02.01.09. 1John 5:1-12 The divine witness to Jesus as the Christ . .

§ 9. 1 John 5:1-12 THE DIVINE WITNESS TO JESUS AS THE CHRIST

[If readers will turn back to the account already given of the teaching of Cerinthus , whom St. John appears to have in mind in this Epistle as the typical adversary, they will find the latter part of the section easier to understand.]

St. John begins by affirming that the belief that Jesus is the Christ is the mark of divine sonship. And the character of true sonship to God shows itself with an equal necessity both in the love of our brethren and in the love of the Father. On the one hand, you cannot really love the Father (“that begat’’) unless you love each of His children. On the other hand, you cannot know that you love the children of God, as being such, unless you love God, the Father of this new family, and do His commandments. The love of God means nothing at all except this diligent keeping of His commandments. And we are not to think of His commandments as a burden hard to be borne. They are indeed a heavy burden to those who belong to the worldly world and have their real interest in the things which make it up, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life”; but our new birth as children of God admits us, every one, to victory over all the powers of this old world. And the instrument of this victory is our faith. The Christian faith has triumphed over the world once for all, because it is faith in Jesus as the Son of God. We should explain this by reference to the Gospel.

There we see Him in the world. We see the world apparently victorious over Him, rejecting Him and crucifying Him. But we see Him also triumphant through death over all the powers of the world, and made manifest in His Resurrection as the Son of God — our Lord and our God. And through faith in Him, St. John now tells us, His victory is ours. And there is no other instrument of victory except that faith.

Now we are to consider closely the divine witness borne to Christ. We are to note two symbolic tokens of His manifestation when He who was to come did come — Jesus the Christ.

First, He came by watery when at the opening of His ministry He was baptized by John the Baptist in the river Jordan, and on that occasion, as we are told in the Gospel, John (as well as Jesus) “beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon him.”

“And I knew him not,” he said; “but he that sent me to baptize with water, he said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God’’ (John 1:32-34). Thus He was marked out at His baptism in water as a divine being, the Son of God and the Christ.

And, secondly, He came by blood— the blood of the Cross, which is the symbol of true human flesh, sacrificed and suffering. Not as our adversaries say, who recognize the divine Christ only in the water and refuse to acknowledge Him in the blood. Nay, in Him both were joined, even as St. John has seen and borne witness in his Gospel that out of His pierced side upon the cross flowed together water and blood. Both together mark Him as He that should come, divine and from heaven, but in the true flesh of man. And it is the Spirit whom Jesus has poured forth upon us — the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of truth, promised to guide us into all the truth and now given to us — who bears witness that Jesus is no other than the Christ. For He who gives the Spirit is the Christ. But indeed there is a threefold witness — the witness of the Spirit which cannot lie; and the witness of the water of baptism, Christ’s baptism, and now, too, ours — the witness of His divine sonship and the instrument of ours; and the witness of the blood in the assurance of Christ’s true and abiding manhood, which we verily and indeed drink in the Cup; and these three witnesses combine upon the one point — that Jesus very man is the very Son of God and the Christ who was to come. It is a matter of human witness. But it is something much more than human witness. God Himself has borne witness to His Son. This is the substance of His witness, and you cannot pass it by. Believe on the Son of God and the divine witness passes into your own being. Refuse to believe and truly it is God you refuse to believe — it is God whom you make a liar. So manifest is it that He has borne His witness to His Christ. And the meaning of the witness is this — that God has given us eternal life, fellowship in His own life, in His Son, If you have Him you have the life; and without Him you have it not.

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God: and whosoever loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and do his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is begotten of God overCometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for the witness of God is this, that he hath borne witness concerning his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.

1. It is a comfort to many people to note that St. John interprets the love of God so absolutely as having no other meaning than the diligent keeping of His commandments, and doubtless also the “love of the brethren” as the willing and whole-hearted service of them. Such devotion to the service of God and man is normally followed by feelings of affection. But it is not a matter of feeling: nor is feeling the test.

2. His commandments are not “grievous,” or, rather, “heavy.” There would seem to be an obvious reference to our Lord’s own words, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

3. “The victory which overcame the world” is represented as “our faith.” But the context shows that the faith St. John is thinking of is an assurance resting upon facts of experience — the facts of Christ’s human life, which justified or compelled the belief in the divine sonship of the man. The victory of our faith depends upon the victory of Him in whom we have believed. It is His victory appropriated by us, 4. The dependence of the Epistle on the Gospel is nowhere more evident than in this passage. The meaning of “the water” is to be found by reference to John the Baptist’s testimony as given in the Gospel (already quoted) to the significance of the baptism of Jesus (John 1:32-34). The witness of the blood is to be interpreted in the light of John 6:52-55, where “flesh” expresses our Lord’s human nature given for the life of the world; and when the word “flesh’’ causes scandal (John 6:52), “blood” is added to it to emphasize the reality of sacrificed manhood — the ’’blood which is the life” thereof. Again, the combination of water and blood in the drops that flowed from our Lord’s pierced side is emphasized without explanation in the Gospel (John 19:35), and here interpreted of the union in Jesus of the divine and human elements. Again, the “witness of the Spirit” must be thought of in the light (1) of John 7:38-39, “This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet; because Jesus was not yet glorified”; and (2) of the last discourses about the Spirit (John 14:25-26, John 15:26-27, John 16:7-15), where, to a degree not commonly recognized, the Spirit is spoken of as “the Spirit of truth.” Again, the idea of a divine witness to Christ overshadowing the human witness, which is to be appropriated as divine by the individual, requires interpreting by John 3:31-34 and John 5:31-47, and other passages.

It is fundamental to the understanding of St, John’s attitude towards either intellectual rejection of Christ or perversion of the teaching about Him, that to his mind the Father and the Divine Spirit had borne such manifest witness to Jesus as Christ and Son of God that to reject the witness was to impugn the divine truthfulness — to make God a liar, who had wilfully deceived His unhappy creatures. Only, St. John would say, the external testimony loyally accepted receives such inward confirmation in the man’s own heart that it becomes his own testimony.

Again, the idea of the reception of life, divine and eternal, as the result of believing in Christ and as the object of His coming, is a foundation thought of the Gospel. And, finally, the unique and exclusive claim of the Christ, “He that hath not the Son hath not life,” refers back to John 3:36,

5. The threefold witness. — “We may feel fairly confident about the interpretation of the Spirit and the water and the blood given above. It is characteristic of St. John’s mystical method that it should rest on outward facts, the baptism of Christ, the shedding of His blood, the drops of blood and water which trickled from His pierced side — a detail remembered and treasured with precision; and that his brooding soul should grow to see the inward meaning in the outward facts with an absolute certainty of intuition; and that he should pass from the record of past facts, the baptism and cross of Jesus and the mission of the Spirit, to the present living witnesses, the Spirit still possessing the Church, the baptism of regeneration into the divine life, and the eucharist in which we eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood. It is not possible to prove, but it is hardly possible to doubt, these last references.

6. Finally, a word must be said about the great interpolation. In the familiar authorized version the text of the above section (1 John 5:7) runs: ’’There are three that bear record [or “witness”] in heaven, the Father, the Wordy and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood/’ The words in italics are an undoubted interpolation.

They do not exist in the Greek manuscripts, except in two very late and worthless ones, apparently translated from the Latin. They were not in the old Latin nor in Jerome’s translation, nor in any of the old versions. What happened was that the “three witnesses agreeing in one” suggested the idea of the Trinity. This suggestion, probably first written on the margin, found its way into the text at the hands of a pious copyist, probably innocent of any intention to deceive. Its first occurrence, as a text of St. John, is in the writings of the Spaniard Priscillian, who was put to death in a.d. 385. The words are: “As John says. There are three which hear witness on earth, the water, the flesh, and the blood; and these three agree in one, and there are three which bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one in Christ Jesus.” These or the like words passed from copy to copy of the Latin Bible, and came to be accepted as part of the authoritative text. But they interrupt the context and plainly were not original.

Nevertheless, though these particular words are not St. John’s, there can be no question that St. John believed in the Trinity in Unity. The statement of the Quicunque that “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God’’ can be quite fairly concluded from his Gospel and Epistles. Later writers have loved the argument that love involves fellowship; and that a God who eternally is Love must be a God whose essential nature is a fellowship, and I do not think St. John would have demurred.