“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.”

Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father, the only God and Lord, and is the one designated to be the Christ of God. The holy trinity of God worked together in love, to plan a redemption strategy to save fallen human kind. Jesus, the second person in that trinity, has set Himself to be the Saviour of the world and the one who would come in the flesh to rescue us from the effects of our sin. Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one spoken about all through the Old Testament ages where the message of salvation is proclaimed to the people of the Jewish nation through the prophets, recorded for us in Scripture.

The prophets of old spoke of Him to the people who were waiting for Him right from the beginning, and we can trace His presence throughout the whole Word of God. The Apostles proclaim Him and show His truth, and lay down the doctrines of the faith spoken about in the New Testament.

To see the truths of Christ in the Scripture, all through the Scripture, is a blessed thing. The two saints of New Testament time, on the road to Emmaus, entered into the delightful teaching of the Lord Jesus about Himself, starting at Genesis and right through the Scriptures. We should search the Scriptures that we might see our Saviour in them, and know for sure who He is and His eternal purposes.

“They said to one another, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us along the way, and while he opened the Scriptures to us?”

Luke 24:32

What a Bible study that would have been! They believed and so they belonged to the Lord. They were born of God, as is everyone who trusts in this Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus told Nicodemas that he must be born again by the Spirit of God if He was to see the kingdom of heaven.

“Jesus answered, “Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born of water and Spirit, he can’t enter into God’s Kingdom. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don’t marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’”

John 3:5-7

Those who are born of the Holy Spirit and believe in the only Saviour – Jesus the Christ, are the children of God. To be born into a family requires human birth – the birth by water, and to enter the family of God requires birth by the Spirit. There is no other way and we should seek it diligently. This is our spiritual birth certificate, that we are born of God and spiritually alive in His family. It therefore stands to reason that we will love the other members of our spiritual family and express it in word and deed. John is keen to labour this point at the beginning of this chapter.