Question on 1 John 5:1

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As I was going over today’s first reading one verse in particular stuck out: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God.”

Some translations say “begotten by God” and others say “born of God.” Either way you say it, the verse implies a familial relationship as a son or daughter. As such, it could be used to support the typical Protestant view that when we begin to believe we are adopted into the family of God and are regenerated as new creatures.

Obviously, doctrine can’t be formulated on a single verse, but having come from a strong Protestant background I find this fascinating. Any thoughts?
 
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pgeorgejr:
As I was going over today’s first reading one verse in particular stuck out: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God.”

Some translations say “begotten by God” and others say “born of God.” Either way you say it, the verse implies a familial relationship as a son or daughter. As such, it could be used to support the typical Protestant view that when we begin to believe we are adopted into the family of God and are regenerated as new creatures.

Obviously, doctrine can’t be formulated on a single verse, but having come from a strong Protestant background I find this fascinating. Any thoughts?
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In commenting on this verse The Navarre Bible. New Testament in the Revised Standard Version, with a commentary by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, compact edition (Scepter Publishers: 2001), page 640, it says:
Through faith in Jesus Christ, a person is made a child of God at Baptism.

Galatians 3:25-27 says,
25But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; 26for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
 
While technically still a Protestant, I am protesting less and less all the time. I don’t doubt at all the saving grace we receive through Baptism, I’m just curious what John means. He doesn’t mention here any criteria other than belief by which we are “begotten” of God.

Can’t a person believe that Jesus is the Christ without having been Baptized? If they have not been Baptized and still believe, does John’s verse still apply?
 
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pgeorgejr:
While technically still a Protestant, I am protesting less and less all the time. I don’t doubt at all the saving grace we receive through Baptism, I’m just curious what John means. He doesn’t mention here any criteria other than belief by which we are “begotten” of God.

Can’t a person believe that Jesus is the Christ without having been Baptized? If they have not been Baptized and still believe, does John’s verse still apply?
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The key is to look into what John means when he says “believe.” In the well-known verse John 3:16, we see that “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only son that whoever might believe in him should not perish but might have eternal life.” Further on in that very same chapter, it says: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; **he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.”(**v 36).
What this infers is that to believe in Jesus is to be obedient to him. I would say that this includes baptism, which he commanded his Church to do.
 
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pgeorgejr:
While technically still a Protestant, I am protesting less and less all the time. I don’t doubt at all the saving grace we receive through Baptism, I’m just curious what John means. He doesn’t mention here any criteria other than belief by which we are “begotten” of God.

Can’t a person believe that Jesus is the Christ without having been Baptized? If they have not been Baptized and still believe, does John’s verse still apply?
Click to expand...
In Acts 18:24-26, 19:1-7, there is mention of some disciples of Christ who did not know about Christian baptism but they are described as having inaccurate knowledge of the way of God.

The Church teaches that baptism is necessary for salvation (John 3:5), whether that be the normative baptism of water, baptism of blood (martyrdom), or baptism of desire.
 
pgeorgejr - i believe you’ve hit the nail on the head. that, precisely, is the heart of much of protestant theology - and where it diverges from the truth of the catholic church.

i have a degree in baptist theology, so i’m not just spouting ‘what i heard someone say the other day’ - much of protestant theology - evangelical, esp - teaches the very thing you stated. that ‘all we have to do is believe and we’re saved’.

there’s a problem inherent in that formula, which todd easton et al. have addressed: if we believe, we obey. john says this multiple times, and Jesus’s teachings themselves leave little room to doubt that we have to DO something. our faith results in actions - else it is not faith.

so yes - your faith in Christ will save you. how will it save you? by causing you to believe Jesus. believe Him in what? in what He said we should do. what did He say?

we have to be born again. (John 3) - baptism.

we have to eat His flesh and drink His blood. (John 6)
  • the eucharist.
we have to do good works (His parables - what we do unto the least of these, we do unto Him - whoever doesn’t DO these things hears the words ‘depart from me, for I never knew you…’)

this is how faith saves us. faith causes us to obey. in obeying, we find salvation. thus, we ‘work out our salvation with fear and trembling’.

does that make sense?

one final picture: you’re in a plane that has crashed, and is burning to pieces. you and a couple other people somehow survived. you hear someone say ‘come this way’, even though he’s standing in a smokiest part of the plane. ‘trust me and you’ll be saved’ he says. if you ‘trust him’ but don’t do what he says, you won’t be saved from the smoking wreckage. if you trust him and do what he says, and come to where he is, you see that he’s standing in an open door and leads you to clear air and safety.
 
the previous post by jeffreedy789 is great. I think I spent many years of my life putting that together in my head – the internal life as they say.

Yup, we have to do something in our life about all those verses.

Intuitively, it doesn’t just make sense to me that at the last judgment, we just get nailed for all the bad we did without the good deeds counting for something – not that these are put in the divine balance in simplistic fashion.

Makes me think right away of the warnings in NT about omissions – if we see something good that we could do and we don’t do it, then we’re sinning. Sounds like that Good Samaritan episode of Seinfeld.

But, back on the point, what is “begotten”?
 
it means (i would say) that we become His children. not just His creation - we become ‘born again’ (as Jesus said) as a child of God - a new creation. this happens when we are baptised - when the stain of original sin is taken away, and we are made new.

‘begotten’ is the word used for when a father has a child. when we’re born again, we become His children. i think i said that already. i’m rambling now.

thanks for the compliment on my earlier post. don’t worry, it won’t go to my head. i post enough nonsense to balance it out. 😉
 
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