"Having" or possessing "the Son of God" is equated with "having life." Whoever possesses the Son of God has life. The same thing can be said either way. This statement helps us understand the supposed "ordo salutis" of verse one - "whoever is believing has been born of God."
How does one "have the Son of God" according to the context? It is they who have believed. Their faith in Christ was their appropriation or apprehension of Christ, resulting in their union with Christ. Therefore we may say "whoever has a faith connection with Christ has a new birth and new life" or conversely, "whoever has new birth and new life has faith in Christ." What John is showing in this chapter is that faith and life go together. They cannot be divorced.
We may ask, does one first "have" life before they "have" the Son of God? No. Obtaining Christ by faith is obtaining life. This John emphasizes many times and in several ways.
He quotes Christ as saying to those who were spiritually dead - "you will not come to me that you might have life." (John 5: 40) Coming to Christ is in order to "have" Christ, and in having Christ one has life.
John also said that it is "by believing" that one has "life through his name." (John 20: 31)
He also recorded the words of Christ who said that men believe in order to have eternal life. (John 3: 16; John 6: 40) We receive eternal life when we are born again or converted. It is the ones who believe in Christ who "have eternal life." (John 5: 24)
He cited the teaching of Christ who said that eating the bread of life (himself) is what imparts eternal life, and this partaking of the bread is a metaphor for appropriating Christ into the soul by faith. (John 6: 35) "If any man eat of this bread," said the Lord, "he shall live," and that "forever." Again, life after eating the bread by faith. Life after faith union with Christ, in other words. If you do not eat of this bread (believe on him and possess him), said our Lord, "you have no life in you." (6: 53) "He who believes in me," said the Lord, "though he were dead, yet shall he live." (11: 25)
Said Charles Spurgeon:
"We understand possessing the Lord Jesus Christ. There is the finished work of Jesus, and faith appropriates it. We trust in Christ, and Christ becomes ours. As the result of grace in our souls, we chose the Lord Jesus as the ground of our dependence, and then we accept him as the Lord of our hearts, the guide of our actions, and supreme delight of our souls. He that hath the Son, then, is a man who is trusting alone in Jesus, in whom Jesus Christ rules and reigns; and such a man is most surely the possessor of spiritual and eternal life at the present moment. It is not said "he shall have life "—he has it, he enjoys it now, he is at this hour quickened spirit; God has breathed into him a new life, by which he is made a partaker of the divine nature, and is one of the seed according to promise, and this life he has by virtue of his having received the Son of God to be his all." (Alive or Dead - here)
I don't care what Spurgeon may have said on one or two occasions about regeneration preceding faith, he more often than not upheld the regeneration after faith view and the above is one example. He plainly says that "this life" is had "by virtue of his having received the Son of God to be his all." That is a denial that regeneration precedes faith.
Spurgeon also said:
"Now, faith by which we receive the Son of God, is the grace which vitally unites the members with Christ, their living Head; and where there is a vital union with the Son of God, there must be life. While the branch is vitally in the stem, it will have life; if it is not always bearing fruit, yet it always has life in itself, because it is in union with the living stem; and thus, beloved, the fact of having the Son becomes an evidence of life, because it is the source of life."
Again, that denies that faith follows life. It affirms that faith unites to Christ, putting a man "in Christ," and new life follows.
So, you can put Spurgeon in the category of five point Calvinists who deny that regeneration precedes faith.
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