1 John 5

3. We glorify God by believing (Romans 4:20): Abraham was strong in faith, giving glory to God. Unbelief affronts God, it gives him the lie; he that believes not, makes God a liar (1 John 5:10). So faith brings glory to God, it sets to its seal that God is true (John 3:33).

Clement of Alexandria calls the other graces the daughters of faith. Indeed in heaven love will be the chief grace, but while we are here militant love must give place to faith; love takes possession of glory, but faith gives a title to it; love is the crowning grace in heaven,…

Question: What means shall we use that we may obey? Response. 1. Serious consideration: Consider God's commands are not grievous: He commands nothing unreasonable (1 John 5:3). It is easier to obey the commands of God than sin: The commands of sin are burdensome: Let a man be un…

6. The sixth argument is, A Victoria supra mundum, from a believer's victory over the world. The argument stands thus: he who overcomes the world does persevere in grace; but a believer does overcome the world, therefore he perseveres in grace (1 John 5:4): This is the victory o…

Broad is the way which leads to destruction, and many there be that go in there. The greatest part of the world lies in wickedness (1 John 5:19). Divide the world, says Brerewood, into 31 parts, nineteen parts of it are possessed by Jews and Turks, seven parts by Heathens; so th…

Love to God carries the soul above the love of life; and the fear of death. 7. He who loves God loves his favorites, namely the saints (1 John 5:1). Idem est motus animi in imaginem & rem.

God will shoot all his murdering pieces among idolaters: all the plagues and curses in the book of God shall befall the idolater: the Lord repays him that hates him to his face. Use 2. Let it exhort us all to fly from Romish idolatry; let us not be among God-haters (1 John 5:21)…

If we believe not, yet he abides faithful; he cannot deny himself. Not to believe God's veracity, is to affront God (1 John 5:10). He that believes not has made God a liar.

1. Hereby error in prayer is prevented: it is not easy to write wrong copy; we cannot easily err having our pattern before us. 2. Hereby mercies requested are obtained; for the Apostle assures us God will hear us when we pray according to his will (1 John 5:14), and surely we pr…

Micah 7:18. Pardoning iniquity, there is Justification; verse 19. He will subdue our iniquities, there is Sanctification. Out of Christ's sides came water and blood (1 John 5:6). Blood, namely Justification, water, namely Sanctification.

Response. For answer to this, I shall prescribe some remedies and antidotes against this sin. 1. Faith (1 John 5:4). This is the victory over the world, even your faith. The root of covetousness is the distrust of God's providence.

Question 6. How many persons are there in the Godhead? Response: Three persons, yet but one God (1 John 5:7). There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

What is the shedding of a tear to a crown? So that God's commands are not grievous (1 John 5:3), our service cannot be so hard as a kingdom is sweet. 2. Branch. See hence the royal bounty of God to his children, that he has prepared a kingdom for them.

God never pardons and justifies a sinner, but he does sanctify him (1 Corinthians 6:11): "but you are justified, but you are sanctified." (1 John 5:6): "This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ." Christ comes to the soul by blood, that denotes remission, and by…

And the like he endeavored between Christ's human nature and the divine, though hypostatically united. And likewise 4. 'That God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his Son' — this being the great truth of the gospel, so that a Christian who believes it not makes God…

How? namely, beside the applying of Christ's blood, it brings to memory God's merciful promises in Christ: which stay a man from committing such things as would pollute and defile the heart. And therefore is faith said to be our victory over the world: 1 John 5:4. Because by app…

Some take evil in this place only for the devil, but we may take it more largely for all spiritual enemies. (1 John 5:19) The whole world lies in evil, namely, under the power of sin and Satan. These words (as I have said) are a proof and explanation of the former: for when a ma…

The means then to make ourselves fit is, to seek to be reconciled to God in Christ for our sins past, and withal to endeavor to have an assurance of the free remission and pardon of them all in the blood of Christ. And as touching that part of life which is to come, we must reme…

A man in humbling his soul before God, is not to pray as his affections carry him, and for what he pleases: but all is to be done according to the express word. So as those things which God has commanded us to ask, we are to ask, and those things which he has not commanded us to…

Alexander might give a coward his armor, but he could not give him his courage; but God infuses a spirit of magnanimity into his people, with his armor he conveys strength (2 Corinthians 12:9): My strength is made perfect in weakness. A Christian having on God's armor, and going…

Now hence I gather that he who is the child of God, truly justified and sanctified, shall never fall wholly and finally from the grace of God. And I conclude on this manner: that which we ask according to the will of God shall be granted — 1 John 5. But this the child of God ask…

This use is threefold: in respect of God, of man, and of ourselves. Works are to be done in respect of God: that his commandments may be obeyed — 1 John 5:12; that his will may be done — 1 Thessalonians 4:3; that we may show ourselves to be obedient children to God our Father —…

So Christ says (Mark 11:24): Whatever you desire when you pray, believe that you shall have it, and it shall be given to you. And Saint John further notes out this particular faith, calling it our assurance that God will give to us whatever we ask according to his will (1 John 5…

That's a sound and good faith that warms the heart with love to Christ, and the nearer that faith brings the believer to Him, it warms the heart with more love to others. And therefore love to the people of God is given as an evidence of one that is born of God (1 John 5:1), bec…

5. As for the effects that followed on his sufferings, or the influence they have on the elect people of God; as many converts as have been and are in the world, as many witnesses are there, that he is the Messiah; every converted, pardoned, and reconciled soul seals this truth:…

Secondly, for confirmation of this truth, that the general preaching of the Gospel is a warrant for believing and exercising faith on Jesus Christ, for making our peace with God: it's clear from these [reconstructed: Grounds]. 1. From the nature of the Gospel, it's the Word of G…

1. In this respect, that no sin can condemn them, they are not under the Law but under Grace in that respect (Romans 8:1). It is said that there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ. 2. In this respect that they cannot fall into that sin which leads to death, as is clear…

1. Look to all the promises, whether of pardon of sin, or of peace with God, of joy in the Holy Ghost, of holiness and conformity to God; there is no access to these, or to any of them but by faith; this is the very proper condition of the Covenant of Grace, and the door whereby…

They pray not for knowledge as God's gift; how many of you, when you take up the Catechism to read, fall down on your knees to seek God's blessing on your reading thereof? When John is speaking of the benefits that come by Christ; this is by him put in among the rest, And has gi…

Even beyond these that came upon Tyrus and Sidon, upon Sodom and Gomorrah; we think such threatenings as these, should make folks not to think unbelief a light, or little sin, and that there is no ground of quietness, so long as they are in a self-righteous condition, and have n…

And others have set out in its colors the image of Christ in itself; but not as leaving out Christ, and taking in merit; nor does the sense of sanctification darken justification, or lessen it to nothing, except where we abuse it to merit, and self-confidence, as Peter did; who…

5. All within the visible Church, have means sufficient in their kind, in genere mediorum externorum, to save them. 6. As none can be saved by the light of nature, nor ever any used, or could use it so far forth, as to improve it for their sufficient preparation, to receive the…

So that, as it were folly for any man to think that he has an interest in an heiress's lands because he has got the writings of her estate into his hands (whereas the interest in the lands goes with her person and with the relation of marriage to her; otherwise, without a title…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. These words contain the third part of the record that God bore of his Son, to whom this eternal life is communicated, and that is to all such, as to whom the Son is communicated; amplified by…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. We are now in the next place to see how we may discern life by the properties, and adjuncts of it; you heard before of the effects of life, now of the properties and qualities of this life, by…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. Having handled a use of trial of life, and this depends upon our having of Christ.

1 John 5:13. These things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. We are now come to enter upon the beginning of the conclusion of this whole Epistle,…

1 John 5:13. That you may believe on the name of the Son of God. Now we come to speak of the other end of the Apostle's writing of these epistles, and that is, that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.

1 John 5:14-15. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

1 John 5:14-15. And if we know that he hears us whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions we desire of him. Now to come to a second note.

1 John 5:16-17. If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not to death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life; for them that sin not to death. There is a sin to death, I do not say that he shall pray for it. These words contain a third motive to encourage us to that duty…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. Because in Scripture phrase, there are more ways of having Christ requisite for the knowledge of every soul, I thought it therefore not amiss to open those other ways by which in Scripture we…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. We now come to speak of the third way of having Christ, and that is by way of covenant (Isaiah 49:8): I will give you for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. There yet remains two things for signs of having Christ, for in all this point of our Christian faith, there is no word but of more than ordinary and common use; and therefore when he says, he…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. From the second part of the words, He that has the Son, there are three sorts of heads of notes drawn.

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. It now remains that we come to show, what it is to have the Son by a spirit of prayer, but of this we shall have further occasion to speak in the 14, 15, and 16 verses, and therefore we shall…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. We now come to a third head of signs, by which it may appear whether we have Christ or no, and that is from the third word in the text (which is Life) for it is an argument of like strength an…

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. The causes of this life you have heard, and some of the effects of it also.

1 John 5:12. He that has the Son, has life, and he that has not the Son, has not life. Now we come to speak of such effects of the life of sanctification, as show themselves in the lives of Christians, by observing of which in ourselves we may know we have Christ, and life in hi…

So great an action as this was needed valuable testimony, for the law says in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every thing shall be established (Deuteronomy 17:6). Now Christ would go to the utmost of the law, and would have not two only but three witnesses, as the apostle s…