Unlike Spock’s Prime Directive — our Prime Directive as Christians is to intervene in the world with faith and love.
START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 John 5:1-6
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OBSERVE:
John continues his fugue-like exploration of various concepts. He explores the following relationships between:
- The Father and Jesus.
- Jesus and the believer.
- Love and knowledge.
- Love and law.
- The new birth and victory over the world, and the victory of faith.
There is a kind of chain of cause and effect in this passage that builds to a clear and dynamic climax.
He begins with the central faith of the Christian:
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him.
This is a reminder of the unique relationship between the Father and Jesus as the only-begotten Son of God. But because of faith, the Christian also is born of God, because he/she believes that Jesus is the Christ. John is not leaving open any room for denying the Godhead of Christ.
The next link in the chain of this cause and effect is the vertical relationship between the believer and the children of God:
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments.
And if we’ve learned anything from 1 John, the primary command of God is love:
God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. (1 John 4:16).
The third link is that the command isn’t burdensome:
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith.
Again, we return to the fugue — faith is reintroduced as the “means of grace” for those who are born of God.
And by faith the child of God has overcome the world, which is a reminder of the language of Jesus in John 16:33:
I have told you these things, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have oppression; but cheer up! I have overcome the world.
The world that must be overcome is the current culture of sin and defiance against God, the darkness of this present age. This was a common understanding of the early church, that the world was in rebellion against God and that Christians were in some sense at war with the world — not violently, but through love and faith. They are called to be spiritual warriors.
Paul uses the same kind of language when he describes the Christian as a non-conformist, and Christians as a people who are “strangers” in this world. See Romans 12:2:
Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.
And also see Ephesians 6:12:
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
The faith that overcomes the world has a clearly defined substance and content. John makes this clear when he answers his own question:
Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Finally, John confirms yet again the divine origin of Jesus, and alludes to the work of the Spirit that is also such a key part of the Gospel of John, especially from chapters 14 to 16. Here he says:
It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
But what exactly does John mean when he says, just before his reference to the testimony of the Spirit:
This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and the blood.
The blood seems an obvious reference to Christ’s death on the cross — but the water? Is he referring there to the water of baptism, or, as some commentators suggest, to the waters of biological life and procreation? Or is it a reference to the moment recorded only in John’s Gospel when:
one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out (John 19:34).
I confess I’m not sure of the answer.
What is clear is that for 1 John, Jesus’ identity as Son of God, and the faith of those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, results in love, knowledge of God, and victory over the entrapments of this world.
APPLY:
The rather lengthy Observe (above), can be easily applied to our lives. If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then we are born of God and we are given the power to love the children of God and to overcome the temptations and trials of our current culture.
Ah, but there’s the rub! How do we know that we are the children of God who are born from above?
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments.
Faith and love and obedience to God’s commands are all interwoven with one another.
There is a positive and a negative aspect to this. The positive is the energy that is given to us from God to love as he loves. The negative of this is the frank admission that this world is corrupt and corrupting, and is something to be overcome. And we overcome through faith and love.
RESPOND:
I remember watching Star Trek years ago when the star travelers on the USS Enterprise spoke of the “Prime Directive.” It was simple — don’t interfere with the alien life that may be encountered, but allow that life to develop as naturally as possible without outside contamination.
Well, we Christians have a “prime directive,” but not at all like that. We are to interfere with the culture in which we find ourselves, and overcome it in our own lives through faith and love. And we are also commanded to invade it, to subvert it, to overcome it by making disciples of all nations.
My own efforts in more than 38 years of ministry have been paltry, meager and insufficient. But if the Gospel is true, at least I’ve been on the right side! The side that will ultimately prevail over the powers of this dark world.
Our Lord, renew my faith and remind me that through Christ I am born again from above. Through your Spirit, empower me to overcome the world through faith and love. Amen.
PHOTOS:
“Spock – The Last Voyage” by Daniel Arrhakis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.
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