Bible Study on 1John 5, verses 6 to 9, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost

 

1John 5:6 ¶  This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7  For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8  And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. 9  If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son.

The heresy of Gnosticism was apparently a problem during the time of the early church as John combats it. This Gnosticism, the perfectability of man, the secret knowledge of an elite, the idea that matter was part of a fraud perpetuated by the God of the Old Testament who was evil, that God could not come in the flesh because of that, a sort of the movie Matrix played out in history where Jesus came to enlighten us and deliver us from the evil God, a type of Satan, and denying that there could be a God in the flesh who could have died on the Cross, and finally that every person was responsible for their own salvation. Now that Gnosticism has come down to us in the form of Communism/Socialism/Marxism where early philosophers talked about returning to the innocence of the Garden of Eden without God as in the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song made famous at the Woodstock music festival of the 1960s. By the way, Woodstock, NY was where the Communist Party was instituted in the early 20^th century.

Anyway, back to John’s letter, there are two interpretations of the water and the blood. One is that Jesus came to earth in the water birth, born of water, and that He ended His life by shedding His blood for us. This has justification in John’s gospel.

John 3:3  Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 4  Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? 5  Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6  That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Another, more popular interpretation, is that Christ began His ministry in Baptism and ended in shedding His blood for us, as meanings for the water and the blood.

Verse 7 is one of the most hotly disputed verses in Bible history and yet, that is odd, because it is alluded to or quoted by early church fathers in every century of the early church. In spite of that, some “bible scholars” insist it was added in the 7^th century. It is in Jerome’s Latin Vulgate from the early 5^th century and many insist that it reflects the Old Latin Bible of the second century in controversial arguments that are too long to explain here. I recommend reading In Defense of the Authenticity of 1 John 5:7  by C. H. Pappas and A History of the Debate over 1 John 5:7-8 by Michael Maynard, the latter of which I’ve read from cover to cover. If the verse is not in your Bible then you should get a different Bible.

This verse is the hinge on which the theology of God, the Godhead, swings. As I’ve noted before regarding the Targums, or the Jewish understanding of the Bible in the first century and before, in the Godhead was the living Word of God, the angel of the LORD, who appeared to men and interacted with them. It is how Adam and Eve could have walked and talked in the Garden of Eden with God. It is who appeared to Moses in the burning bush. It is, among many other incidences which you will see if you watch or read my commentaries, the preincarnate Christ.

There are three in heaven who are one. They are one God with three parts; God the Father, invisible, the Son of God, the Word by which all things exist and who interacted physically with mankind, the Holy Ghost, His very mind in action as God’s Spirit, the operative side of the Holy Ghost working within the universe and indwelling each believer. I’ve gone over this many times so I won’t belabor the point here.

See my comments on 1John 1:1-4.

John 10:30  I and my Father are one.

The Spirit of God, His very mind acting in and upon creation, the living Word of God entering into human flesh as in the water birth, the only time God was born as a human being, and the blood, His blood by which we are all saved, agree and point to the God of heaven and earth. The physical world and the physical universe all point to the invisible God and His living Word by which all things were created.

Christ’s birth, death, burial, and resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in His believers all manifest this foundational truth of Christian belief.

Christ bears witness to the eternal God as the eternal God bears witness to the Son of God, God walking in human flesh on the earth by whom we are saved and God’s Biblical ministry of reconciling mankind to Himself is finally complete.