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1 John 2:29
“If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”
Believers in Christ enjoy many benefits through faith, including “assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 36). When we see these things in our lives, we can have confidence that Christ dwells in us (1 John 2:24–28). In today’s verse, John provides a further test of the genuineness of our relationship to Christ. Those who have been born of God will themselves practice the righteousness of God.
“If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him,” John writes (v. 29). The argument moves from a known truth to a certain inference. Christ is righteous; this John’s readers know. From that confessed righteousness of Christ, John concludes that those who belong to Him will display the same righteousness, however imperfectly, in their own lives.
Two features of John’s statement deserve careful attention. First, the verb “practices” is a present participle in the Greek, suggesting habitual, ongoing action. John is speaking not of an isolated act of righteousness but of a settled course of life characterized by righteous behavior. The believer keeps doing what is right even when particular failings interrupt the pattern.
Second, the verse establishes a one-way relationship between the new birth and a righteous life. The new birth produces righteous practice; righteous practice does not produce the new birth. John is not teaching that we are born of God by doing righteous acts. Such a reading would contradict everything that the New Testament teaches about salvation by grace through faith. Rather, the practice of righteousness is the evidence and outflow of a new birth that has already taken place by the sovereign work of the Spirit (John 3:5–8).
This test is meant to give assurance. Those troubled by the question whether they truly belong to God may look at the pattern of their lives and ask whether the righteousness of Christ is being formed in them. If it is, however haltingly, the new birth has plainly occurred, for nothing else could produce such fruit in fallen creatures. The Christian’s growing love for what God loves and growing aversion to what He hates are the marks of a regenerate heart. Such marks are no ground of boasting, but they are a steady source of comfort to the soul that has known the doubts that John writes to relieve.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Examine your life today. Do you find a settled, even if imperfect, direction toward what God commands? Such righteous practice does not save us, but it is the steady evidence that the One who is righteous has adopted us through faith. Take comfort, and continue in the path He has set before you.
For further study
- Psalm 15:1–5
- Matthew 7:17–20
- Titus 2:11–14
- James 2:14–18
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 54–55
- 1 Thessalonians 4