Chapter 5 – One God Translation

1 John

   5 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been fathered by God, and whoever loves the Father loves the Son He fathered, brought into existence.[1541] 2 By this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and obey His commands. 3 Loving God means obeying His commands. And His commands are not a burden, 4 because everyone who has been fathered by God overcomes the world. This is the power that has overcome the world — our faith.
    5 Who is the person who overcomes the world? It is the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. [1542] 6 He is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus the Messiah. not by the water only, but by the water and blood. It is the spirit which testifies, because the spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree. [1543] 9 If we accept the witness of people, the witness of God is greater, because this is God’s testimony which He has testified about His Son. 10 The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given about His Son. 11 And the testimony is this: God has given us the life of the age to come, and that life is in His Son. 12 The one who has the Son has that life; the one who does not have the Son of God does not have that life.
    13 I have written these things to you who believe in the name[1544] of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have the life of the age to come. 14 And this is the confidence we have before Him: that whenever we ask anything according to His will, He listens to us. 15 And if we know that He listens to whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked of Him.
    16 If anyone sees his brother or sister committing a sin not resulting in death, he is to ask, and God will give life to the person who commits a sin not resulting in death. There is a sin resulting in death. I am not saying that he should make a request for that. 17 All unrighteousness is sin, but there is sin not resulting in death.
    18 We know that those fathered by God do not continue in sin. Rather, the Son of God, the one fathered and brought into existence,[1545] protects them and the Evil One does not touch them. 19 We know that we are from God and belong to God, and the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One. [1546] 20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us the intellectual understanding[1547] to know Him who is true. We are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Messiah. This One is the true God and is[1548] the life of the age to come. [1549] 21 Little children, guard yourselves against idols.

1 John

[1541]

Literally, the Father is “the begetter,” the one who brought His Son into existence (5:18; Lk. 1:35; Mt. 1:18). The Son explicitly had an origin in time. He began to exist.

[1542]

The Son of God was begotten, brought into existence, not an “eternally generated” Son, which has no recognizable meaning. Trinitarian Dr. McCleod admits: “It is far from clear what content, if any, we can impart to the concept [of eternal generation]. It is revealed but it is revealed as a mystery…The writings of the fathers abound with protestations of inevitable ignorance on the matter” (The Person of Christ, p. 131).

[1543]

The Greek manuscripts were corrupted much later by a false insertion about Father, word and spirit in 1 John 5:7. This has been properly rejected as a forgery by every modern translation, though it appeared in the King James Version of 1611. It is now universally regarded as false.

[1544]

That is, the agenda and teaching of Jesus, all he is and all he stands for.

[1545]

The one begotten (by God). Gennetheis points to a moment in time when the Son came into existence. This is denied in Trinitarian theology which speaks of God the Son, coequal and coeternal with the Father. Cp. Isa. 9:6 which speaks of the predicted Son to be begotten, with the same verb in the aorist tense, pointing to a moment in time. There is no “eternally generated Son” in the Bible.

[1546]

Satan is the god of this age (2 Cor. 4:4) and is said to be currently deceiving the whole world (Rev. 12:9). That massive power to deceive on a grand scale will last until the Devil is removed and imprisoned at the start of the future millennium, when he will be able to deceive no longer (Rev. 20:3). One cannot be deceiving the whole world and not deceiving it any longer, at the same time! This fact proves that amillennialism is false to the NT text, especially Rev. 20:1-6. Saints are not now ruling the world (1 Cor. 4:8).

[1547]

Dianoia describes the power of intellect. Cp. Isa. 53:11 where Jesus makes us right through his knowledge (cp. Dan. 12:3).

[1548]

That is, this true belief in the one true God leads to the Life of the Age to Come in the Kingdom (cp. Dan. 12:2).

[1549]

This is an exact repetition of the words of Jesus in John 17:3. “This is the true GOD” is a reference here, as in John 17:3, to the Father who is “the only one who is true God.” The word “this” in John must sometimes be understood in context and not by the immediately preceding subject. See for example 1 John 2:22 and 2 John 7, where if we take the closest antecedent, Christ would be antichrist! It is logical nonsense to say that “the only true GOD” is the Father alone (Jn. 17:3), and then to say that Jesus is also that “only true God.” “Only” excludes all others from being “the only true God”! The One God is so named, i.e. as the Father, 1300 times in NT Scripture and the Bible uses singular personal pronouns for Him thousands of times. This is the basis of the most important command of all (Mk. 12:29 = Deut. 6:4). John 17:3 is an unequivocal unitarian proposition which Augustine could avoid only by forging the text, altering the order of the words and changing the sense: “The proper order of the words is, ‘That they may know You and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, as the only true God” (Tractates on the Gospel of John, 105).