2024.07.18 Hopewell @Home ▫ 1 John 5:18–19

Read 1 John 5:18–19

Questions from the Scripture text: What does the one who is born of God not do (1 John 5:18)? What does he do? Who does not touch him? What do believers know about themselves (1 John 5:19a)? What do they know about literally everyone else (verse 19b)?

What is the great battle? 1 John 5:18–19 prepares us for the second serial reading in public worship on the Lord’s Day. In these two verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that, whether in our heart or the whole world, the great battle is between what is from God and what is under the sway of the devil.

The believer has a new nature that is from God (1 John 5:18, cf. 1 John 3:9). He is kept by Christ—the only begotten of God, in Whom we are begotten. Men’s sinning was instigated by the wicked one, as Satan is called here. But the wicked one is unable to touch the new nature. 

As we put the old man to death, killing what remains of our former nature, Satan more and more loses any ability to touch us. This is one way to think about our sanctification: vivifying the new man who does not sin and keeps himself in Christ, and mortifying the old man whom the wicked one touches.

The Christian must see all of humanity as two kingdoms, two nations, two races: those who are of God, and those who lie under the sway of the wicked one (1 John 5:19). Blurring these lines for ourselves sets us back in right relation to God, to other Christians, and even to ourselves in our new nature. 

If you have come to believe in Christ, from Whom was your new nature born? What can’t such a nature do? But what can still proceed from your remaining fleshliness/former nature? If everything that you desire/do comes either from the new nature or the flesh, what question should you constantly be asking? What should you do with that which comes from the new nature? And that which is from the flesh?

Sample prayer:  Lord, thank You for giving us a new birth by Your Spirit. Give us to live more and more from this new nature. Give us to put to death what is from the former nature. Keep us separate from, and compassionate to, the world that lies under the sway of the devil. This we ask through Christ, AMEN!

 Suggested songs: ARP51A “God, Be Merciful to Me” or TPH503 “From Depths of Woe, I Raise to Thee”