1 John 5:4-5 vs. “The Victory (1 John 5:4-5 ESV)”

Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) · checked 2026-09-05

▸ Official upload. It met the standard, so play it.

What we checked

Passage1 John 5:4-5 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asquotation

Categoryword-for-word ✓

AlbumPower · 2020

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful

✓Translation named

✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Both verses whole and in order. Counted in the ESV, all forty-two words are there, none skipped, and the chart carries nothing from outside the passage
The version rides in the track title. On streaming services the song is listed as “The Victory (1 John 5:4-5 ESV)”, so the address and the version arrive together
The free chord chart carries the full Crossway credit line and names the text edition, 2007, so the exact wording the song was set from can be opened and compared
The two tenses stay apart. The verse section carries the present overcoming and the pre-chorus carries the victory that has already overcome
Verse 5 is the chorus. The most repeated part of the song is the part that says who the overcomer is and what he believes about Jesus

⚠ Cautions

None. This is the standard, met.

Verse Proof

1 John 5:4-5

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“because everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith. Who then overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

The letter we call 1 John carries no author's name and names no city. The writer calls his readers his little children, and near the end he says why he wrote: so that people who believe in the name of the Son of God may know they have eternal life (5:13). Verses 4 and 5 sit inside a short argument that begins at 5:1. Everyone who believes Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Loving God means keeping His commandments. His commandments are not burdensome. Verse 4 then opens with a joining word, “For” in the ESV and “because” in the BSB, and gives the reason the commandments are not a weight: everyone born of God overcomes the world. The rest of verse 4 says what the victory is. Verse 5 says who the overcomer is. “The world” here is not the planet. The same letter describes what is in the world at 2:16 as the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, and says it is passing away.

WHAT THE SONG SINGS — 1 John 5:4-5, complete, ESV, named in the streaming track title and credited down to its 2007 text edition on the chord chart

Everything the chord chart prints is the two verses and nothing else. Checked line by line against the chord chart Seeds publishes free, every sung word comes from the passage, in the passage's own order.

The verse section sings the opening clause of 1 John 5:4 twice, then sings its predicate twice. The pre-chorus sings the middle of verse 4 twice, then lands on the two words that name what the victory is. The chorus is verse 5 whole, the question and then the answer, with one word doubled at the end of a line and the last four words sung again to close. The chart then marks a repeat of the intro, the verse and pre-chorus, and the chorus, a solo, two more choruses, and an instrumental outro.

Nothing on the chart comes from outside the passage. There is no added line, no refrain written for the song, and no filler syllable. Counted in the ESV, the two verses run to forty-two words, and all forty-two are there, in order, with none skipped. Every repeat is the passage's own words coming round again.

The version is the English Standard Version, and Seeds names it in five places a listener can reach without asking anyone.

Nothing in the passage shifted. No word was added, dropped, or moved. The song's shape comes from repeating phrases the passage already supplies, and the one word sung twice in a row is a word the verse already used.

✓ Word-for-Word Verified: Both verses in full, in the ESV's wording and the passage's order, with nothing sung that the passage did not supply. The version is named in the streaming track title, and the chord chart credits the ESV down to its 2007 text edition.

Every word in this song is a word from 1 John 5:4-5, and the chord chart names the version it was set from.

Why it matters

Most songs about victory sing that it was won. This passage says what it is. Verse 4 names the victory as our faith, and verse 5 says what that faith holds, that Jesus is the Son of God. Sing only the first half and the word “faith” is left for the singer to fill in from somewhere else. This song sings the second half as the chorus, so the part repeated most is the part that names the Son.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What a loop of this song plants is one sentence about who overcomes and one about who Jesus is. The centre of attention reads as mixed, and the reason is worth noticing. The sentences are about a person who overcomes, but every line defines that person by God: born of God, our faith, believing that Jesus is the Son of God. The only first-person word in the whole song is “our”, and it sits on the faith rather than on the win. So the repetition does not train a child to say what they pulled off. It trains them to name what they hold and who it is about. Colossians 3:16 asks that the word dwell in us richly as we sing. A child who has this one memorized can answer two questions straight from the text: what overcomes the world, and who the Son of God is.

Helpful comparison

This is a passage where the site's translation toggle earns its keep, because the free translations do not agree about the tense.

The BSB above and the WEB both read “has overcome” in the middle of verse 4, a finished action, sitting next to “overcomes” in the first clause, a present one. The ESV, the version the song sets, reads the same way. The KJV reads “overcometh” in both places, so the finished victory and the present one sound identical there. The song's whole shape rests on that difference, since its verse carries the present verb and its pre-chorus carries the completed one. Toggle the passage above to KJV and the section break stops matching the text.

The translations also differ on whose faith it is. The ESV and the BSB read “our faith”. The WEB reads “your faith”. The song sings “our”, which is the version it names.

One gap is worth stating plainly, because it cuts the other way. The free YouTube upload, where most people will meet this song, carries the reference in its title and no translation anywhere in the title or the description. The version is named on the song's product page, on the album page, on the chord chart, in the catalogue's scripture list, and in the streaming track title. It is not named on the video.

Sources

Seeds Kids Worship — “The Victory” chord chart (PDF) · (the printed lyric and section structure checked for this proof; writers Ben Houser, Jason Houser and Greg Fadness, © 2019 Seeds Family Worship Music (ASCAP); the credit line “Lyrics taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway … ESV Text Edition: 2007”)
Seeds Kids Worship — The Victory (1 John 5:4-5) product page · (“Word for Word Scripture taken from 1 John 5:4-5 ESV.”)
Seeds Kids Worship — Power · (the album page: “Age Range: 3-12 years old | Scripture Version: ESV”, the key truth “Every Believer Overcomes The World Through Faith! (1 John 5:4-5)”, and the track listing with “The Victory (1 John 5:4-5)” as track 5)
Seeds Kids Worship — scripture reference song list · (the catalogue indexed by verse; the row reads “The Victory: 1 John 5:4-5 ESV | Power”)
Seeds Kids Worship — free chord charts · (the index the chart PDF comes from)
Seeds Kids Worship — music catalog · (the publisher's album index, listing Power with its nine tracks and summarising the album's victory song as 1 John 5:4-5)
YouTube — 1 John 5:4-5, The Victory (Seeds Kids Worship channel) · (the official upload; oEmbed returns author_name “Seeds Kids Worship”; published 12 January 2021; the title carries the reference and the description names no translation)
Apple Music — The Victory (1 John 5:4-5 ESV) · (the streaming track title with the version in it; artist Seeds Kids Worship, album Power, released 16 October 2020)
Spotify — The Victory (1 John 5:4-5 ESV) · (a second streaming service carrying the version in the track title; “Seeds Kids Worship · Power · Song · 2020”)
ESV.org — 1 John 5 · (the ESV wording of verses 4 and 5, which the chart's printed lyric was checked against word by word)
eBible — World English Bible, 1 John 5 · (the WEB reading “this is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith”)

Corrections

2026-09-30 The eBible source link stopped working when eBible moved its pages. It now points to eBible's current page for the same WEB text. The finding is unchanged.

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