Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.

1 John 5:1

First, the word, “Everyone.”  John has burst out of his Jewish ethnic mold.  He is absolutely convinced that Jesus Christ died for all, meaning all!  All people, for all time in all cultures.

The next phrase is also shocking to most ears, “Who believes.” It does not just happen, it requires belief, one of the most difficult concepts to grasp, but also the most important.  We are trained to believe what we see and know.  We have no cultural training to believe what is unseen and eternal.  John is not describing something quite natural, like believing that the sun will rise tomorrow because we have learned that it always has.  This is not the kind of belief John is talking about. He speaks of something that is believed by faith!

Human logic does not readily believe that Jesus Christ of Nazareth who was a baby and a man of Palestine was in fact Jesus the Christ. Even those words require such a stretch of imagination that we do not take the trouble to even try to understand it.

John insists that Jesus is the one and only promised Messiah. Then it gets even more challenging, He who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.  As I see it God was the Father of Jesus. Then, hold your breath, God bears Jesus in us as a Father.  

What is the meaning of “born of God?”   We understand “born of Joseph and Mary.”  Our culture is stymied at the idea that a human being could have God as the father. That is terribly hard to believe, so hard that most just throw up their hands, and think of Jesus as a good man.

This brings us back to the crucial function of belief!  If the truth is apparent there would be no reason to doubt it.  That Jesus is born of God is certainly not apparent, but must be grasped by faith alone.  In fact, it is the central belief of all who are born anew of the Holy Spirit of God.