NOTES for Jo1 5:6-21

"This testimony" is God's testimony about His Son. Judging by the context, this refers to the episode of Jesus' baptism (Matt. 3:16-17), when God's voice from heaven called Jesus the beloved Son. Let us notice the chain of witnesses that brings this news to us: the Father bears witness to the Son, John the Baptist bears witness to this to his disciples, and the disciples bear witness to this testimony to us through the Gospels. Testimony is the main way the good news is transmitted, because in it, for all its truth, there is no coercion of the listener.

What is this testimony about? "In Him is My good pleasure," that is, the good will of the Father is revealed in the Son. What, then, is this good will of God? Look at several passages: Ezek. 33:11, Matt. 18:14, John 3:16 - and you will see that God wants to deliver us from death and give eternal life. Therefore, in Jesus Christ the Father's will for eternal life for human beings is revealed: the Son of Man, passing through death into resurrection, ascended to the Father and abides forever at the Father's right hand. This means that our life can become eternal if we are united with Christ and allow Him to fill us with His presence and His life.

John's words about receiving what is asked of God through Jesus Christ can seem overly optimistic. Indeed, almost every Christian has experience of unanswered requests with which he turned to God, turned to Christ, either receiving no answer at all or receiving not the answer he counted on and hoped for. Yet such experience characterizes not so much God's responsiveness or the Savior's attitude toward us as our own spiritual condition. Words about faith sound textbook in such a context, but that does not make them any less deeply true.

Of course, this means faith as trust in God, not faith as a system of views and convictions in which a person is confident. The question of trust is what proves to be central here. Trust not only opens to a person the door of communion with God; to a certain degree it changes the reality in which a person lives and to which he is related. Indeed, today even scientists are increasingly convinced that any reality is real only insofar as it is observed, and therefore has an observer. The universe can exist only if there also exists an absolute Observer.

This postulate would be merely another version of the cosmological proof of God's existence if it did not also apply to the human person and to every spiritual being at all that possesses self-awareness and bears free will. Every such being, and therefore every person, creates his own reality, which is real exactly to the degree that his own spiritual life, and life in general, approaches fullness. Only God possesses the absolute fullness of being and life, and a person's life is full insofar as it is connected with God's life.

Here faith-trust plays a key role: it joins two wills, God's and the human will, creating a single God-human space of being and life, and therefore a single God-human reality. It is in this God-human reality that what the apostle writes about exists: here God's will and the human will coincide, God and the human person jointly create what happens in it, and the person's requests are fulfilled unconditionally - as unconditionally as they coincide with God's plan for human life.

Can you imagine an ordinary person, not the Son of Man, who would not sin? Great saints spoke of themselves as great sinners. Yet here the apostle John speaks of "sinlessness" as something quite familiar: "We know..."

Perhaps the solution to this paradox, as in many situations of spiritual life, lies in the four-word formula: "already yes, not yet." Birth from God, like salvation and like entering the Kingdom, is a dynamic concept. It has not simply happened; it is happening in us, and as it happens we move away from sin, because we both guard ourselves from evil and leave the evil one nothing in us to "get hold of."

John testifies that not every sin is a sin unto death. One could object to him that every sin carries within itself deadly poison, but there is no contradiction here: the apostle does not deny this, but speaks of the degree of poisoning. A brother who sins must not be condemned; rather, one must pray about his fall and grieve over him. If everyone born of God does not sin, then it follows that if I cannot help sinning, I cannot be counted among those born of Him. But then what relation do these words have to us, the many sinners who constantly stumble?

These words give us hope that if we continue to follow Christ, He will free us from all sinful inclinations and dependencies.

The last phrase of John's letter is written almost in passing, but from the fact that it is saved for the end, one can conclude that it is especially important to the apostle. Here, perhaps, the matter is not only pagan statues. Anything at all can become an idol, even harmless things, if they block Christ from view. Therefore, even after taking in the full depth of the instructions of the Lord's beloved disciple, we must guard ourselves against seemingly harmless "little things" that, like a speck in the eye or a pebble in the shoe, can cause an injury that takes a long time to heal.

A Christian’s relationship with the world cannot be simple. The world has its familiar patterns and norms, and we, raised in ordinary families—even believing ones, but not holy ones—live within those norms. The desire for comfort, for psychological comfort, is simply embedded in us: to be like everyone else while feeling special, to be liked by those around us...

But for that we must be part of this world. Then we become slaves, because the world rejects those who do not obey its norms and prescriptions. Who cares why you do not fit the common pattern? No one. And if you merely say, “But I am not like you,” you easily fall under the power of the prince of this world, who catches you in the nets of pride...

Only one thing conquers the world and tears apart the nets that bind us: faith in Jesus Christ. When we act not for ourselves but in His name, He grants us freedom—freedom from the power of sin and of this world.

Today’s reading brought back a rather unpleasant memory of school days... The teacher says confidently, “But the problem is quite easy!” while the pupil stares gloomily at the desk, knowing that he understands nothing... The apostle John tells us, “His commandments are not burdensome.” An inner voice replies, “Yes, you are a saint, you are an apostle; it is easy for you to say.” What is wrong with this comparison? Of course, it is the phrase “it is easy for you to say.” The apostle John speaks not as a teacher but as one of us. Is he a saint? Yes, but not because he possessed special “aptitudes for holiness.” We have no right to say that it was easy for him and that we lack the gift. Every saint was simply a human being, just like us. The Lord’s commandments are objectively not burdensome; we need only desire to fulfill them. Everything depends on our choice, on our free will, and the Lord gives grace in abundance.