At the end of the preceding chapter John has spoken quite sharply about the need to love, saying, “If a man says, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?” But it is entirely possible that a person might try to escape this demand by asking, “And who is my brother? Just whom precisely am I to love?”
The full answer to this question, as Jesus showed in His story of the good Samaritan, is everyone. Each man is made in God’s image and is to be the proper subject of our solicitations and love. But there is a closer and even more demanding sense in which the Christian’s brother or sister is any other Christian, and it is this rather than the broader dimension that concerns John here. True, Christians often fail to love those who are in the world and so fail to win them to Christ. But it is also true, scandalously true, that Christians often fail to love Christians. They believe in brotherhood, no doubt. But they restrict it to their own particular company of believers. Sometimes this is a social division, as when Christians associate with and love only those in the upper-middle class or, by contrast, only those within a lower level of society.
At other times the division is by denomination, so that if they are Baptists, their brothers and sisters are Baptists; if they are Presbyterians, their brothers and sisters are Presbyterians; if they are Independents, their brothers and sisters are all Independents. At still other times, Christians will hold closely to those only within some rigid theological persuasion. Is this right? Can Christian brotherhood and the love that goes with it be so restricted?
John gives the answer to these questions in the opening verses of chapter five, when he says quite clearly, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and everyone that loveth him that begot loveth him also that is begotten of him.” In other words, membership in the family of God is not limited by anything other than confession of Jesus as the Christ. Consequently, the love of Christians for their brothers and sisters should extend to all who thereby give evidence of being God’s true children.
The idea of spiritual birth or being “born of God” ties these verses together. The concept occurs in verses 1 and 4, and it is from this that the realities involved in the three tests are developed.