Is 1 John 5:10 Parallel and Relevant to 1 John 5:1

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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I would like to very briefly comment on an article that has been posted online in response to actually just to my posting of John Piper's video on First John 5 .1.

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It mentions that I gave my comments afterwards, but doesn't really respond to what

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I wrote, unfortunately. It doesn't even attempt to interact with the parallels that I provided, the direct verbal and syntactical parallels that I provided from First John 229 or First John 4 .7.

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And what's more, the article is anonymous, so I don't know who wrote it, and that bothers me a little bit because I don't know where they're coming from.

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But just in general then, this is an article that attempts to say, on the basis of First John 5 .10,

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that First John 5 .10 is a parallel to First John 5 .1, and that it demonstrates that faith precedes regeneration, which the word doesn't actually appear in First John 5 .10.

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But it is not a parallel, and it is an invalid argument.

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I would like to be able to interact with it a little bit more if I knew who wrote it, where they're coming from, but the blog is completely anonymous as far as I can tell.

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And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to place the text on the screen and very briefly walk through why

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First John 5 .10, the citation of it, is an invalid attempt to get around the authorial examination

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I gave, what I mean by that, looking at how John uses not only the verb to beget in a particular form, but that by looking at First John 229 .4

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.7, we can see what the author is intending across a book, and that this is not what

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First John 5 .10 allows us to do. It's a different context, different construction, and that this is a misguided attempt to get around John's testimony to the fact that God's action of causing us to be born again precedes that response that is ours of love, of doing righteousness, and of the continuation of belief, that is, saving faith.

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So let's take a look at the text and very briefly respond to this attempted parallel in First John 5 .10.

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Now let's take a look initially at what the anonymous author had to say.

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He quotes from First John 5 .1 and then quotes

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First John, well, unfortunately, a very small portion of First John 5 .10,

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which reads, Whoever does not believe present participle, God has made, that is, in the perfect tense, him a liar.

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With the comment being made, those two verses share the same construction, yet obviously in 5 .10, the making

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God a liar did not precede the not believing. Instead, making God to be a liar is the result of the unbelief.

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Likewise, in 5 .1, the present participle takes precedence over the perfect verb. Thus, believing precedes regeneration.

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Now, we just simply note that to come to this conclusion from a verse that doesn't even mention regeneration and is in fact about unbelief is truly amazing.

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But that's not the only problem with this presentation. Let's look at the actual text because only a portion has been cited.

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Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe

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God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his son.

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Now, notice there is a Hathi clause that's not even quoted by our anonymous author, which is very much a part of this particular text.

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It, in fact, explains much of the meaning of the text and to divorce this from the context as it has been done in this citation really is very problematic.

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Now, before looking at 1 John 5 .10 in its meaning, let me just point out that if this author is correct, then he would likewise have to be correct in then stating that we cause ourselves to be born again by the doing of righteousness, 1

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John 2 .29, and by loving God, 1 John 4 .7. That's why I said it was somewhat problematic to respond to this because that issue was not raised in this response and seems to have been posted prior to my providing the full discussion that provided the authorial intent, that is, the author's intention seen from these other parallels.

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So, maybe this author will have something else to say. I don't know.

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He did note that the further discussion had been cited but did not expand upon his own statement. So, that's somewhat problematic.

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That would be something we would have to look at and ask him the question, do you believe it was the intention of John to teach?

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Not only that faith precedes regeneration, 1 John 5 .1, but that doing of righteousness precedes regeneration, 1

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John 2 .29, and loving God precedes regeneration, 1 John 4 .7. Are you saying that unregenerate people believe, do righteous deeds, and love

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God, resulting in their regeneration? Now, if you're a rank Pelagian, which the gentleman may be,

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I don't know since it's done anonymously, then maybe, but I sort of doubt that there are too many rank

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Pelagians running around out there that would actually argue that that is John's point. But to the point of 1

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John 5 .10, obviously it is not a verbal parallel, outside of simply saying, well, you have a present tense participle, and then you have a perfect tense verb, as if that's all you have to have.

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There's a huge difference between making God a liar and regenerating someone, causing someone to be born again.

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Certainly, in John there is, is there not? And this making God a liar is in reference to something.

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Notice, whoever believes, so you have hapest you own, whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony in himself.

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And so notice, notice here, John has gone from utilizing a perfect tense, has been born in verse 1, to a present tense, has this testimony in himself, because he's describing the fact that the one believing has this testimony within himself, that spirit of God that dwells within us, this testimony which is eternal life, given to us from God, this testimony is in himself.

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And so, he's not even addressing the issue of having been born from God, he's talking about right now. The one believing has the testimony, however, the one not believing, so notice, the reason that you have the present tense participle is so that it is a complete contrast to the one believing.

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It's the one believing, the one not believing. They're meant to be contrasts, there's two types of people. You're those who believe, those who do not believe, those who have the testimony, or those who are rejecting the testimony.

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So notice it says then, the one not believing has made God a liar, perfect tense, that's true, because he has not believed in the testimony which he himself, that is

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God, has in essence testified, has borne witness. So notice the hati changes everything here, because it says, because he has not believed, perfect tense.

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That's where the parallel is. He has not believed the testimony which God has perfect tense given, has testified concerning his own son.

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And so, the reason that you have this perfect here is not that there is any type of discussion here of regeneration, but you do have an interesting discussion that if this man's an

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Arminian, and again, I don't know whether he is or isn't, but if he's an Arminian, what you have here is a testimony concerning the nature of unbelief.

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Because even though God has testified, has given testimony concerning his son, there is this exact parallel unbelief.

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He has not believed. He, this is, this is a state of unbelief on the part of the individual who rejects the testimony that the one believing has within himself.

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And so, by chopping off the hati, and not seeing, the hati clause that comes after made him a liar, and not seeing that the reason for the perfect tense is to be found in what comes afterwards, you have completely missed the whole point.

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It's like cutting a sentence in half and missing the conclusion and saying, ah, this is saying the same thing.

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It's not saying the same thing. The reason you have the present tense not believing is because it's in parallel to the one believing, hapistuon.

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And the reason you have the perfect tense used in has made him a liar is because not only is

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God's testimony in the perfect, God's testimony to his son is a complete action of the past, but this rejection of faith, this not believing is likewise put into the perfect tense as well.

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And so, while it may look good on paper, when you actually open your Bible and read the whole sentence, you discover that the parallel simply does not exist.

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There is no reference to being born again. Making God a liar is a completely different thing in light of the continued rejection of his testimony than causing someone to be born again.

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One's an action of God, one's something a man does. To try to say that this construction therefore means that the consistent and true parallel constructions we saw between 5 .1,

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2 .29, and 4 .7 is not valid is itself an invalid argument, meaning once again, you need to be very careful to examine the information that is presented to you in the internet because very often it is just a little bit less than consistent and in depth.

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So once again, we see that 1 John 5 .1 is consistently understood in John's context as referring us to the fact that it is the fact that we've been born again that causes us to have this ongoing faith in Christ.

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And that would explain as well 1 John chapter 2 that talks about the apostate, the one who was once in the church and has now left the church, the one who once confessed that Jesus was a

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Christ and no longer does so. We all know of people like that, unless you're a brand new

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Christian and haven't unfortunately run into that situation yet, you will. And John's words that they went out from us so it might be demonstrated they're not truly of us, if they had been truly of us they would have remained with us but there need to be a demonstration that they were not truly of us, they went out from us.

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That nature of apostasy fits very carefully and very perfectly

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I think with this description of what true saving faith is. True saving faith is something that God does.

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Those who claim to have saving faith but it's not God who has regenerated them, it's not true saving faith that they possess which is the result of His work in their life, they will apostatize.

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They will fall away, they will go away. And if we don't understand that there is false faith, that there is faith that is not the work of the

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Holy Spirit, then we will find much reason to be very troubled when we see what happens when people we thought were very much a part of the body of Christ leave and embrace falsehood or deny the faith, whatever else it might be.

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Especially as we live in an age with more and more apostasy around us, we need to recognize he who endures to the end shall be saved.

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Who will endure to the end? The one the Father draws to the Son, the Son will save that person perfectly, lose none of those the

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Father gives him. If we don't see that true divine saving faith is the work of the Spirit of God within us, we really won't have a foundation upon which to meaningfully interact with what we see around us.