Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ IS born of God - i.e. he HAS BEEN born of God. This is one of those verses that can be misinterpreted and spun the Arminian way but the fact is, spinning it that way contradicts many other Scriptures. However, a proper reading of this would be similar to the following example:
You observe a family reunion where everyone present has the same lineage; Fred & Mary, who are parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or great-great-grandparents of everyone there. Anyone observing the gathering can say:
“Everyone present IS born of Fred & Mary.”
In other words, even though the structure of that sentence may sound like it has everyone present before their birth - chronologically it is impossible for them to be present without being born first.
So as with the spiritual birth and believing - being born-again comes before belief. Just as we had NOTHING to do with our natural birth (other than experiencing it), we had nothing to do with our spiritual birth (other than experiencing it).
The word born in “...born of God” is a perfect tense verb.
The word believes in “Everyone who believes...” is a present tense verb.
If you know your grammar, perfect tense always precedes present tense.
In light of that simple grammatical rule, being born again, or “born of God” occurs BEFORE belief. This also reconciles with Scripture that God does not give man the ability to believe, He gives belief - AFTER a man is born-again. (John 6:29, Philippians 1:29)
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