Faith & grace in Jesus: We know that we belong to God even though the whole world is under the rule of the Evil One. 1 John 5:19

The apostle John, in his first epistle addressed to several churches in Asia Minor, wrote in this spiritual text about the need to live according to the commandment of love in order to follow Jesus, and how through faith every believer can attain the grace of eternal life; at a time when heresies and theological divisions constituted the main problems of the early Church. The apostle also explained the incompatibility between sin and life in God's grace, because sin is error, ignorance, and darkness, whereas the true life in Jesus is knowledge and truth. From a literary and theological point of view, the apostle John was one of the most prolific Christian authors during the first century after Christ.
And the apostle, in his last words written in his first epistle, called believers in Jesus to preserve faith and grace as true spiritual treasures, because every Christian is called to overcome the world, that is, to overcome everything that binds man to suffering, such as selfishness, the passions like envy and hatred, and the love of money.
And faith, the apostle added, is intimately related to that new birth according to the Spirit, a birth that leads to integrity, perseverance, and the fruits of the Spirit. For John, this new birth, which is described in the gospel of this apostle in the encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus, is the birth that makes men children of God, by making them partakers of the divine nature. And so the apostle wrote in his first epistle what this change means in relation to the spiritual: "We know that no children of God keep on sinning, for the Son of God keeps them safe" 1 John 5:18. The new birth is therefore liberation of the mind from the inclination to error, and also spiritual guidance and protection.
But then the apostle warned that all this meant a fundamental ethical change, which caused pagans to look with distrust upon the followers of the Kingdom of God. That is why John also wrote about the importance of the new believers separating themselves from the weaknesses of worldly people subject to the concupiscence: "We know that we belong to God even though the whole world is under the rule of the Evil One" 1 John 5:19.
The apostle concluded his letter by teaching that this entire struggle, posed by the spiritual war between good and evil, has a very important purpose: to recognize Jesus as the truth itself, because to know the truth is to participate in all divine blessings.

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