1 John 5:1 1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, from God he has been begotten, and everyone who loves the One who has begotten loves also the one who has been begotten from him.
The grammar of this verse can be interpreted in various ways, as indicated by English translations. My translation follows the word order of the Greek and informs my interpretation. The identity of Jesus is a major theme of this letter. Orthodox Christology is crucial to our faith. The link between God the Father and God the Son is nonnegotiable for Christians. This verse makes the significant claim that Jesus is the Christ (Greek), or “Messiah” (Hebrew), the anointed and predicted King who came in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. This claim would speak specifically to Jewish hopes. Jesus as Messiah referred more specifically to his humanity, his descent from David, and his fulfillment of God’s promise to David of an eternal house (2 Samuel 7:11-16).
The word begotten (gennaō) means to bring something forth as in birth and occurs three times in various forms in this verse. The first use, has been begotten, is the verb with the subject being the earlier substantive participle everyone who believes. The perfect tense of the verb shows how the new birth is a continuous growth process that begins when one first comes to accept and believe the claims about Jesus (John 3:3-8). To be born again through the Holy Spirit is the beginning of a new life that continues to grow and transform a person, with the promise of eternal life after death.
The word is also used twice as a substantive participle. The first is in the active voice and is the object (accusative case) of the love that believers ought to have (the one who loves). The only logical referent who did the begetting must be God the Father, who is the source of the birth of Jesus the Messiah and of believers. The previous chapter made clear that believers love because God is at work in them, recreating them to be like Jesus, the perfect model of love. The aorist tense of the participles suggests that John was either referring to the historical birth and life of Jesus or to the point when believers put their faith in Jesus and are born from above, like he had his source of human existence through the agency of God.
The last use of the word is where the translation and meaning become unclear. The word is another substantival participle in the accusative case; however, the voice is passive, and the tense is perfect. Who is the one who has been begotten? The combination of these two verbal parses point back to the first use, which referred to believers. The perfect love relationship between Father and Son should be modeled by believers, who share in the same type of new birth as Jesus: both have been born through the Holy Spirit. To love the Father is to love the Son. To love the Son is to love the Father. We do not need to know all the nuances of Christology, but we must love God the Father and God the Son. To reject the Son is to reject the Father. To misunderstand or misinterpret the Son means to misunderstand and misinterpret the Father.