CHAPTER V
CHAPTER 5
8. THE VICTORY OF FAITH (5:1-5)
5:1 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.
To love the Father (whom we have not seen) involves loving His child (whom we can see). Thus John sums up what has just been said. And who is the child of God? Any one who believes that Jesus is the Christ. In the Johannine writings this means more than assenting to the proposition that Jesus is the promised Messiah It means personal faith in Him, personal union with Him, who has been revealed “in the flesh” (4:2) as the Christ and Son of God. In the Gospel it is to all who received the living Word, to all “who believed in his name,” that God “gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12); the Gospel in fact was written in order that its readers might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” and thus “have life in his name” (John 20:31).
5:2 Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and do his commandments, 5:3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments:
Love to God and love to His children, love to God and obedience to God, are so completely involved in each other that any one of them implies the other two. A man may say he loves God, but his love to God can become manifest to himself and to others only in so far as he obeys God’s commandments and shows practical love to God’s children. It is easier to deceive ourselves in these matters than it is to deceive others. If we tell others that “we love God,” they will look for some visible evidence, and we should look for some visible evidence ourselves. If the visible evidence is forthcoming, it will not be necessary to say that “we love God” because the evidence will say so more convincingly. Keeping the commandments of God includes first and foremost keeping the primary commandment of love. “If love to men proves the truth of our love to God, love to God proves the worth of our love to men.”187 There is indeed much genuine and practical philanthropy in the world which rests on a humanist basis, but John insists that love to man finds its strongest and most enduring motive in love to God in whose image man was made and by whose grace man was redeemed. Again, the test of love and the test of obedience are seen to be not two tests, but one.
5:3b and his commandments are not grievous, 5:4 For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith, 5:5 And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
The punctuation of the clause “and his commandments are not grievous” (RSV, NEB “burdensome”) is doubtful; it may go more closely with the foregoing or with the following words. The argument for taking them with the following words is that the following words explain why the commandments of God are not burdensome—it is because the new life imparted to members of the family of God carries with it a new desire to do His will and a new power to give effect to that desire. Not only so, this new power enables them to “overcome the world”— everything that is opposed to God. This may be the world of current thought inimical to the “teaching of Christ” which was communicated “from the beginning;” it may be the world with its attractiveness and pretentiousness against which the readers of this letter are put on their guard in 2:15-17; it may be the world in open hostility, meting out to the disciples of Christ the same kind of treatment as was meted out to their Master. In the Gospel, Jesus’ last word to His disciples before His passion is, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). By their faith in Jesus as the Son of God188 they are so united with Him that His victory becomes theirs; they conquer by His power.
John has already encouraged his readers, “You are of God, little children, and you have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (4:4). In the Revelation, too, every kind of incentive is held out to the hard-pressed disciples to maintain their faith and so prove themselves “overcomers.” When “the deceiver of the whole world” launches his final and deadliest attack against them, they win the victory over him with the same weapons as their Master used: “they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (Revelation 12:11). This victory over the world and every other hostile force was common Christian experience in the apostolic age. We may compare the language of the Johannine writings with Paul’s assurance that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37) and his thanksgiving to God “who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57).
9. THE GROUND OF ASSURANCE (5:6-12)
5:6 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.
* Greek in.
We are naturally reminded of the incident in the passion narrative of the Gospel of John, in which blood and water come out from our Lord’s side after His dead body is pierced with the soldier’s lance (John 19:34).189 In the narrative, much importance is clearly attached to this phenomenon, emphatically supported as it is by trustworthy eyewitness testimony (John 19:35). Whatever else it may signify, it does (in the Evangelist’s intention) signify our Lord’s real humanity.
Something of the same significance is present here, though the details are to be interpreted rather differently. The sequence “water and blood” is not accidental, but corresponds to the historical sequence of our Lord’s baptism and passion.190 Cerinthus, we recall, taught that “the Christ” (a spiritual being) came down on the man Jesus when He was baptized but left Him before He died. The Christ, that is to say, came through water (baptism) but not through blood (death).191 To this misrepresentation of the truth John replies that the One whom believers acknowledge to be the Son of God (verse 5) came “not with the water only but with the water and with the blood.” The One who died on the cross was as truly the Christ, the Son of God, as the One who was baptized in Jordan. This is the primary force of John’s words; if there is any substance in the sacramental significance which has been discerned in them (mentioned in the commentary on ), it is at best secondary.192
5:7 And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth.
John and his associates bear witness to the truth of what they have seen and heard (1:2; 4:14), but behind their witness lies the witness of the Spirit (cf. 3:24; 4:13). This is completely in line with the promise of our Lord in the Gospel: “when the Counselor comes,…the Spirit of truth,…he will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:26 f.). The fulfillment of this promise was realized early in apostolic history. “We are witnesses to these things,” said the apostles to the Sanhedrin when challenged for proclaiming the crucified and risen Jesus, “and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32). The Spirit witnesses in the believer’s heart and in the believing community, and their experience of His power and guidance confirms the truth of the gospel to which they have committed themselves. To this “inward witness” must be added the “outward witness” of the Spirit in Holy Scripture. While this aspect of the Spirit’s witness does not come to the fore in this epistle, it is prominent in most of the New Testament documents. The Spirit who spoke through the prophets bore witness by their written words, interpreted in the light of their fulfillment in Christ, to the truth of the message which the apostles proclaimed.193 Whatever form the witness of the Spirit takes, it can be implicitly trusted, for “the Spirit of truth,” as He is repeatedly called in the upper room discourse in the Gospel (John 14:17; 15:26; 1:13), is Himself “the truth.”194
5:8 For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one.
It is in the community who hold fast to what they were taught from the beginning, those who believe in Him who came by water and blood, that the Spirit is present to “bear witness;”195 those who deny the truth conveyed by “the water and the blood” cannot lay claim to the Spirit who bears witness by means of these. The Spirit’s ministry in the world includes as one of its principal elements the bearing of witness to Christ. This He did as early as the baptism, when He descended like a dove and remained on Him (John 1:32 f.). The Baptist saw and accepted this witness of the Spirit, and thereafter he himself bore witness “that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34). Again, when the death of Jesus was certified by means of the soldier’s lance thrust instead of the breaking of His legs, the witness of the Spirit of prophecy was doubly confirmed, as the Evangelist is at pains to underline (John 19:36 f.), while true witness was further borne by one “who saw it” (John 19:35). The witness of the “water” and the witness of the “blood” are thus aspects of the Spirit’s witness. The witness which all three bear is “one” and the same:
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.
Another account of “the Spirit and the water and the blood” interprets them in terms of three stages of Christian initiation in certain areas of the early church—(a) the reception of the Spirit (with or without the laying on of hands); (b) baptism; (c) first communion. This sequence is attested for Syria, by contrast with the Christian West. This interpretation has been worked out in particular by Wolfgang Nauck,196 who finds affinities between this primitive Christian order and the practice of certain Jewish communities, especially the procedure for admission to the covenant community of Qumran and the procedure reflected by the treatise Joseph and Aseneth197 and the Testament of Levi.198 That the mention of “blood” alone without a companion mention of the body should denote the Eucharist is unlikely, and the context of John’s argument implies a historical rather than a sacramental interpretation. The most that can be said is that Christian communities which observed this particular order of initiation (cf. Acts 10:44 ff. for an apostolic precedent) may have appealed to the sequence of the three witnesses in our present text. There could be an allusion to the witness which the Spirit bears to and through believers as they identify themselves with Christ in baptism and declare their “interest in the Savior’s blood” in communion, but any such allusion would be secondary to the main thrust of the passage.
5:9 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. 5:10 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.
The witness of the Spirit and the witness of the Father are one. At our Lord’s baptism, for example, the Spirit’s descent and the Father’s voice alike proclaimed Jesus to be the Son of God. This witness that God has “borne concerning his Son” is amplified in the gospel narratives—we may recall that the Gospels of Mark and John alike, in their respective ways, are concerned to produce within their readers the conviction that Jesus is the Son of God (compare Mark 1:1; 15:39 with John 20:31). Whoever, by accepting “the witness of God,” believes in the Son of God,199 has the witness in himself.200 The record is no longer simply something that he has heard from others, or reads in a book, but it comes to life in his own experience because the witness-bearing Spirit now resides within him. On the other hand, refusal to accept “the witness of God” is tantamount to calling Him a liar (cf. 1:10). So clear-cut is the antithesis which John sees between belief and unbelief.
5:11 And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 5:12 He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
“Eternal life” (Greek zōē aiōnios) means in the first instance “the life of the age to come,” the life of the resurrection age. As such, it is something to be experienced in the future. But in Jesus the powers of the age to come have manifested themselves already. He proclaims Himself to be “the resurrection and the life” in such a way that those who are united by faith to Him enjoy eternal life here and now, whereas those who reject Him are “condemned already” without waiting for the sentence of the great day (compare John 11:25 f. with 3:18). The Son of God who died and rose again is the embodiment of “the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us” (1:2), so that to have “the Son” is to have “the life” and failure to have Him means forfeiture of “the life.” Very much the same statement is made in the Gospel (cf. especially John 3:36). Here probably John has in mind more particularly those false teachers, who, by denying that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh (cf. 4:2), showed that they had not “the Son of God” in the sense in which the apostolic message had proclaimed Him “from the beginning,” and showed by the same token that they were outside the pale of eternal life.
10. EPILOGUE (5:13-21)
5:13 These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.
Towards the end of the Gospel of John its readers are told that the “signs” recorded in it “are written that you may believe201 that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). The First Letter is written to those, who do “believe in202 the name of the Son of God” to assure them that it is they who, in virtue of this belief, possess eternal life. The question where eternal life was to be found, as has been said above, had probably been the subject of animated debate, the seceders claiming that it was to be found in their circle by reason of the higher teaching which they had embraced. But John affirms that the seceders, by denying the incarnation of the Son of God, did not truly believe in His person (which is what is meant by “the name” in such contexts as the present) and so had no claim on the eternal life which was to be had in Him alone. While this contemporary situation may have been uppermost in John’s mind, however, his affirmation has a wider reference. Because of its abiding validity this verse has remained a classic and effective text conveying the assurance of eternal life in all generations to those who believe in the name of the Son of God.
5:14 And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: 5:15 and if we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him.
This is the fourth occurrence of “boldness” or confidence (Greek parrhēsia) in 1 John (cf. 2:28; 3:21; 4:17 for the other occurrences). Here the confidence which is particularly in the writer’s mind is related to the free access and freedom of speech which the children of God enjoy as they come to their Father to present their requests to Him. There is a close relation between these words and the promise of Jesus to the disciples in the upper room: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13 f.; cf. 15:7, 16; 16:23 f.). If in the Gospel and the Epistle alike it is not always clear whether the request is made to the Father or to the Son, this is because of the perfect unity subsisting between the Father and the Son. It is through the Son that the children approach the Father, and it is in the Son that the Father’s grace is conveyed to the children. With this confidence, the children know that the Father’s hearing of their prayers is synonymous with His answering their prayers. “Constantly,” said C. H. Spurgeon, “we hear God addressed as ‘the hearer and answerer of prayer,’ a mere vulgar and useless pleonasm, for the Scripture idea of God’s hearing prayer is just his answering it—‘O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.’”203
5:16 If any man see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God will give him life for them that sin not unto death.* There is a sin** unto death: not concerning this do I say that he should make request. 5:17 All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin** not unto death.
* Or, he shall ask and shall give him life, even to them etc.
** Or, sin.
After the general assurance about the answering of prayer in verses 14 and 15 comes this special encouragement to pray for a fellow Christian in spiritual need. The present participle “sinning” may denote engagement in a sinful course rather than committing an isolated act of sin. We cannot be sure, and in the one case as in the other, the “brother” could well be regarded as standing in the need of prayer. The question arises what the distinction is between “sin unto death” and sin which is “not unto death” (since “not” represents the Greek negative mē, it is implied that the reference is to the kind or class of sin which is “not unto death”). We should not think of the distinction between venial and mortal sin as this has been traditionally elaborated in moral theology.204 The distinction is one which John’s readers were expected to recognize. But it is difficult to see how they could recognize the distinction except by the result.
Elsewhere in the New Testament instances occur of sins which caused the death of the persons committing them, when these persons were church members. Ananias and Sapphira come to mind (Acts 5:1-11); the incestuous man at Corinth is possibly another example, if he suffered “the destruction of the flesh” in the literal sense (1 Corinthians 5:5). And those other Corinthian Christians who are said to have “fallen asleep” because of their profanation of the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:30) certainly provide further examples. It may be, then, that by “sin unto death” John means an act or course of sin which has resulted in the death of the sinning brother. If so, his words “I do not say that one is to pray for that”205 (RSV) amount to a deprecation of praying for the dead. Another possibility is that he has apostasy in mind.206 In that case, he does not encourage prayer for the restoration of those who, like the false teachers of 2:18-23, had manifested the spirit of Antichrist and shown where they properly belonged by quitting the fellowship in which alone eternal life was to be found. With regard to such men, John may have felt much as the writer to the Hebrews did in another situation, that it was “impossible to renew them to repentance.”207 Renunciation of the apostolic witness to Christ and His saving power was indeed a “sin unto death.”
Apart from such an exceptional case (whichever form it took), John gives his readers every encouragement to pray for their fellow believers whom they see falling into sin. Such prayer is in line with the ministry of their Advocate with the Father. Foreseeing the certainty of Peter’s fall, their Lord on the eve of His passion assured that self-confident apostle of His intercession: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32). This too was an example of a service which His disciples could perform for one another, with similar happy effects in those who were thus prayed for. “All unrighteousness (RSV, NEB: “all wrongdoing”) is sin,” but not every unrighteous act is irremediably mortal, if it be repented of. The intercession of a fellow Christian may be a most effective means of inducing repentance and reliance on the promise given earlier in this letter: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
5:18 We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but he that was begotten of God keepeth him,* and the evil one toucheth him not. 5:19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know him that is true,
* Or, himself.
As he draws his exhortation to a conclusion, John reminds his readers of some of the basic articles of the faith which they have held “from the beginning.” He has already told them that their knowledge derives from the anointing they have received from “the Holy One” (2:20), and now he mentions some of the most important things that they “know.” It is significant that the first of these underlines the ethical implication of their faith—the child of God does not sin. Earlier in the letter John has said that the child of God does not sin because he abides in God (3:6, 9), and there we saw that he wants to make it quite clear that anyone who leads a life of sin is shown thereby not to belong to the family of God. Here the reason the child of God does not sin is expressed in different terms; it is because the Son of God keeps him, protecting him against the designs of the enemy of souls.
The adjective clause “whosoever is begotten of God” represents a Greek construction with the perfect participle passive gegennēmenos, and refers to every child of God. The expression “he that was begotten of God” represents the construction with the aorist participle passive gennētheis, and denotes the one and only Son of God, as RSV indicates by (exceptionally) capitalizing the antecedent pronoun “He.” (NEB makes the meaning equally clear by rendering more freely, “We know that no child of God is a sinner; it is the Son of God who keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot touch him.”208) The Received Text obscures the sense by reading “himself” (Greek heauton or hauton) after “keepeth” instead of “him” (auton); hence the misleading rendering of KJV, “he that is begotten of God keepeth himself,” as though the subject of “keepeth” were the child of God (as at the beginning of the verse) and not (as in fact it is) the Son of God.
The second thing that “we know” is more personal—“we know that we are of God”—and the basis of this knowledge can only be that the tests of eternal life have been applied and the results have been positive. To claim to belong to the family of God is one thing; to exhibit the marks of His family, in the light of the criteria of obedience, love and perseverance, is another thing. In the case of John and his “little children,” these criteria have been satisfied. As for those not included in the family of God, they belong to the godless “world” (in the sense of 2:15-17; 3:1), which lies in the grip of “the evil one,” called in the Gospel “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30). As this ruler, on Jesus’ own testimony, has no authority over Him, so he has none over those who by faith share in Jesus’ victory over the world. But those who are still dominated by the standards of the world organized without reference to God are enslaved by its ruler and cannot share in the victory which has overcome him. This passing world order and its ruler are on their way out, to be superseded by the eternal order and its Ruler; the subjects of the latter will abide forever (cf. 2:17).
In the world which God created man has been made in his Creator’s image to represent Him to the rest of the created world. But man has abdicated his dominion over the world as God’s representative in favor of a dominion which he imagines is autonomous, but which in fact has let in the powers of evil and anarchy. Nevertheless the created world, as distinct from the transient world order, remains God’s world, and through the Son whom the Father sent as Savior of the world (4:14) man’s rightful dominion under God is to be re-established and the usurpation of “the evil one” brought to an end.209
The third thing that “we know” is that “the Son of God has come”—“come in flesh,” that is to say (4:2), come moreover “through water and blood” (5:6)—and has given us spiritual intelligence, a faculty of perception or apprehension (Greek dianoia) which far surpasses the “knowledge” cultivated by the Gnostic seceders, for through it we come to the personal knowledge not only of truth in the abstract (2:21) but of “the True One” Himself. Whether, as “fathers,” they know Him as the One who is “from the beginning” or, as “children,” know Him as “the Father” (2:13 f.), it is through the Son of God that they have acquired this knowledge: He has made known the God whom no one has ever seen (John 1:18).
5:20b and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. 5:21 My little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Not only has the Son of God made the true God known—through faith-union with Him, His people have their being in “the True One.” To abide in the Father and to abide in the Son are two ways of stating the one experience: “if what you heard from the beginning abides in you,” John has already told them, “then you will abide in the Son and in the Father” (2:24). It may be that the seceders claimed a special part in the Father, but since they denied the Son His true status, their claim was disallowed, for it is only through the Son that men and women may dwell in God, just as it is only through the Son that God is pleased to dwell in men. “If a man loves me,” says Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, “he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home (monē, cognate with menō, “abide”) with him” (John 14:23).
John, in closing, takes up the theme of his opening paragraph, where he assured his readers that the fellowship which he shared with them was fellowship “with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” As in the prologue to the letter, Jesus Christ is described as “the Eternal Life which was the Father and was made manifest to us,” so here He is characterized as “the true God and eternal life.” So fully is the Father expressed in His Son, that what is predicated of the former can be predicated of the latter: “what God was, the Word was” (John 1:1, NEB). Our Lord is rightly acclaimed as “true God of true God.” C. K. Barrett says, in commenting on the first verse of the Gospel of John, “The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true the book is blasphemous.”210 Since, then, it is only in the true God and in His Son Jesus Christ that eternal life resides, it is urgently necessary to distinguish truth from error. The “idols” or false appearances (Greek eidōla) against which John warns his readers to be on their guard are not material images. They are false conceptions of God.211 Any conception of Him that is at variance with His self-revelation in Christ is an idol. Hence, says John, since you have received the truth, have nothing to do with counterfeits. Beware of imitations and refuse all substitutes.212
NOTE ON THE “THREE HEAVENLY WITNESSES”
The sentence which appears in the KJV as 1 John 5:7 (“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one”) is no part of the original text of the letter. It appears in a treatise written by Priscillian (a Spanish Christian executed on a charge of heresy in AD 385) or by one of his followers.213 It may have originated as a comment on the authentic passage about the three witnesses (1 John 5:8). At any rate, in the course of the fifth century it was incorporated from the margin into the text of an Old Latin (pre-Vulgate) manuscript. It was not incorporated into the text of the Vulgate until about AD 800, but once incorporated it remained there securely, and the balancing words “in earth” were added in the following sentence.
When Erasmus published his first printed edition of the Greek New Testament (1516) he was attacked for omitting the “three heavenly witnesses,” but he replied reasonably enough that he found them in no Greek manuscript. Rather incautiously he added that, if a Greek manuscript could be produced which contained the passage, he would include it. In due course such a Greek manuscript was produced—by no means an ancient one, for it was written about 1520! Erasmus knew that this was no evidence at all—the passage had plainly been translated into Greek from the Latin Vulgate by the writer of this manuscript—but he had given his promise, and he was a man of peace, and so in his next edition (the third edition, 1522) he included it, adding a footnote in which he complained that the manuscript had been written with the express purpose of putting him on the spot. From Erasmus’s third edition the passage was translated into German (by Luther) and into English (by Tyndale); it was taken over into other early printed editions of the Greek New Testament, and hence appears in the “Received Text” and in the King James Version.
The Greek manuscript which was produced for the discomfiture of Erasmus is now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.214 Today we know of three other Greek manuscripts which contain the passage: one of the fifteenth century,215 one of the sixteenth,216 and another in which it is added in a seventeenth-century hand in the margin of a twelfth-century manuscript.217
The official Sixto-Clementine edition of the Vulgate published in 1592 contained the passage, and therefore its authenticity was for long accepted de rigueur in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1897 the Holy Office issued a ruling, confirmed by Pope Leo XIII, that the genuineness of the passage could not be safely denied. The American “Confraternity Edition” of the English New Testament (a revision of the Rheims-Challoner version), published in 1941, included it.218 A footnote points out that “according to the evidence of many manuscripts, and the majority of commentators,” it does not belong to the true text, but adds, “The Holy See reserves to itself the right to pass finally on the origin of the present reading” (i.e. the reading which preserves the reference to the three heavenly witnesses). As late as 1945, it was included in the translation of the New Testament prepared by R. A. Knox under archiepiscopal direction; a footnote was added: “This verse does not occur in any good Greek manuscript. But the Latin manuscripts may have preserved the true text.” In fact, the best Latin manuscripts also lack the verse. It is perhaps a measure of the advance made in twenty years that the verse is absent both from the Catholic Edition of the RSV (1965) and from the Jerusalem Bible (1966). There are one or two Protestant quarters where rearguard actions in defense of the verse are still attempted, but evidence is evidence.
Although the verse came to be valued as a proof text for the doctrine of the Trinity when once its place in the Vulgate and Received texts was established, the validity of this doctrine is completely independent of it. The classic formulations of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381) and Chalcedon (451) were the work of theologians who knew nothing of the “three heavenly witnesses.”
187 G. G. Findlay, Fellowship in the Life Eternal (London, 1909), p. 368.
188 Confessing Jesus to be the Son of God is tantamount to confessing Him to be the Christ (1 John 2:22; 5:1). The twofold formulation is brought together by the Evangelist in John 20:31: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”—where the designation “the Christ” may be appropriate to Jewish readers (cf. W. C. van Unnik, “The Purpose of St. John’s Gospel,” in The Gospels Reconsidered, Oxford, 1960, pp. 167 ff.) and the designation “the Son of God” (i.e. the One in whom God is fully revealed) for Gentile readers.
189 Cf. Augustine, Against Maximin ii. 22. 3. J. Massingberd Ford (“‘Mingled Blood’ from the Side of Christ,” NTS 15, 1968-69, pp. 337 f.) sees in John 19:34 a reference to Jesus as the Passover Lamb, and “cannot correlate this interpretation to any other references to water and blood in the Johannine corpus” (namely those in 1 John 5:6, 8)
190 So Tertullian, On Baptism, 16. Several authorities, including Codices Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, with a few minuscules and some editions of the Latin, Syriac and Coptic versions, read “water and blood and Spirit,” adding the witness of Pentecost to that of the baptism and the passion.
191 The preposition translated “by” in the first half of the verse is dia (“through,” “by means of”); that translated “with” three times in the second half of the verse is en (used in its instrumental sense, which is practically synonymous with dia followed by the genitive).
192 J. Calvin takes a different line: “I do not doubt that by the words ‘water and blood’ he refers to the ancient rites of the Law” (Commentary on John 11-21 and 1 John, trans. T. H. L. Parker, Edinburgh, 1961, p. 302).
193 His witness in Scripture is a material factor in the confirmation of the physical death of Jesus in John 19:36 f.
194 The Latin Vulgate probably bears witness to a text which omitted the second occurrence of “Spirit” and read, “And it is the Spirit that bears witness that he (i.e. Christ) is the truth.”
195 The words “in earth” following “there are three that bear witness” in KJV are a late addition made necessary by the insertion of the spurious text about the three that bear witness “in heaven” immediately before verse 8. See pp. f.
196 Die Tradition und der Charakter des ersten Johannesbriefes (Tübingen, 1957), pp. 147 ff.; cf. T. W. Manson, “Entry into Membership of the Early Church,” JTS 48 (1947), pp. 25 ff. Manson points to the case of Cornelius and his household, who received the Spirit (evidenced by their speaking with tongues) before baptism (Acts 10:44-48; contrast the order in Acts 2:38; 8:15 f.; 19:5 f.), and suggests that Paul regarded the utterance of “Abba Father!” (Romans 8:15 f.; Galatians 4:6) or “Jesus is Lord!” (Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3) as sufficient evidence of reception of the Spirit to satisfy the requirements for baptism.
197 This is a Jewish missionary document of Essene affinities, in which the name of Joseph’s Egyptian wife Asenath is given a Hebrew spelling and etymology Aseneth, perhaps to make it mean “female Essene” (“Esseness”). She is treated as a proselyte, and undergoes an initiation in which “anointing” (or “renewal by God’s Holy Spirit”) is accompanied by the “eating of the bread of life” and “the drinking of the blessed cup of immortality.” Apart from the “anointing,” this has little enough relevance to 1 John.
198 In the early Christian recension of the pseudepigraphic Testament of Levi (one of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs), Levi describes how “seven men in white raiment” install him in the priestly office: “the first anointed me with holy oil,…the second washed me with pure water and fed me with bread and wine…” (8. 4 f.)—in which the influence of this threefold Christian initiation has been detected (cf. T. W. Manson, “Miscellanea Apocalyptica III,” JTS 48, 1947, pp. 59 ff.).
199 Greek pisteuō eis, as in John 3:36, etc.; see commentary on and commentary on
200 The reading of KJV, RSV, NEB, “in himself” (Greek en hautō or en heautō), is preferable in this context to RV “in him” (Greek en autō); the difference in Greek may hang on nothing more than the presence or absence of an aspirate, not marked in uncial writing.
201 Manuscript authorities are divided between the present pisteuēte (“that you may hold the faith,” NEB text) and the aorist pisteusēte (“that you may come to believe,” NEB margin).
202 Greek pisteuō eis, as in John 1:12; 2:23; 3:18, etc.; see commentary on and commentary on .
203 Lectures to my Students, abridged one-volume edition (London, 1954), p. 65.
204 The RSV renders “sin unto death” as “mortal sin;” NEB as “deadly sin”—possibly (but not certainly) in allusion to Article XVI: “Not every deadly sin willingly committed after baptism, is sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable….”
205 The rendering “not concerning this do I say that he should make request” is a flagrant example of RV pedantry; it is more appropriate to a schoolboy’s “crib” than to a version of the Bible intended for public use.
206 Yet another suggestion is that he means a sin which, like the “highhanded” sin of Numbers 15:30, can be expiated only by death; this is improbable.
207 Hebrews 6:4-6; cf. Hebrews 10:26-29. Others have compared the sentence passed by our Lord against those who attributed His power to expel demons to possession by Beelzebul instead of to the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28): “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:29). They too were guilty of a deliberate refusal of the witness of God.
208 Similarly TEV: “We know that no child of God keeps on sinning, for the Son of God keeps him safe, and the Evil One cannot harm him.”
209 Cf. Romans 8:19 ff.
210 C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John (London, 1955), p. 130.
211 Are all “conceptions” of God false, falling under the general ban on “graven images?” The son of a colleague of mine, directed in his Divinity class at school to write an essay on “My Concept of God,” queried the appropriateness of the subject. “My father says that any concept of God is an idol,” he told his teacher. That is certainly true if we allow any concept or conception of God to take the place of God Himself.
212 The Byzantine witnesses and Received Text add “Amen” (so KJV). This is probably due to liturgical usage when the public reading of the epistle in church was concluded with “Amen.”
213 Instantius, according to G. Morin, “Pro Instantio,” Revue Benedictine 30 (1913), pp. 153 ff.; but cf. the reply by J. Martin, “Priscillianus oder Instantius?” in Historisches Jahrbuch der Dörres-Gesellschaft 47 (1927), pp. 237 ff. The treatise is the Liber Apologeticus (Tract. 1.4; CSEL xvii. 6): “as John says, ‘there are three that say witness in earth, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and these three (agree) in one; and there are three that say witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one in Christ Jesus’” (from which it will be seen that the intrusive words originally followed the authentic text about the three witnesses).
214 In the catalogue of Greek NT minuscules its serial number is now 61.
215 Minuscule 629.
216 A manuscript copy of the Greek text of the Complutensian Polyglot, which included the passage (translated, of course, from Latin) when it was printed in 1513-14.
217 Minuscule 88. See B. M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (Oxford, 1964), pp. 101 f.
218 This was because of the Vulgate basis of the Confraternity Version of 1941. The revised edition of 1970—in The New American Bible—is based on the scientifically established Greek text.