The Three Witnesses
THE THREE WITNESSES
1 JOHN 5:1-12
To believe is life, to disbelieve is death. Do you believe? If so, does your life show it?
“Christ” in Greek is not a proper name but a title, and a most unusual one for John’s contemporaries. The challenge is to believe that Jesus is God’s Messiah, ie his king and representative. Once again we have the stress that love is a relationship within the family (5:1). As such, it is not primarily emotional but derives its nature from God. If we have the right relationship with God and “obey his commandments” (5:2), our love to God’s children will look after itself, because obedience is a sign of our love to God. Obedience is “not burdensome” (5:3), because we share a common character with God (see also Matthew 11:30). Yet we may never think that the Christian life is something merely automatic. There is the continuous conflict with the world, which demands the continued use of “our faith” (5:4), which must give Jesus his full position (5:5).
The verse numbering of contemporary versions hides the fact that 5:7 of the KJV has been omitted, certainly correctly. The statement about the three witnesses in heaven is found in Latin sources in the fifth century, but no Greek manuscript before the thirteenth century contains it. With its omission we find the justification for our confession of Jesus as the Son of God. John’s thought is hard to follow in detail, and there is point in Law’s view (The Tests of Life) that we have “a summary … intended to recall fuller oral exposition.”
While “water and blood” (5:6) have some relation to John 19:34, the different order shows that primarily it refers to his baptism and death. In contrast, the reference to the Spirit is in the present and must refer to his witness in the church. So the “three witnesses” (5:8) are the Spirit (mentioned first!), baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The blessing on the sacraments, when rightly used, from generation to generation, shows that God has approved of them, and so the three are God’s testimony (5:9). Where people accept God’s objective testimony, they receive a subjective inner testimony as well. People may disbelieve us with impunity, but to disbelieve God is to charge him with being a liar. To believe is life, to disbelieve is death (5:12).