Chapter 5 is another dense passage and my semi-random thoughts will certainly not do it justice. The first few verses reiterate one of John's primary themes: We are children of God who can show our love to Him by obeying His commandments.
John then does something I don't think I ever noticed before doing my reading today--he starts using the language of a warfare. Jesus, who came by "water and blood", conquered the world. This seems out of place given the overwhelming themes in the rest of the book of love and obedience. But it does make sense upon further thought. Not only did Jesus conquer the world, so does our faith in him. If we go back to chapter 2, we see the world defined as, "...the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions..." Our faith in Christ can conquer these things.
So what we seem to have is a circle of faith/obedience that might seem odd. Christ is God's son. Those of us who have faith in Christ are God's adopted children. The faith that makes us adopted children also empowers us to obey the Heavenly Father. This obedience is one key way to show our love to God. So God, through the gift of His son, empowered us to join His family and to love Him.
The rest of the chapter gets into some of the complicated themes that we touched on in chapter 3, but I do not feel adequate to tackle them at this time. Maybe in future years as I continue my study and think about these things.
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