Written by Paul J Bucknell on June, 24, 2019
1 John 5:7-8: “The Spirit and the water and the blood”
7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. (1 John 5:7-8, NASB)
Public witness and scripture confirm Jesus as Lord and the Christ, the Anointed One of God the Jews were anticipating to come and save them. Jesus the Christ has come and fulfilled the Scriptures. Creeds are good, but they can be corrupt if built on false premises. These creeds and teaching must address the current issues. John’s audience faced a particular issue with a false cult that had sprung up around them and so targeted his teaching to affirm that this incipient form of Gnosticism that denied God’s Son, the Christ, to have a body. The Gnostics (there were two main forms) typically assert that the Christ came upon and departed from Jesus the person. Their Greek philosophy intruded on the facts, presuming the perfect could not have a body, something like some forms of Hinduism which assert the body as evil.
John, in verses 6-12, proves that the Messiah Christ did not come upon and occupy a man named Jesus but became a human. It is interesting John does not affirm this truth through the incarnation (i.e., the Christmas story) which also affirms Christ taking upon a body, but gives evidence through Jesus’ baptism (water) and death (blood). Perhaps, John took this defensive strategy as Jesus’ baptism and execution happened in public, affirming the reliability of the testimony. John records how God gave public proof that the person whom He (God) anointed by the Holy Spirit at His baptism was also His Son who died on the cross. John asserts it is Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, who came by water and the blood.
The “water” refers to Jesus’ baptism when the Spirit of God came upon Him and testified by the Holy Spirit coming down upon Him:
21 Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22)
The people saw God’s anointing from heaven. Christ literally means anointed One so the Spirit, in the form of the dove coming down, is crucial. God affirmed that Jesus was both human and divine with words from heaven proclaiming Him to be the Son of God. (The Son of God is also a very rich term from the Old Testament that we will not here discuss.)
Jesus’ death also serves as a crucial testimony that He the Messiah had a body because He had real blood that spilled out. The Messiah’s death affirms many Old Testament prophetic passages such as Isaiah 53, but He also established the New Covenant through His blood. All this proves that the Messiah died. Jesus blood is only effective if a perfect man died for sinful man. If Jesus was some good Jew, he would still need to die for his own sin, being in Adam’s descendant, but Christ Jesus died (being of special origin through the Spirit and Mary), suffering for mankind that those who believe might find life in His sacrifice for us. Some of those cult members asserted that the Christ left Jesus before he died, leaving Jesus alone to die. Pilate asks, “Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ” (Mat 27:17)? By dying, it is evident that this same person that God declared to be the Son of God died on the cross. It was not a different person but the same one, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, in full integrity and identity.