My Dialogue with Antonio da Rosa on 1 John 5:1

by Jonathan Perreault

Introduction: The Content of Saving Faith

What is the absolute "lowest common denominator" required for a person to be born again? Does a person simply need to believe that someone named "Jesus" promises "eternal life," or does saving faith inherently require an understanding of Christ's substitutionary death on the cross and His resurrection?

In October 2007, I engaged in a week-long blog dialogue with Antonio da Rosa regarding 1 John 5:1: "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Antonio, representing the perspective popularized by Zane Hodges, argued that this verse is a strict logical equation—asserting that simple belief in Jesus's identity as the Christ is sufficient for eternal life, apart from any other theological considerations.

Representing the traditional Free Grace position, I approached the text from a different angle. By digging into the original Greek syntax—specifically the relationship between the present participle ("believing") and the perfect tense verb ("has been born")—I argue that John is providing a description of those who are already regenerated, rather than a prescription for how the lost receive eternal life.

What follows is an edited transcript of our back-and-forth. It serves as a case study in how minor grammatical details can completely reshape our understanding of gospel clarity, biblical context, and the structure of New Testament epistles.

To summarize my thesis and understanding of 1 John 5:1, it is simply this: 1 John 5:1 is a summary confession of faith for the believer rather than the specific content of saving faith required for the unbeliever.

About This Transcript:

The following dialogue occurred between October 2–8, 2007, and is excerpted from the comments on Antonio's original Free Grace Theology blog post, "'Whoever [simply] believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God' (1 John 5:1). Do you believe this?" (October 1, 2007).

To highlight our specific back-and-forth, I have removed all other comments from the original thread except for those between Antonio and myself. I have also done some light editing mainly to correct spelling errors and typos, but otherwise, the comments are copied and pasted directly as they were originally written.

To be continued...

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