The Epistles of John, Part 20: On the Witness Stand Part 1

For the disciple of Jesus Christ who has spent time studying the Bible, there are probably many passages of Scripture that stand out as particularly meaningful or powerful or important.  To be sure, an orthodox understanding of God’s word is clear on the point that every single piece, or as Jesus put it ever jot and tittle, of sacred Scripture is valuable and stands on its own as the breath of God in written form.  We obtain this important teaching especially from 2 Timothy 3:16-17: All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.  Yet even with that truth evident, it must be said that some passages, at least to our limited human understanding, seem to rise above the rest and stand as majestic monuments or towering skyscrapers that dominate the spiritual landscape with the authority of God.

In Genesis chapter 1 we find God speaking and the universe literally spins into existence, borne on the wings of the command of its creator.  We feel awe at the sheer scope of what is on display before us and we shrivel into insignificance when we consider our place within the whole of creation.  We come to the 23^rd chapter of Psalm and our fears are eased and our minds stilled by the calm, peaceful reassurance of David’s depiction of God as our perfect and loving shepherd who provides for us in every circumstance.  A few pages later, in Psalm 51, we are humbled at the breadth and depth of David’s repentance as he pours out his sorrowful heart to God regarding his own personal horror over what he has done with Bathsheba and Uriah. 

Moving forward to the New Testament our soul stirs and our eyes rise to the heavens as we behold the wonder of the birth of Christ in Luke chapter 2.  Perhaps most keenly during the Christmas season each year our heart leaps within us at the thought of our savior being born into low and humble circumstances.  Yet in Matthew chapter 27 we are shocked into speechlessness over the heinous and callous evil of the perfect spotless lamb of God being crushed by the hands of sinful men as he was nailed to a cross to die an agonizing death on our behalf. 

But then from our sorrow bursts forth a shout of triumph as the church is born on the Day of Pentecost.  Peter’s powerful sermon in Acts chapter 2 blasts across the annals of history as if he held a Spirit-wrought megaphone to his lips which blasted apart the bonds of space and time to come down to us two millennia later.  After that we find a quiet unassuming man with a towering intellect named Paul.  Our minds are stretched in an attempt to understand his logic as he unleashes a barrage of rhetoric in defense of the Christian faith in the book of Romans.  He expertly weaves parallels between Adam and Jesus in chapter 5 as he examines the lasting impact and effect on the human race of both sinful failure and sinless perfection.

This is a short list.  I could easily go on for pages describing the themes and currents of Scripture that beckon us to explore the mysteries of the wonders of God.  I am sure that you could add to what I have written with your own list of personal favorites and meaningful anecdotes.  However, in very few of the explorations of Bible themes that I have done have I come across 1^st John 5:6-12 as being of paramount significance.  But to my mind this passage is massively, incredibly, amazingly important.

The bedrock of the Christian faith is the Christ Himself.  Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” This is the core of what it means to be a Christian.  The reformers of the 16^th century, men who faced down the menacing authority of the Imperial Roman Church, took as one of their core tenets of belief the Latin phrase “Solus Christus”, which means literally “through Christ alone”.  Peter, of the famous Acts 2 sermon of two paragraphs ago, said the following in Acts 4:12 in reference to Jesus: “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

Through all the denominational differences that exist within Protestantism, the doctrinal disagreements over sacraments, proper forms of worship, consumption of alcohol, etc. the one unifying theme that pumps like life’s blood through the global church is this common, shared, conviction that belief in Jesus Christ is the only path to salvation.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that this idea is how John ended his previous section in verses 1 to 5 on warfare and victory.  He told us previously that: whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.  Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?  In John’s mind this faith in Jesus is the pathway to victory for everyone who claims to be a Christian.

And now, in verses 6 to 12 John is going to just blow the doors off of this core doctrine of Christianity.  These seven verses are a powerful manifesto on the authenticity and the veracity of Jesus as the Son of God.  As people who seek to pattern our lives after such core truths as a deep and profound faith in Christ, we desperately need to be intimately familiar with passages such as this one, because it forms of the core of everything we believe about everything.

So here in a few minutes we are going to walk through this passage together, examining what the apostle is communicating with his words.  But before we get to that I want to take a moment and talk about three words from the language John wrote in; Greek.  These three words are, in my opinion, of particular significance in verses 6 to 12.  So I want to be sure we have as accurate of an understanding of them as possible so that when we come across these words in the verses our comprehension of John’s meaning will be clearer.

The first two words are very similar and are in fact related.  They are “martureo” (mar-tur-eh-o) and “marturio” (mar-tur-ee-o).  If you say them out loud with the pronunciations I’ve provided you may notice they sound very similar to another word you are probably familiar with; martyr.  The reason for that is martyr means literally “witness”.  And these two Greek words are essentially two different sides of that same coin.  “Martureo” means “to bear testimony, to be a witness, or to give evidence”.  “Marturio” means “the witness, testimony, or evidence given”. 

So, a “martureo” is the one who provides a detailed “marturio” of the circumstances surrounding a given situation.  You might wonder what the big deal is.  Well, as we will see, this issue of witnesses and testimony given is going to be critical to John’s argument in this passage.  It is the foundation of what he will be presenting to us.  Between the two of them, these words occur eleven times in 7 verses.  So we had better make sure we have a firm grasp on their meaning. 

The other Greek word I want to address is one that has come up before in this series; “echo”.  It means “to have, to hold, or to possess.”  I don’t want to overstate my position, but I am of the opinion that this little word “echo” is going to rise to the forefront and become the proverbial “mouse that roared” in this passage.  I’m not going to say too much about it now, in fact it won’t come up in part 1 at all, but keep it in your mind because we are going to revisit it later in part 2.

And with that, on to the Scripture!  Verses 6 to 8 reads thusly: This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.  For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 

John has already told us that it is our faith, specifically our faith in Christ, that overcomes or conquers the world.  And now he begins to explain the fullness that exists behind or beyond that faith.  There are three components to this opening salvo of his argument: the water, and the blood, and the Spirit.  John uses a precise order to present these elements and we will mirror it.  The water and blood are closely intertwined so we will treat them first as a pair, then consider the Spirit, and finally examine all three together.

If we wind the clock back about 60 some odd years from the point at which John is writing, and we dialed in on a location just outside the city of Jerusalem, we would behold a terrible sight.  Three men side by side, fastened to crosses of wood, breathing out their final agonizing hours in excruciating pain.  Somewhat close to the foot of the middle cross stands an older Jewish woman.  Her gaze is haunted as she stares up at the horrifying sight of the broken, battered, unrecognizable form of her crucified son.  A few other women are close to her as well as a younger man.  The man on the cross suddenly addresses his mother as well as the man with her.  If we turn to John 19:26-27 we can hear his words from so long ago: When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”  Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!”  From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.

From John’s usage pattern throughout the gospel he wrote, we know that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was none other than John himself.  This tells us something very valuable.  John, probably alone of all the eleven remaining apostles, was actually there at the crucifixion of Jesus.  It is almost certain that Peter was not with him.  John himself records in John 18:25-27 that Peter denied the Lord when confronted about Him after the arrest.  And Mark, traditionally at the dictation of Peter, tells us in Mark 14:72 that Peter was in sorrowful mourning over his failure after the rooster crowed.  So the odds are that he did not return, whether out of fear or remorse, to witness the moment of death.

And it is probable that none of the other 9 apostles hung around either.  Jesus actually told them this would happen.  Matthew 26:31 records His words: Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’  Without exception, Jesus’s best and brightest students deserted their master in His hour of need.  And the likelihood of them returning seems low, all except for John.

So he was likely the only one of the men who was there at the foot of the cross with Mary, the mother of Jesus.  He was probably the only one of the New Testament writers who witnessed firsthand the moment of death when physical life passed out of the shattered body of the Lord.

And when that instant of death had passed, John alone of all the gospels records a fascinating historical detail.  John 19:34: But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.  Now, there are medical reasons why this would have occurred.  You can go elsewhere to learn about those.  But John’s inclusion of this detail in 1^st John 5:6 reveals that there is theological significance behind this otherwise ordinary effect of the horrors of crucifixion.

You can be sure that John, having seen this happen with his own eyes, would have been severely impacted by it.  I have very little doubt that over the next six decades of his life he often reminisced on all that he had seen and heard while with his Master.  And now, here at the end of his own life, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, John is presenting these two elements of water and blood to us as symbolic pictures of God at work in salvation.

I think there are two things in view with the water and the blood.  The first is God’s favor, bestowed upon His Son.  In this image the water represents the baptism of Jesus, early on in His ministry.  Matthew 3:16-17 gives us the most pertinent account of this event: After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  This was God’s visible and authoritative stamp of approval upon the incarnated God in human flesh.  It served as a launchpad for Christ’s ministry. 

Additionally, it corresponded to the personal testimony of John, who baptized Him.  The Gospel of John, chapter 1 and verse 32 reads: John testified saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him.  I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’  I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

What an amazing endorsement of the ministry and work of Christ from one who was clearly and demonstrably a prophet in the spirit of Elijah!  And just as God opened His Son’s earthly ministry with a clear sign of approval, so He closed it with the same.  This is the significance of the blood in John’s epistle.  When Jesus was crucified to death and his side was pierced with a spear, the blood and water that emerged referenced the completion of His work and God’s favor upon Him.  How you might ask does the blood symbolize the Father’s favor?  Well, it was not the blood in and of itself.  It was what happened after the blood; the resurrection.

Turning to Paul’s masterwork letter to the Romans, the 4^th verse of the 1^st chapter tells us: who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.  The fact that Jesus did not stay dead, that God the Father instead raised Him up to new life at the appointed time, rings out the truth of His deity.  It stands as the clearest and most resounding affirmation of favor and pleasure that the Father could possibly have bestowed upon the Son.

This is further confirmed by none other than King David.  In Psalm 16:10 he prophesies: For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.  How do we know that David was foreshadowing Christ by almost 1,000 years?  Because of the exposition of Paul on his first missionary journey.  In Acts 13:35, while addressing the Jews who were assembled in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, he said the following: Therefore He also says in another Psalm, ‘You will not allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.’  Paul is giving a presentation of the gospel in which he clearly identifies Jesus as the One of whom David spoke so long ago. 

There is no doubt whatsoever that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead served as a mark of approval from God at the end of His ministry just as the baptism served the same function at the beginning.  In this way these two events book ended Jesus’s time on earth with the blessing of His Father. 

In addition to the water and the blood serving as a sign of God’s favor upon His Son, I think there is a second symbolic component John intends us to understand here.  That is, that the water and blood also demonstrate the work that Christ did on our behalf by cleansing with water and atoning with blood.

Through Jesus’s own words we can see the association He has always made between water and cleansing.  John chapter 4 details His encounter with the woman of Samaria.  In verse 14 He explains to her the symbolic relationship between the “water” He is offering and eternal life: “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”  Just as with the light and darkness metaphor that John used earlier in his letter, Jesus uses an example that is easy and natural to understand.  We instinctively grasp the concept of water as a cleansing agent for the washing away of dirt.  So it is a very small mental leap to translate that into a spiritual washing away of sin.  However, this was not a new concept that originated here in this conversation.  True to Jesus’s pattern, rather than seeking to abolish the existing revelation of God in the form of the Mosaic Law, He instead sought to uphold it.  Let me explain.

In Numbers chapter 19 God gives instructions to Moses for purification from sins.  First, the priests were to slaughter a heifer, burn its carcass, and save the ashes.  Then in verses 17 and 18 we read: for the unclean person they shall take some of the ashes of the burnt purification from sin and flowing water shall be added to them in a vessel.  A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent and all the furnishings and on the persons who were there, and on the one who touched the bone or the one slain or the one dying naturally or the grave.

This is just one reference to water as a purifying agent that is found in the Law of Moses.  The necessity of being cleansed before the Lord was a staple part of the people’s lives from the very beginning of the nation.  So it is not at all surprising that Jesus capitalized on that centuries old understanding to help explain what He was offering.

Cleansing through blood was no less important a principle to the Jews.  They were specifically prohibited by God from consuming blood.  This was not an arbitrary rule.  The reason is found in Leviticus 17:10-11: ‘And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people.  For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’  Rather than a callous consumption of blood, God commanded the Jews to use it carefully and specifically to symbolically cleanse both people and objects, as in Exodus 24:6-8: Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and the other half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.  Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!”  So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

The Lord wanted the people to associate blood with life and atonement.  He did not want it casually dealt with in a flippant manner.  He wanted to be crystal clear that the horror of sin was so bad that it required extreme measures to compensate for it.

Therefore, when we come to a passage such as 1^st John 1:7, if we have been previously exposed to the paradigms of cleansing given by God, it should immediately make sense: but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

So what we have depicted in Scripture is both water and blood as cleansing agents.  But notice, back in 1^st John 5:6, that John makes a distinction between the water and the blood.  He specifies that it is not the water only that is relevant.  He wants to be sure that we understand that it is both the water and the blood that Christ came through in order to provide salvation.  This is not a partial salvation.  The Son of God did not accomplish a portion of what was required to reconcile men with God.  He accomplished it all.

Furthermore, His work was intimate and unique to Him.  He fully entered into it.  We know this because the Greek that is translated “by” water and blood is the word “dia”.  It is the root of our modern word diameter.  A more precise translation of it is “through” rather than “by”.  Imagine a circle.  If we attempt to calculate the diameter of that circle, what are we wanting to know?  We need to find the distance from one side to the other, directly through the middle of it.  Jesus did not just utilize water and blood to accomplish His mission.  They were not tools or instruments that helped Him along the way.  He literally passed through the middle of both elements in order to bring completion and fulfillment to the Father’s plan of redemption.

All of this, the importance and relevance of water and blood as well as the necessity of having the blood added to the water as a symbolic cleansing agent, is illustrated beautifully with a single passage from Hebrews chapter 9.  Verses 13 and 14 wrap the whole thing together in a theological package for us to digest: For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

But that’s not all.  We’re not even finished with verse 6 because John has more to say.  Christ’s work was completed with His death and His position was secured with His resurrection.  But all of this is still meaningless to mankind.  It is not until the Spirit of truth appears as a witness that any of this relates to man in any way.  You see, the water and the blood testify to nothing by themselves.  They exist as a real and meaningful symbolic component of Christ’s work.  But it is required that the Spirit speak these truths into the mind of a man for it to make any kind of sense to him.

This is what John means when he writes in verse 6 that Jesus came through the water and the blood.  And then he follows that up by immediately switching to the perspective of the Spirit.  It is here, in the second sentence of the verse, that we find our first occurrence of “martureo”.  The Holy Spirit of God becomes the star witness for the defense who stands in the box and points at the water and the blood.  He says “Look at the mark of favor that God the Father has bestowed upon this man Jesus.  God expressed His satisfaction with Him at the beginning of His ministry with a supernatural event at His baptism.  Then He indicated His supreme pleasure in what His Son had accomplished by raising Him from the dead.  And both of these, the water and the blood, stand as timeless testaments of the cleansing power of the Son of God for the sake of sinful men who stand before the throne of God in judgment.”

This vision of supernatural revelation of the truth of Christ’s work is exactly how Jesus described the Spirit in John 14:16-17 when He first explained Him to His disciples: I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.  And then in 16:13-15: But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.  He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

This is why John now states in his letter that the Spirit is the one who is the “martureo” for the Christ.  Just as Jesus Himself was and is the literal embodiment of truth, so is the Holy Spirit.  And once He appears on the scene to testify, suddenly something miraculous happens.  John says in verses 7 and 8 that now there are three that testify about the Son: The Spirit is joined in His work by the water and the blood.  They transform, through His testimony, into witnesses themselves.  Whereas before they did nothing for human beings, now they become the sweetness of a refreshing spring of crystal clear spiritual water and the comfort of a sheltering blanket cast over our shoulders in the cold winter’s night of our alienation from God.

And notice the word John uses at the end of verse 8.  It is translated in almost every major modern English Bible translation as “agree” or “agreement”.  I find this to be unsatisfactory.  The key word in Greek is “heis”.  It means, simply, “one”.  The Greek word for agree is “symphoneo” (soom-phone-eh-o).  That word is not in this verse at all.  A literal, grammatically incorrect, rendering of the original phrase would be something like this: “and the three into the one are”.

Now, perhaps it’s just me, but agree just doesn’t carry the same weight of meaning as “one” or “three into one”.  Agreement sounds like two or three people meeting together, discussing their options, and coming to an accord regarding how to proceed.  It sounds like a debate with a peaceful ending, essentially.

Rather than that watered down image, I take the wording John used to mean that these three witnesses converge into one combined voice.  They come together, are absorbed into a common whole in a marvelous display of harmony, and then communicate as a single cohesive unit.  I find the word picture John is painting for us to be far stronger and much deeper and infinitely surer than mere agreement.

Only the King James Version of the English Bible comes close to matching the grandeur that John associated with this relationship.  It renders the phrase as “and these three agree in one.”  That is a little better, but I still think it does a disservice to John’s meaning for the sake of a grammatically sound translation.

In summary, I believe that this passage out of the fifth chapter of 1^st John, if it doesn’t already, should occupy a position of supreme importance in our understanding of theology and the gospel of Jesus Christ.  John explicitly and definitively lays out for us the model of what stands behind our faith in Christ which is what accomplishes our victory over the world.  In a single master-stroke of literature the Apostle and his partner the Holy Spirit grab ahold of four millennia of divine revelation and mediatorial significance from the Lord God to His chosen people: first the Israelites and now the church of Jesus Christ.

And these two authors point out for us that details are critically, invaluably important.  How many times have we perhaps read John’s account of the Crucifixion and come across 19:34 where he describes the piercing of Jesus’s side and the blood and water that flowed out?  I can think of at least one film depiction of this that shows it graphically.  And have we understood the depth and splendor behind that single detail from the 33-year physical life span of the Lord?  Have we perhaps assumed simply that John was merely attempting to provide a historically accurate record of what happened and that was all?  If so, we now know better from John’s own pen.  And we would do well to apply that same level of understanding to all of the sacred Scriptures.  God does nothing by accident.  He is a God of design, intentionality, structure, and planning.

This principle of who He is applies inside the church, as in 1^st Corinthians 14:33 where Paul describes proper corporate worship: For God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.  And it applies in the entirety of the natural created order all around us, as in Job 38:4-6 where God describes His exacting construction of the world: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell Me, if you have understanding.  Who set its measurements?  Since you know.  Or who stretched the line on it?  On what were its bases sunk?  Or who laid its cornerstone?”  Every detail in the Bible is there for a reason.  Woe to us if we decide otherwise and carelessly bounce through the Scriptures as if they are a mindless television program that we can turn half our brains off for.