:43

He listens to me as little as he possibly can, I think is how he put it. And that's fine. I don't know why, when

12:51

I try to present biblical material in an in -depth fashion, in an accurate fashion, if they don't like what

12:59

I have to say, well, why not demonstrate that it's wrong rather than just avoiding it? That's an odd attitude for Christians to have.

13:06

But, it as it may, listen to how Brian Brodersen refuses to answer the question.

13:14

Listen to how he very quickly abandons the text, shows no understanding whatsoever of the relationship between the present and the perfect tense.

13:23

I see no reason to believe that Brian Brodersen has ever taken the time to learn this language, and yet, you might say, well,

13:30

Christians don't have to learn Greek. That's true, but if you're going to present yourself as a teacher to the body of Christ and address these issues, why not just say, you know,

13:38

I can't address that because I haven't taken the time to do that. If you're going to say, no, that's not what it teaches, then

13:45

I think there is some incumbent responsibility upon you to know what you're talking about, that Brian Brodersen gives no indication of this.

13:54

Instead, he goes off to another text and never actually deals with what 1

13:59

John 5, 1 says. And that's a major problem. So, let's listen to what

14:04

Brian Brodersen had to say. Compare this with what I've provided you on the meaning of the text in its context, in its original languages, and I think the comparison will pretty much say everything that we need to say.

14:17

I was teaching 1 John last night, and we were going through chapter 5, and in verse 1,

14:26

John says that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Son of God has been born of God. And the verb there for believes is a present tense, meaning it's an active belief.

14:40

But the tense for the verb of being born of God is a perfect tense, meaning it happened in the past.

14:49

So my question is, because I hear all the time that we believe and then we're regenerated, or we experience a new birth, but from what

14:58

John's saying is that God makes us born again, and the result or the consequence is belief.

15:06

What is your guys' take on that? Well, that's the, you know, that's the first point of Calvinism, which we disagree with.

15:13

But it's in the Bible. Well, it's not in the Bible. You're interpreting it. The text reads, I'm looking at it right here, whoever believes that Jesus is the

15:21

Christ is born of God. It says has been born. Okay, has been born of God.

15:28

So does that mean that, does that then necessarily mean that they were born of God before they believed in Christ?

15:38

Didn't Jesus make it clear in, you know, say John 3, 16, that, you know, the very question that was asked by Nicodemus was how can a man be born when he is old?

15:49

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb? And then Jesus went on to give the illustration of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.

15:57

He went on to speak of for God so loving the world that he gave his only begotten son. Seems to me that Jesus is saying to Nicodemus in response to his question, how can a man be born is that he must believe it doesn't say that, well, uh, he can't be born again.

16:12

This has to be a sovereign act of God. And once he gets born again, then he can have faith.

16:18

The idea that faith, uh, you know, there, there has to be regeneration before faith.

16:25

It's, it's getting it backwards from what scripture says. So you're, you're taking one passage that could go either way.

16:35

Now, very briefly, just two statements, uh, cause I already addressed most everything else. Notice what

16:41

Brian Broderson says. He says, it's not in the Bible you are interpreting. Well, so is

16:46

Brian Broderson. The thing that's frightening about a lot of the Calvary Chapel folks is they have fallen into the very same trap that Dave Hunt fell into long ago.

16:56

Remember when Dave Hunt told me many years ago, James, I have no traditions.

17:02

The man who thinks he has no traditions is the slave of his traditions. And the Calvary Chapel non -denominational denomination is a living example of what happens when you don't examine your traditions because you say you don't have any.

17:15

Their ecclesiology, why is there no real discussion of the unbiblical nature? Because they don't have one.

17:21

You see, we don't have an ecclesiology to actually study. This becomes very dangerous for Brian Broderson.

17:27

This is how he's always been taught. Therefore, he's not interpreting this text. The other guy is.

17:34

That is a very dangerous trap to end up within. And then he says this text could go either way.

17:42

Do you have any evidence from what Brian Broderson says that he's ever studied this text with enough depth to know?

17:49

Does that mean, Brian, that 1 John 2 .29 can go either way? It might teach.

17:56

It might be properly interpreted to say that by doing acts of righteousness, we cause our own being born again.

18:04

No, it can't go either way. That's just simply the desperate reaction of a person who does not have a biblical response to a biblical question.

18:15

So once again, we find that the scriptures are plain, and they are clear, and they are understandable, as long as we will test our traditions.