Saturday

Related Verses
1 John 4:16
16 And we know and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

1 John 5:1-8, 11-13 (6-8, 11-13)
1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten of God, and everyone who loves Him who has begotten loves him also who has been begotten of Him.
2 In this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and do His commandments.
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.
4 For everything that has been begotten of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory which has overcome the world — our faith.
5 And who is he who overcomes the world except him who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
6 This is He who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood; and the Spirit is He who testifies, because the Spirit is the reality.
7 For there are three who testify,
8 The Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are unto the one thing.
11 And this is the testimony, that God gave to us eternal life and this life is in His Son.
12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.
13 I have written these things to you that you may know that you have eternal life, to you who believe into the name of the Son of God.

Related Reading
First John 5:20 indicates strongly that we are now experiencing the true God, and we are experiencing Him by being in Him. We experience, enjoy, and possess Him by being in Him. This, to us, is the true God and eternal life. 

In verse 20 we have the crucial conclusion of the entire Epistle of 1 John. This Epistle reveals that now we are truly one with the Triune God, and He becomes true, real, to us. He becomes reality and life to us because we are in Him. (Life-study of 1 John, p. 351) 

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In 1 John 5:2 1 John goes on to conclude “Little children, guard yourselves from idols.” The word guard means to garrison ourselves against attacks from without, such as the assaults of the heresies. Idols refers to the heretical substitutes for the true God that were brought in by the Gnostics and Cerinthians…The idols here also refer to anything that replaces the real God. As genuine children of the genuine God, we should be on the alert to guard ourselves from these heretical substitutes and from all vain replacements for our genuine and real God, with whom we are organically one and who is eternal life to us. 

Before we were saved, we were outside of God. God was true in Himself, but we could not say in our experience that He was true to us. But after we believed in the Lord Jesus, we entered into God. Therefore, 5:20 says not only that we know the true One but also that we are in the true One. We have seen that to be in the true One means that we are in His Son Jesus Christ. Because we are in God, He now experientially becomes true to us. Likewise, because we are in Jesus Christ, He becomes experientially true to us. Due to our experience of God and Christ by being in God and in Christ, we can say that this is the true God and eternal life. 

In doctrine, there may be a distinction between God, Christ, and eternal life, but in our experience they are one…“This is the true God and eternal life.” This sentence is not merely the conclusion of verse 20; it is actually the conclusion of the entire book. What this Epistle reveals is the true God and eternal life. (Life-study of 1 John, pp. 351-352) 

According to 1 John 5:20, we not only experience and enjoy the Triune God, but we are in Him: “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”…Only our Triune God is true; everything and everyone else is false. John tells us that we are in the True [Gk.], in His Son Jesus Christ. No longer are we outside the True, and no longer are we outside His Son Jesus Christ. 

The true God becomes our experience as eternal life. This is the basic factor of John’s first Epistle. 

In 1 John 5:20 we have the true One, Jesus Christ, the true God, and eternal life. In John’s concept all of these are one. However, in doctrine they are four: the true One, His Son Jesus Christ, the true God, and eternal life. But in our experience they are one. When we are in the true One, we are in His Son Jesus Christ. Then the true One becomes our God, and His Son Jesus Christ becomes eternal life to us. This eternal life is actually the true God. Furthermore, because the true God is real to us, in our experience He becomes our eternal life. This is the true God and eternal life. (Life-study of 2 John, pp. 13-14) 

Further Reading: Life-study of 1 John, msg. 40 

Further Reading:
Further Reading: Life-study of 1 John, msg. 40

Hymn: #610
1 God’s Spirit His transmission is,
In Him God enters into us;
It is in Him that God in Christ
May be experienced by us.

2 God as the Father is the source,
And God the Son doth Him express;
God as the Spirit enters us,
That God as all we may possess.

3 The Father, who is veiled in light,
The Son to man hath fully shown;
The Spirit then transmitteth Him
That He may inwardly be known.

4 The Son within the Father is,
And now the Spirit is the Son.
The Spirit, Son, and Father God
Are now in us and with us one.

5 God as the Father in the Son
Has been embodied and expressed,
And God the Spirit is the Son’s
Reality to be possessed.

6 May God the Father’s love to us
In God the Son as grace be known,
Thru God the Spirit’s fellowship,
That God our portion we may own.