Verse 4-5: You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.
John begins verse 4 with you, as if to emphasize but you in contrast to those who represent the spirit of the antichrist. He is setting up the battleground configuration of the world we live in. The sides are: you—we the members of the Body of Christ; versus them—the legion of false prophets/teachers instigated by the spirit of the antichrist. The good thing for us is that on our side is the God of the universe, an absolute fact that our source is from Him eternally; while on the opposing side they have he who is in the world—the evil one (2:13).
This word overcome is derived from the Greek word níkē, from which we get the English word for the commercial brand name, Nike. Overcome appears 28 times in the New Testament and holds a special significance to John since it is used only 4 times outside of his writings. It means to conquer or to vanquish1 an enemy. The Greek tense here relays the fact that our victory is as complete now as it was the moment the battle was won, for this had previously been confirmed by John (2:13, 14).
Our Power Source
John underscores the reason for our having overcome the evil one, that it is not of our own doing. We cannot claim credit for single-handedly defeating our supernatural foe. We must give credit where credit is due; the power for victory comes from the God the Holy Spirit, Who is greater and mightier than any who oppose God’s plan for our lives. John asserts that His Holy Spirit is in you as an irrefutable fact. On this note we should be careful; for many believers today want evidence of this fact, believing that in some way they should feel and sense or even hear the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is our counselor, who assists us in our trials and confrontations of this world. He is the One, as Dr. Marvin Vincent states,
Who suggests true reasonings to our minds, and true courses of action for our lives, who convicts our adversary, the world, of wrong, and pleads our cause before God our Father.2
And Dr. L.S. Chafer weighs in on this matter, quoting William Kelley that the Holy Spirit is,
“One who is identified with our interests, one who undertakes all our cause, one who engages to see us through our difficulties, one who in every way becomes both our representative and the great personal agent that transacts all our business for us.”3
The Apostle Paul maintains that the minds of mankind have been veiled by Satan from understanding spiritual phenomenon (2 Corinthians 4:3-4; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:14). It is therefore the role of the Holy Spirit to guide believers into “all truth” and make known to them “what is to come” in the future (John 16:13).
This special ministry to believers is designed so that all believers will be able to comprehend the doctrines of the Christian faith (Ephesians 3:18). Dr. Chafer points out that regarding the believer:
The divine Teacher [the Holy Spirit] is within his heart and he therefore does not hear a voice speaking…but the mind and heart are supernaturally awakened from within to apprehend what otherwise would be unknown.4
Our Lord Himself stated this to be the established ministry of the Holy Spirit to the believer in this present Church Age:
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (John 14:26)
It thus implies that for the Holy Spirit to perform His work, believers must possess a substantial knowledge of God’s Word stored up in their souls for the Spirit to bring to their remembrance the pertinent doctrines needed to sustain them during any and all trials and temptations from the evil one. This requires that we have sufficient doctrines that will refute the false teachers who are energized by the spirit of the antichrist. How else will we be able to successfully test the spirits (4:1)?
Enduring Victory?
John praises his readers for they have overcome them, the false teachers, having done so by their reliance upon the work of the Holy Spirit, Who is greater than he who is in the world. The Apostle Peter tells us that he is our adversary, the devil “who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We must always be vigilant to the fact that the world is his battleground and we are ever in his crosshairs
These false teachers are indeed having their source from the world that the evil one controls. It therefore stands to reason that what they speak is from the world. Specifically, the content of what they speak is based upon human viewpoint and not of divine viewpoint that originates from Scripture, the mind of God (2 Timothy 3:14-17; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:16).
And what they persistently speak, the world at large attentively listens to them, because what the world hears appeals to their emotions, freeing them from their inner guilt that they are responsible to their Creator, “Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
The distressing fact is that within the Church today there are many believers who have listened and responded to false teaching. The Apostle Paul foretold of this day:
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3–4)
This is manifest by the acceptance of sexual abnormalities and the breakdown of the local and universal mission of the church of Jesus Christ. The local church was designed for the edification of the believers by a pastor/teacher for a specific purpose as described by Paul:
For the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:12–13)
Is the instruction of God’s Word the primary objective of your local church? Are other activities or endeavors given greater priority? There must be a proper balance; teaching should be the highest priority along with missions. After that, the music ministry and fellowship are important but should never be the primary focus of the local church or the design for church growth. Allow the strategy to be directed by the Holy Spirit and the power of God’s Word.
[1] Arndt, W., Gingrich, F. W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (1979). In A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 539.
[2] Vincent, Marvin R. (n/d). Word Studies in the New Testament. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2.244.
[3] Chafer, Lewis Sperry (1976). Systematic Theology, Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 6.39.
Excellant explanation
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