Go ahead and take your Bibles and turn to 1 John 5:6-12. We are nearing the end of 1 John and our series “Love One Another.” And we’ve talked a lot in the last few messages about love for one another. But today’s message is not so much about love for one another, instead it’s about the testimony of Jesus Christ that we can either receive or reject. 

Now just as a head’s up, today’s message is going to be heavy on explanation and light on exhortation. Along the way I will encourage you and exhort you as time allows. But this is a passage of Scripture that requires a lot of explaining. 

So I want to encourage all of you to lean in and listen up as we go through some deep water here together. And where there are places in this text that need clarification along the way, I’ll take some time to explain and unpack what John is saying. And my desire is that we will all be edified and encouraged as a result of our study.

The title of today’s message is “The Testimony.” And what I want to do in these next few minutes is ask and answer three questions for you. And you can read those on the screen right now or see them in your notes:

1) Who testifies concerning the Son (5:6-8)?

2) What happens to those who reject this testimony (5:9-10)?

3) What happens to those who receive this testimony (5:11-12)?

 There’s a divide that is created here between those who receive this testimony and those who reject this testimony. And the destiny of those two parties is radically different. The question is which side of the ledger are you on. Are you a rejector or a receiver of the testimony concerning Christ? We’ll get to that in a second, but first let’s address the first question.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) Who testifies concerning the Son (5:6-8)?

Well John gives us three testifiers in this passage. Three witness-bearers, you might say. Three corroborating witnesses… 

The Water

The Blood

The Spirit

Imagine a courtroom setting where John pulls together three witnesses to testify to Christ. And these witnesses aren’t exactly your normal witnesses: The water, the blood, and the Spirit. But their testimony is compelling. John says in verse 6. 

6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; 

You might say, what does that mean that Jesus came by water and blood? Well hold that thought, we’ll come back to it in a second. 

6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 

7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. 

So let’s just make some preliminary observations here about this passage… an intriguing, yet admittedly confusing, passage. First of all, the three testifiers (the water, the blood, and the Spirit) are all in agreement as to who the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is. It’s not like the water and the blood are in disagreement. It’s not like the blood and the water say one thing, and the Spirit says something else. No, all three are in agreement. 

Verse 8 says,

8 the Spirit and the water and the blood… these three agree. 

They are in agreement that Jesus is the Christ (verse 6), and that Jesus is the Son of God (verse 5). And it’s significant that there is more than just one witness here. 

In the OT, a single witness wasn’t enough to establish a matter. You needed two or even better three witnesses. Deuteronomy 19:15 says, “Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.” Similarly Paul says, “Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (2 Cor 13:1). Well the Apostle John is consistent with that Jewish expectation here. He says there are three witnesses that agree (the water, the blood, and the Spirit) as to who Christ is. 

  Secondly you’ll notice that the Spirit that John refers to is a capital “S” Spirit. I think the ESV was right to capitalize that “S,” because we aren’t talking about Jesus’s human spirit or some other “spirit of the age” or something like that. John is talking about the Capital “S” Spirit, the Holy Spirit. 

And it shouldn’t surprise us that the Holy Spirit is testifying about Christ, because Jesus said himself that the Holy Spirit would come after his death to bear witness to him. In fact Jesus said, “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).

Thirdly John says Jesus came by water and by blood, but he doesn’t say that Jesus came by the Spirit. That’s important. The water and the blood are representative of Jesus’s life on planet earth, but the Spirit is not. The Spirit is separate from Jesus, which makes sense if you have an orthodox view of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit. One God in three persons. The Father sent the Son, and the Spirit bears witness to the Son. That’s all part of our Trinitarian belief and confession.

Now I do need to comment on this. Some of you might have some additional words in your translation of verse 7. For instance the KJV has the following statement, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, 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: and these three agree in one.” This is referred to as the Johannine comma, and it’s a very hotly debated issue in Christian circles. Is this part of John’s original writing or not? I don’t think it is. In other words, it’s not θεόπνευστος (“breathed out by God” – 2 Tim 3:16-17) like the rest of Scripture.  

Now the statement is certainly true. So let me state clearly that I believe in the Trinity. In fact, I’ll say it stronger than that—no orthodox Christian believer can deny the Trinity. That’s how strongly I feel about that issue. And yet, this statement about the Father, The Word and the Holy Ghost in 1 John 5 is not in the earliest, most reliable Greek manuscripts. 

And for the record, I love the KJV. I grew up on it. But what happened here, most likely, is that an overzealous scribe used this opportunity to insert a Trinitarian statement into the Greek text (or the Latin Vulgate) in order to substantiate that doctrine. And it got passed down to those who translated the Bible into English in the sixteenth century. 

By the way no Greek text before the fourteenth century has that statement. That’s one of the ways that we discern, in the discipline of textual criticism, that this was not part of John’s original writing. And so the better English translations of the better Greek texts omit that statement. And simply have… 

7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.

Now beyond those preliminary observations of this text, we still have a difficult issue here. What does it mean that Jesus came by water and by blood? And what does it mean that the water and the blood testify concerning Jesus Christ?

Well there are three views that predominate. Augustine and many church fathers believed that this was a reference to the blood and the water that flowed from Jesus’s side after his death. If you remember, after Jesus gave up his spirit on the cross, the Romans plunged a spear into his side and blood and water flowed (John 19:34). This gave evidence that Jesus was indeed dead, so they didn’t have to break his legs. Now I love Augustine, and I’m cautious about disagreeing with him, but I don’t agree with his interpretation of 1 John 5. That connection doesn’t make sense with what John says in verse 6 that Jesus Christ came by water and blood. Besides John says water and then blood in this passage as two separate testimonies, whereas in the crucifixion passage, John says blood and water flowed together, meaning they are a unit and not separate testimonies. So I don’t think Augustine’s interpretation is correct. 

Others including Luther, saw water and blood as reference to the two sacraments/ordinances in the church. The blood symbolizes communion, and the water symbolizes baptism. And these two ordinances give testimony to Jesus Christ. Now again I love Luther, and I’m cautious about disagreeing with them too, but I don’t think that’s what John has in mind here in this passage… not directly anyway. He says that Jesus “came by water and by blood.” Something more than just the church ordinances must be in mind here. There are historical events and past historical realities that John is describing with these metaphors “water” and “blood.” What are they? 

The best understanding of this passage is that John was referencing both the beginning and the end of Jesus’s earthly ministry—his birth (Jesus coming by water) and his death (Jesus coming by blood). Both of those events are recorded in the Scriptures. These are the brackets of Jesus’s life, and we celebrate them with the two important events on the church calendar: Christmas and Easter. At Christmas we celebrate his birth, that is his coming by water. At Easter we celebrate his coming by blood—his death and resurrection. Also we recognize that between those brackets of Jesus’s birth and death, Jesus lived as a fully human being without any interruption in his earthly ministry. 

And just to give some support to this idea that “water” meant birth. [I think it’s pretty clear that blood meant death]. Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” That’s a well-known passage from John 3, And Nicodemus responded saying, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:1-6).

To be born of water is a reference to being born of the flesh. He’s talking about physical birth. And John has already stated clearly that Jesus came in human flesh. In fact John said, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (4:2-3).

So what John is saying in 1 John 5 is that Jesus came by water (his birth) and Jesus came by blood (his death), and they both (his life and death) testify to his identity as the Christ, the Son of God. And your salvation is dependent on faith in Jesus’s life and death as the Son of God. 

The reason this is emphasized so strongly here is because John was countering some heretics in his day, who had put forth the notion that Jesus’s divinity was present at his birth but wasn’t present at his death. Or vice versa.

For instance, there was a man named Cerinthus who had a group of followers in the first century who (get this!) distinguished between “Jesus” and “the Christ.” Cerinthus held that Jesus was just a man born to Mary and Joseph, and his Christ-hood was activated at his baptism! But then it was separated from him at his crucifixion! I don’t have any idea how that works. That’s ridiculous to me. And it’s possible that John was addressing this fundamental error as part of this letter. John is saying to Cerinthus and any other heretics that precede or proceed from him, “Jesus was the Christ from the cradle to the grave and even after the grave. He didn’t become the Christ. He was born the Christ.” 

Other heretics believed that Jesus was born a regular man, but then he assumed a divine state at some point in his life. We’ve talked about this already with some of the proto-gnostic beliefs that circulated in John’s day where people believed that Jesus just floated down as a phantom being and appeared to be human or took on human flesh for a time and then floated back to heaven. So people were saying, “He might have been divine for some portion of his life, but Jesus wasn’t fully God at the crucifixion. Because how could he be? How could God die on a cross?”

But the truth of the matter that John wants to make clear is that Jesus was fully God and fully man all throughout his life… at his birth, at his baptism, at his death, and at his resurrection. Jesus was and Jesus is fully God and fully man! This, by the way, is not a trivial matter. Our entire doctrine of salvation hinges on Jesus’s identity as the Perfect God-Man who absorbs the wrath of God into himself and thereby takes away our sins. 

Sanja and I had a good friend in Croatia who was doing a good work of evangelism among young people in the capitol city of Zagreb. And we were really supportive of all that he was doing. But then he recruited a group of leaders who believed that Jesus wasn’t fully God. They thought, “Oh he was just a good man who was worthy of our admiration and even imitation.” That’s essentially the belief of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, if you are familiar with that religious group. And that ministry was completely derailed by those individuals who had a false view of who Christ was. So this is not a trivial matter. And these false views of Jesus aren’t just a thing of the past that date back to John’s day. These fallacies still get circulated in our day. And so here’s what you need to believe, Christian. Here’s the truth about Jesus—Jesus Christ is God incarnate who was born into this world as God’s Son and died on the cross as God’s Son. And there was never any interruption of his deity or his humanity throughout his life (birth, baptism, death, and resurrection). He was and he is fully God and fully man.

Now not only do we have the water and the blood as testimonies to the Son, but we also have the Spirit inside of us. Not only do we have these two external and historical witnesses to Christ (the water and the blood), we also have an internal witness (the Spirit). And John says these three agree and testify that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So in answer to that first question: “Who testifies concerning the Son?” The answer is that there are three that testify concerning the Son: the water, the blood, and the Spirit. Now we want to address the second question, namely…

2) What happens to those who reject this testimony (5:9-10)?

What happens to those who reject Christ’s life, death, and resurrection? What happens to those who reject the testimony of the Spirit that Jesus was in fact the Son of God? Well the answer that John gives us is this… 

They make God out to be a liar

Can we all agree that that is a bad thing to do? John says,

9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. 

So there’s the testimony of men, which is not insignificant. And then there’s the testimony of God. Is God’s testimony greater than man’s testimony? 

9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater

By the way, there are “men” who testify concerning Jesus Christ. The Jewish historian Josephus, a first century scholar, who was not a Christian affirmed Jesus’s resurrection. He was probably the most respected historian of Jesus’s era and he said this: “When Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned [Jesus] to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day… [This is not in the Bible, by the way. This is a non-believer’s historical record of what happened!]… for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

Not only do we have Josephus’s testimony (the testimony of men), but we also have the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Bible. These are the testimonies of men, but for those of us who believe in the inspiration of Scripture, we know that they are more than just the testimonies of men. Their records are θεόπνευστος. These are the testimonies of God. And the Spirit of God has confirmed these testimonies to us. 

9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. 

In other words, whoever believes in the Son of God has the Holy Spirit residing inside of him bearing continual witness to God’s Son. We’ve talked about this already at some length in 1 John. 

1 John 4:13 – “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” 

1 John 3:24 – “And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”

So not only is this testimony external to us in the Scriptures, but it’s internal as well. It’s inside of us. It’s inside of those who believe, because…

10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God [though] has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. 

That’s a pretty strong statement that John makes here. It’s sobering for us to read it. 

Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar. 

Just think about that for a second. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar. Do you think about unbelief like that? Do you consider unbelief a defamation of God’s truthful character? 

John Stott writes this, “Unbelief is not a misfortune to be pitied; it is a sin to be deplored. Its sinfulness lies in the fact that it contradicts the word of the one true God and thus attributes falsehood to him.” If we don’t receive the truth, then we’re saying that the truth-teller, God himself, is a liar. 

I think that we as Christians can be conditioned to think (especially in the postmodern world that we live in today), “O Bless their heart, they don’t believe.” “You believe your thing; I’ll believe my thing.” “You believe what you want to believe. I’ll believe what I want to believe.” “No biggie.” “What’s good for you is good for you! What’s good for me is good for me!” 

No, that’s not how John sees it. To reject the truth about Christ… to refuse the testimony about Christ found here… found in God’s Word… and found through the testimony of the Holy Spirit… if you don’t believe that, you make God out to be a liar. That’s not good. “Unbelief is not a misfortune to be pitied; it is a sin to be deplored.”

Imagine this if you would for a second. Let’s say that you were at Walmart the other day. And while you were there, you saw a crime take place. A man pulled out a gun and robbed the store, and you watched the whole thing. And then when the detective came up to you afterwards you gave a full testimony of what happened. And the detective took down your statement and then said to you afterwards, “O Bless your heart. It didn’t happen the way you said. But thanks for telling me your story!” What’s that detective saying about you? He’s essentially calling you a liar, right? He’s definitely not saying, “O you have your truth, and I have my truth. And they are both true.” Nobody gets all postmodern when it comes to facts like that. 

And let’s say that the detective took down the statements of two other individuals and they said the same thing that you said. And instead of believing you and these other two witnesses, the detective says, “Nah, it didn’t happen that way. There was no gun. There was no robber. You guys are just doing the best you can… but you’re not accurate.” How would you feel about that? What’s that detective saying about your testimony? 

Now that’s exactly what John is saying about those who reject God’s testimony. God has testified through the water (Jesus’s life) and the blood (Jesus’s death) and the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the Son of God. God has revealed that to us through these powerful testimonies. And yet still some reject that and say, “Nah, I don’t believe it.” “Yeah, that might be true for you but it’s not true for me.” What’s that person saying about God… even unwittingly saying about God? They’re implicitly calling God a liar. 

So what happens to those who reject this testimony? Yes, they make God out to be a liar. And here’s why this is so important, not only do they miss out on a chance to receive eternal life, but they also receive instead eternal death and eternal separation from God.

This is not a trivial matter, folks. This is a matter of eternal life and eternal death. Do you receive and believe the testimony about Jesus Christ, or do you reject it?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now here’s the good news. The bad news is that those who reject the testimony about Jesus make God out to be a liar, and they are condemned to an eternity separated from God. But the good news is this. Whoever receives the testimony concerning Jesus… the person who receives that testimony and by faith believes the truth that Jesus is the Christ, and that Jesus is the Son of God… that person receives eternal life. 

3) What happens to those who receive this testimony (5:11-12)?

They receive eternal life

Belief in Christ means eternal life. Unbelief means eternal death. Faith in Christ means reconciliation with God. No faith in Christ means eternal separation from God. If we receive the testimony about Jesus we have a relationship with God. If we reject the testimony about Jesus, we make God out to be a liar, and God’s wrath is still upon us. And we will suffer the penalty of that wrath eternally.

John writes… look at verse 11 with me in your Bible.

11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 

So, who has eternal life? Whoever has the Son has eternal life! If you have the Son, you have life. If you don’t have the Son, you don’t have life, because there is no life apart from the Son. Eternal life is not some entity that you purchase; it’s not some commodity that you exchange on the stock-market. Eternal life is bound up in Christ. If you have Christ, you have life. If you don’t have Christ, you don’t have life. I heard a pastor put it this way once, “Eternal life is not a commodity to be received; it’s a relationship to be experienced.” 

This is a really great summary of the gospel in these last two verses, verses 11-12. And if you would, let me summarize these last two verses in a really memorable succinct statement. Here it is. 

Know Jesus; Know Life. No Jesus; No Life.

That’s it, right there! That’s the essence of the Christian gospel. To know Jesus is to know life and life eternal. No Jesus; No life.

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

So, do you know him? Do you know him? And by the way, to know him doesn’t just mean to know about him. Plenty of people know about Jesus, but they don’t know him. In other words they haven’t trusted in Jesus’s death as payment for their sins. Have you trusted Christ in this way? Have you acknowledged that Jesus’s shed blood has paid the penalty for your sins?

It’s interesting that this passage speaks about the blood of Jesus being a testimony. In some circles today talk about Jesus’s blood has become distasteful. For instance, “at a conference in Minneapolis in 1994, sponsored by the World Council of Churches, Christian soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) was attacked as promoting violence. A father (God) killing his son (Jesus) was a formula for child abuse. One speaker at this conference, named Delores Williams, did not hide her agenda when she said, “I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all. I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff. We just need to listen to the god within [us].”

Similarly Steve Chalke and Alan Mann in their book, The Lost Message of Jesus, have referred to the Christian doctrine of atonement as “a form of cosmic child abuse.” Do we really need a Christ dying on the cross for our sins? 

David Walls and Max Anders write, “Many people think we need only the gospel of self-esteem, or self-help, or good works, or humanitarianism. To speak of the blood of Christ becomes distasteful. [But] if the cross were not necessary, then the crucifixion was merely a heroic example of sacrifice—a ‘cost’ out of proportion to the ‘benefit.’”

Cornelius Plantinga says, “for the Christian church to ‘ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin… is to cut the nerve of the gospel.’ To deny the necessity of the cross is to fall into the same error as the antichrists did in the Apostle John’s day.”

You know all this discussion just makes me think, “When did it become distasteful to celebrate the blood of Jesus that covers over our sin?” Because even as a kid I would sing about the goodness of Jesus’s blood. Even as a kid I would sing and celebrate this…

What can wash away my sin? 

Nothing but the blood of Jesus;

What can make me whole again? 

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh! precious is the flow

That makes me white as snow

No other fount I know

Nothing but the blood of Jesus

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ll close with this. John says in this passage that there are three that testify that Jesus is the Christ 

…the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. 

Now some people might say, “Meh, is that all? “Can I get just one more testimony?” “You know if God did this miracle than I’d believe.” “If God just did this for me, then I’d accept him.” 

I’ve actually heard people say, “When God does this, then I’ll believe.” And that reminds me of the parable that Jesus told about the rich man and Lazarus. If you remember the parable, the rich man who sought his own selfish pursuits in this life goes to hades, and the poor man Lazarus goes to Abraham’s side.

And the rich man is suffering in hades and says to Abraham, “I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ [Abraham] said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead’” (Luke 16:27-31).

In Jesus’s case not only do we have Moses and the Prophets that testified concerning him, but Jesus also did in fact rise from the dead. We have the testimony of Jesus’s life. We have the testimony of Jesus’s death. We have the testimony of Jesus’s resurrection! We have the testimony of the water, the blood, and the Spirit. There’s nothing else that we need. God has supplied all of it. 

The only question is, “Have we received that testimony or not?” Have we received it and received the eternal life that comes with faith in the Son of God? Or do we reject the testimony, making God out to be a liar, and setting ourselves up for an eternity separated from him?  

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Do we have him? Do you have him?