1"Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him." John reasons the way a family reasons. In the ancient household, children carried their parents' nature, and nobody imagined a person could honor a father while despising his other children. If you are born of God, the people born of him are your family, and loving the Father includes loving them.
3"His commandments are not burdensome." The Greek for burdensome, *bareiai*, means heavy. Jesus said a similar thing: "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:30). Obedience feels light because of where it comes from. A person born of God has received a new desire along with the command, and the command fits the new nature the way a tool fits a hand. John claims the weight is of a different kind from the crushing weight of a rule imposed from outside.
Then he turns to victory. 4"This is the victory that has overcome the world." The noun for victory, *nike*, occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. John borrowed the image of a contest with opposition because his readers faced opposition. The victory belongs to faith, and faith here is an aim at a person, at the Son of God, drawing its power from his standing. Jesus had said, "I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). The victory was won first in him, and the believer shares it by trusting him.
Then come difficult verses. 6"This is he who came by water and blood." The water most likely points to Jesus' baptism and the blood to his death. The teachers John opposed held that the divine Christ descended on the man Jesus at baptism and left before he suffered. John says the one who was baptized is the one who bled, with no escape hatch from suffering in the middle. The Spirit, the water, and the blood are three witnesses who 8"agree." Readers of the King James Version will notice extra words in verse 7. They are absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts, so the doctrine of the Trinity rests on other ground, which Scripture supplies in abundance.
Then the weightiest witness. 9"The testimony of God is greater." People accept human testimony every day, and God's word stands above it. 10"Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar." We heard that phrase in 1:10, where a person who claimed to have no sin made God a liar. Two opposite errors end in the same accusation against God.
The passage ends with a summary that could stand as the entire gospel. 11"God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." Life is a gift already given, held in a person, and John is restating the purpose of his Gospel, that believing, people might have life in his name.
Ask where you feel the commands of God as heavy, and what might change if you received them as the desire of a new nature.
Prayer
Father, you have given us eternal life, and this life is in your Son. Thank you that everyone born of you overcomes the world through faith. Make your commandments light to us, and let us love your children because we love you. Keep us holding onto Jesus Christ, who came by water and blood. In his name, amen.