This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus [the] Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that bears witness, for the Spirit is the truth.
The verse rests faith on something John watched: blood and water flowing from the pierced side of the dead Christ. It raises two questions. How did He come? And why does the Spirit insist on adding "blood"?
Commentators point the phrase to Christ's death, not to His birth or His baptism. They read it as a deliberate contrast with the kingdom a conquering Messiah would bring.
In my view, the two clauses "by water and blood" are not a mere repetition of each other. Each carries its own meaning. First of all, Scripture says, "This is he who came by water and blood." The words describe the Lord Jesus. He did not come as a conquering Messiah, with power and glory, bringing in the promised kingdom. He came by water and blood. The reference is to His death, not His birth or His baptism… In a dead Christ we see far more.
Sin leaves two marks: guilt before God, and defilement in ourselves. The two streams from His side answer to both — and not, as some claim, to two church ceremonies.
Only John in his Gospel records the opened side of our Saviour: water and blood came out of the pierced side. What the sinner needs is cleansing — cleansing from moral defilement, and cleansing from guilt. The water is for cleansing, the blood telling of expiation cleanses from guilt. To make the water here mean baptism, and the blood the Lord's Supper, is as false as it is ridiculous. The death of Christ accomplished and provided both purification and propitiation for the believer.
The negative is not filler. One writer sees here a guard against teaching that keeps Christ's moral influence but drops His atoning death.
Jesus Christ came, "not by the water only but by the water and the blood." That letter has in view the arrival of anti-Christian teachings. In our day similar teaching is common: that He came simply as a reformer of morals, both social and individual, by the power of His word — that is, "by water only." But He came "by the water and the blood," dying to pay the penalty of sin.
The Greek uses two different small words in this verse. First "through" water and blood, then "in" water and blood.
He came by (dia) water and blood; and then He came in (en) water and blood; that is to say, in the power of the water and of the blood. The first of these expressions (dia) shows the character in which Jesus came here below. The second (en) shows the power He displayed according to that character. Jesus came in a character of purification and expiation, by water and blood. He worked according to that character, and accomplished purification and expiation in water and blood. The water and the blood both express the death of Christ, but they set out two results of that death. We are cleansed by the water of death (sanctification), and we are also cleansed by blood (justification)… I wonder whether we pay enough attention to this purifying power of the death of Christ, which frees us from the power of sin now.
Commentators differ on how much the phrase looks back before the cross. One writer gives the water a wider sense:
The power and reality of the new life — in overcoming, in assurance, in living truth before God — depends on these two great characteristics seen in the Lord Jesus. First, He came by water. Water speaks of a ministry that is divine through and through — "the water of life," "born of water and the Spirit," "the water of the Word." So here the Lord comes before us as the Life-giver, "the true God and eternal life."
John saw the pierced side and recorded it. In this letter he steps back, and a greater witness speaks.
Here, instead of putting that inspired witness forward, the Spirit takes this place. He is the greatest of all present witnesses for Christ.
That witness is itself a fruit of the same death, so all three blessings hang on one event.
The Spirit of God, present here below, is also a witness of the grace of life which is in Jesus. But it is because of the death of Christ that the Holy Spirit has come down. So purification, expiation, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are privileges. They exist for us only because of a dead Christ.
- Came — He came on His way to death, not as a conquering Messiah bringing in a kingdom.
- Cleansed twice — blood answers guilt, water answers defilement; sin's two effects, one cross.
- Not only — cut the blood and only a moral reformer remains. The Spirit adds the word to block that error.
- Character and power — He came through water and blood, then worked in their power. Sanctification and justification both flow from His death.
- Witnessed — John saw it; the Spirit testifies to it. And the Spirit came down only because Christ died.
For they that bear witness are three
This verse raises two questions: what did John write here, and what does God's testimony to His Son say? Older English Bibles name the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit as three witnesses in heaven; most modern versions say only that three bear witness, then name them in the next verse.
Commentators here judge that the words about heavenly witnesses were added later. John did not write them. One writer traces how they likely got in:
But the text here has suffered, whether by carelessness or by design. Briefly: from "in heaven" in verse 7 to "on earth" in verse 8 is not Scripture but an insertion. It may have been at first only a note in the margin, later copied into the text by men who did not understand the truth. Scholars have traced the history of this case fully and carefully. The result is clear. The same grounds that make the New Testament text certain everywhere else prove just as surely that these words are a human addition.
Another writer had long doubted the words, on grounds of sense:
I have always held this verse, to say the least, to be very doubtful from the way the meaning runs.
Commentators differ. Elsewhere in this collection the longer wording is quoted as a statement of the Trinity. That doctrine, though, does not stand or fall with this verse.
The longer reading also runs into a question of sense. What would witness in heaven be for?
First, what is the meaning of bearing witness "in heaven"? When you weigh the thought, is it not foolish as well as unscriptural? How could there be such a need or fact as bearing witness in heaven? The natural inhabitants of heaven are angels, and they never needed anyone to bear witness to them… People on earth need witness, and God in His grace gives it, because they are steeped in darkness and lack the truth. Pilate only expressed the ignorance of the whole world in his question, What is truth?
There is a second problem — the pairing of the names:
No inspired man ever wrote, "The Father, the Word." They are not matching terms. In Scripture we have the "Word" with "God," and the "Son" with the "Father."
The witnesses John does name are the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Each answers to something Christ came to do:
The Lord came in relation to these three great truths: moral cleansing; judicial cleansing, or judicial expiation; and the gift of the Spirit of God, who makes these things good in our hearts. The water has dealt with our state. The blood has dealt with our guilt. Because of this two-fold work, the Spirit of God dwells in the hearts of those who are cleansed both morally and judicially.
The three are not witnesses in the same way, and John's order is not the order of history:
In history the order was the blood, the water, and then the Spirit sent from heaven in honour of Christ's redemption… Strictly speaking, of course, the personal witness is the Holy Spirit. He is also the present living power. The water and the blood are only called witnesses in a figure, and so are personified. But the Holy Spirit is a true Person in the Godhead.
Three witnesses, yet John says they agree in one — because they say one thing about one Person:
God bears His testimony in this wonderful group of three — the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Three witnesses, yet only one testimony: there is no life in the first man at all, and all the blessing is in the Second. He it is who by His death expiates my sins and cleanses me, and the Holy Spirit gives me the joy of both by faith.
This is where settled assurance comes from:
God bears witness to Him, not to us. That is what He does when He would establish our hearts before Himself in the full blessing of what He has revealed to us. The ground of all divine assurance in the soul is "the witness of God which He has witnessed concerning His Son."
- Witness, weighed. Commentators here treat the clause about three heavenly witnesses as a later insertion. The truth of the Trinity does not rest on a disputed line.
- Witness is for earth. Heaven does not need testimony; angels never needed it. People on earth do, because they sit in darkness.
- Witness is threefold. Water meets our state, blood meets our guilt, and the Spirit makes both real in the heart.
- Witness is one. Three testifiers, one message: no life in the first man, all blessing in the Second.
- Witness is about Christ. God testifies about His Son. That is why assurance holds when a look at ourselves fails.
the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and the three agree in one.
John's letter has been pressing one question: how can anyone be sure that eternal life is real and that it is theirs? His answer is a court case — God has set three witnesses on earth, and all three say the same thing.
Older Bibles carry extra words here about three bearing witness in heaven. One writer tests those words in a simple way. He does not go to old manuscripts. He asks what witnessing is even for.
First, what is the meaning of bearing witness "in heaven"? When you weigh it, is it not unscriptural — and worse, is it not folly? How could there be such a need or fact as bearing witness in heaven? The natural inhabitants of heaven are angels, who never needed anyone to bear witness to them... It is on earth that witness is needed and is given by God's grace, because men are steeped in darkness and lack the truth. None could find it out unless God gave competent witnesses; and here they are, His three witnesses, "the Spirit and the water and the blood."
Both came from the pierced side of Jesus at His death, and each carries its own meaning. One writer sets out what each one does, and why the two stand in a different order here than at the cross.
Blood and water both flowed from the pierced side of the Lord Jesus when His death was accomplished. Yet, strangely, this water has almost dropped out of the faith of the Christian world. It fills as large a place in the Word as the blood does, both in doctrine and in the Old Testament pictures. The blood is for propitiation; the water is for purification. The blood is the ground of everything before God, and is therefore put first in John 19:34. In 1 John 5:8 the order is that of their application to us. The Spirit brings home the water of the Word in power to our consciences, and by it we are born of God. He opens our eyes to the value of the blood.
This verse names water and blood together, never water alone. One writer shows what people lose when they keep the water and drop the blood.
Many now say He came to make man morally clean. On this view He set the highest ideals before man, and lived them out Himself to spur others on... They reject the idea of atonement with scorn. The Spirit foresaw this dark and deadly error. So He says, "not by water only, but by water and blood." Not by moral cleansing only, but by moral cleansing AND expiation for sin.
The blood and water came at the cross; the Spirit came afterwards. Yet John names the Spirit first. One writer explains the reversal by what the Spirit does in us.
The third witness is the Spirit. He is put first in the order of their testimony on earth, since He alone gives witness in power, so that we know the other two. He is last in their historic order, for that was in fact the order: death first, and only afterwards the Holy Spirit. In effect it is the Spirit's testimony, His presence in us, that lets us value the water and the blood. We would never have grasped what the death of Christ means in practice, if the Holy Spirit did not reveal its meaning and its power to the new man.
One writer pictures the three together: one witness speaks, and two stand silent.
And so the three witnesses remain: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. The Spirit is the living, acting, speaking Witness. The water and the blood are two silent witnesses, like mighty pillars lifting their heads into heaven's blue dome through all eternity. And all three agree in one. They testify that He who came in this way is the Son of God, the fountain of eternal life. And they testify that eternal life is ours in Him — ours who believe on the name of the Son of God.
All three say the same thing. Their one verdict tells us where eternal life comes from, and how little we brought to it.
The testimony of these three witnesses meets together in this same truth: that grace — that God Himself — has given us eternal life, and that this life is in the Son. Man had nothing to do with it, except by his sins. It is the gift of God, and the life He gives is in the Son.
The weight of this evidence makes refusing it serious.
Men accept the witness of two or three as enough to settle a matter. God has given three witnesses, and one of them is His own Spirit... How very solemn it is, then, if men refuse the witness of God.
- Earth, not heaven. Witness belongs where the darkness is. Heaven needs no convincing; men steeped in darkness do.
- Blood. Propitiation — the ground of everything before God, which is why it comes first at the cross.
- Water. Purification by the Word — as large a theme in Scripture as the blood, though often forgotten.
- Spirit. Named first because He is the living witness who makes the other two mean anything to us.
- One verdict. Three witnesses, one testimony. God has given eternal life, and that life is in His Son. We added nothing to the gift, and refusing the witness is a solemn thing.
If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness of God [which] he has witnessed concerning his Son.
Courts settle matters on human testimony every day. John starts there, then presses a far weightier claim: God Himself has spoken, and His subject is His Son.
John is not inventing a new standard. He appeals to a rule already built into human life and into God's dealings with people. Then he shows how far God has gone beyond it.
Men accept two or three witnesses to settle any matter. God set up that rule for people, both under law and in Christianity. Human witnesses can be wrong, even when no one could question their honesty. All people have weaknesses and imperfections. But look at the divine witnesses! One is a divine Person, come from heaven to declare what He knows, what He has seen, and what He has heard. The other two witnesses have come from the side of Christ in death. They come to tell us of the love shown in that death, and of the greatness of the Person who could make that love known and accomplish such a work. How wonderful is the grace that has stooped to our weakness! It brings three witnesses before us, to persuade our poor hearts about what He wants to tell us.
God's testimony here comes through three named witnesses.
There are three witnesses: the water, the blood, and the Spirit — a threefold testimony, but a united testimony, and so one. They unite in witnessing that life is in the Son, and is for men through His death.
The comparison rests on two things: what God's testimony is about, and the knowledge behind it.
We do receive the witness of men. We have to, almost every day of our lives. We accept it, though mistakes often mar it, even when no one means to deceive. The witness of God is far greater in its theme and in its character. The Son is the theme, and absolute truth its character. When the Son was on earth He bore witness to God. Now the Spirit is here, and the witness of God is borne to the Son. Very remarkable, is it not?
Human witnesses report what they happened to see. God does not testify at second hand.
We receive the testimony of competent, trustworthy men without question. How much greater is the testimony of God! He speaks what He knows; with Him knowledge is absolute, not relative. He witnesses to the truth as He alone fully knows it.
Many an anxious person searches God's testimony for a verdict on himself.
The heart keeps looking for God to give it a testimony about itself. But God is giving a testimony about His Son, not about what we are. If God were to give a testimony about us, it must be about our sin and unbelief of heart. In this day of unbelief, one thing matters greatly. If God gives a testimony, it is about His Son, and what He is to the sinner. If you believe that, you will get peace.
One writer recalled what these words did for a believer still tormented by the sense of sin.
Let me recall the divine relief and deliverance these words gave more than sixty years ago. They came to a soul who was converted, but harassed and deeply troubled by a sense of sin. That sense of sin clouded his rest in Jesus. These words chased away all doubt, and made him ashamed to question God's witness. It became God's application of the truth to him, and no longer his own applying of it to himself. Yet he had never doubted the true worth of Christ's death for the sinner. It is not that I see the power of the blood as I ought. Rather, I rest by faith on God's seeing it, and God's valuing it as it deserves.
A person can hold the same truth in two ways, with very different results.
The believer needs to have the sense of this in his soul. The blessing is his as a believer. But how much power and enjoyment he has in it depends greatly on whether he knows the testimony is divine. If it has been received only as the word of men, it will not have its full sanctifying power in the soul.
- Witness given. God stooped to the human rule of two or three witnesses. He supplied three of His own, to persuade our weak hearts.
- Witness greater. His testimony outweighs man's in theme and in character. The Son is its subject; absolute truth is its quality. God speaks what He alone fully knows.
- Witness about the Son. God is not testifying about what we are. Anyone hunting for a divine verdict on himself is looking in the wrong place. The testimony is about His Son, and what He is to the sinner.
- Witness received brings rest. Peace comes not from seeing the value of Christ's blood as we ought, but from resting on God's valuation of it.
- Witness owned as God's brings power. Taken as only the word of men, the truth loses its full sanctifying power. Owned as God's word, it works with full power in the soul.
He that believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself; he that does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness which God has witnessed concerning his Son.
God's testimony about His Son does not stay outside a person. Either it settles inside him as certainty, or he throws it back in God's face.
The verse turns on the word "believes." One writer first clears away a common misreading of it.
Some people create a difficulty for themselves by wrongly assuming that we have a definition of faith here. That is not the point. The verse describes faith's power, range, and effect. Faith in Scripture is believing God, accepting His word because He says it, not on visible evidence or on reasoning but on God's authority. Under the gospel, because it matters so much, faith is receiving the testimony of God which He has testified about His Son. As John 3:33 puts it, whoever receives His testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. But the one who does not believe God carries the awful guilt of making Him a liar.
The testimony reaches a person from outside. One writer traces how it then becomes something he carries within.
He who believes on the Son of God now has the witness in himself, because God has given the Spirit, who is the Witness, to live in us. We begin by believing the witness about the Son of God that comes to us. Then, "by the Spirit whom He has given us," we have the witness in ourselves. No unbeliever can have this witness within.
The witness is inside the believer. So no loss of teachers, company, or Christian privileges can strip it away.
Suppose the believer were in a land where he could enjoy no fellowship with other Christians. Suppose he had no chance to hear a Christian teacher, and knew of not a single fellow believer. The Son of God on whom he believes remains just the same. He has the witness in himself, as fully as if every Christian privilege on earth surrounded him. He is not dependent on anyone under the sun; he has the Son. In such a case many might cry out, "What audacious presumption!" But God Himself says, "Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself." The audacity lies in the unbelief that rejects it.
A converted person can still be troubled and unsettled by a sense of sin. One writer recalls such a case, and what freed it.
Let me recall the relief and deliverance these words gave more than sixty years ago. They came to a soul who was converted, but harassed and troubled by a sense of sin that clouded his rest in Jesus. These words chased away all doubt and made him ashamed to question God's witness. It became God's application of the truth to him, and no longer his own applying of it to himself. It is not my seeing the power of the blood as I should. It is resting by faith on God's seeing it, and God's valuing it as it deserves. The troubled spirit is no longer dead, so it is intensely anxious for God's witness about itself. That agitation keeps it from hearing God about His Son. Christ received on God's witness lets me have done with myself altogether. What Christ is and has done gives peace.
Unbelief looks like missing out on a blessing. One writer names the deeper charge.
The fault of the unbeliever is not that he does not have the blessing, but that he makes God a liar. God has given an adequate witness about His Son, and "whoever does not believe God has made him a liar." So a person rejecting the gospel is rejecting God's testimony about His Son. The witness was enough.
Refusing God's word insults Him. It also costs the refuser what God gives to those who believe.
In the presence of such testimony, not to believe God is to make Him a liar. How grave, how solemn, how wicked, to dishonour Him in this way! In far less important matters we accept the witness of men. Is not His witness greater? All the more so, since the one who believes receives in the Son what God testifies about: the cleansing, the justification, and the life are his. Unbelief dishonours God and robs man beyond measure.
- Witness given. God has testified about His Son, and that testimony is enough. Everything turns on how a person answers it.
- Witness received. Believing is not weighing evidence or reasoning it out; it is accepting God's word because He said it.
- Witness within. The Spirit takes what was heard from outside and makes it an inward possession. The believer carries God's own testimony within him.
- Witness enough. The witness inside needs no teacher and no company to hold it up. Rest comes from how God values Christ's blood, not from how well I grasp it.
- Witness refused. The one who will not believe does more than miss a blessing. He calls God a liar, dishonours Him, and robs himself of the cleansing, the justification, and the life that come with the Son.
And this is the witness, that God has given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son.
John has been naming three witnesses: the Spirit, the water and the blood. Here he states what they testify to — a gift already given, and where that life now is.
Notice what God gives here — and what He does not.
It seems impossible to make the truth plainer than the apostle was given to do. He is showing that God's witness deserves greater attention, being in itself beyond comparison greater than any witness of men. And it is this: that God gave to us, Christians, eternal life — not merely promises or a kingdom — and this life is in His Son.
The verse says God "gave" this life — a finished act. That leaves no room for any other route to life, including the law.
The apostle sums up in a few words the testimony of God about the eternal life He has given us. This life is not in the first Adam, it is in the last — in the Son of God. Man, as born of Adam, does not have it and does not get it. He ought indeed to have gained life under the law. That was its character: "Do this and live." But man did not and could not.
Two things are true at once. The life is truly ours, and it is never ours apart from Christ.
All these great truths — the death of Christ, and the presence of the Spirit in the believer — witness the same thing. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. It is in us as a gift; it is in Him as a source. Apart from the Son there can be no life before God.
Nature shows how something can be alive in itself and still owe that life to another.
We know that a leaf has life in it, just as the believer knows that eternal life remains in him. But it is just as true that the leaf has life in the tree, and only in the tree. In the same way, Scripture tells us that the believer's life is in the Son. Clearly, if the leaf were cut off from the tree it would perish at once.
If the life were rooted in us, its future would rest on us. Its spring is in Christ, so its future rests on Him.
Though we have the life, its proper seat is not in us but IN HIS SON. When God makes us alive, the life is not viewed as being in us, for Christ says, "Because I live, you also will live." It is therefore unchangeable. If Christ's life could in any way be cancelled or set aside, then the life in us could be too — but not otherwise. If Christ can die, so can we; but if death no longer has dominion over Him, neither does it over us. And this is what gives this life its amazing value and most blessed character: that its spring and source is in Christ.
Security follows from the verse, but writers warn against shrinking the word "life" down to that one idea.
It is very blessed to know that the life is in Him. No such thing could be said of us, and there is never any thought of life apart from Him. We enjoy heavenly things already, not merely security in Him. We shall eat of the tree of life in the glory. But we already have the power to enter into these privileges and joys, and all is in the Son. Of course security is implied, and life in Christ is secure indeed. But we should not make "life" just another word for "security." It includes security, but it is far more.
The words "in His Son" also settle what this life is like.
All the character of the life, and all the communion, flows from that blessed truth: "in His Son." The character of this life is nearness to God. Christ Himself is my life.
God has made a statement, so doubting it is not modesty. One writer recalled an older believer who found his assurance here.
As a young man he thought it was outrageous to claim, "I have eternal life, I will not be lost." Then he read these verses. He saw that following such teaching meant calling God a liar. It might sound humble to men, but that is what it does. When God says, "The one who believes in My Son has eternal life," we have to take Him at His word.
- Witness. God is testifying, not negotiating; He announces eternal life already given, "not merely promises or a kingdom."
- Gift. The life was never in the first Adam, and no one earned it under the law's terms, "Do this and live." God hands it over.
- Source. It is in us as a gift and in Him as a source, like a leaf that lives, yet lives only in the tree.
- Security. Nothing can cancel this life unless it can cancel Christ's. Yet it means more than safety — it means nearness to God.
- Assurance. The one sure ground is God's own word; to doubt this witness is to charge God with lying.
He that has the Son has life he that has not the Son of God has not life.
Two short clauses divide the whole human race, and the dividing line is one Person. John has just said that God has given eternal life and that this life is in His Son; verse 12 draws the plain conclusion.
The verse does not treat life as a quality we develop. It tells us where life is: in Christ.
All these great truths — the death of Christ and the presence of the Spirit in the believer — witness that God has given us eternal life. This life is in His Son. It is in us as a gift; it is in Him as a source. Apart from the Son there can be no life before God.
So the question is not what we achieve, but whom we have. And there is only one place to get this life:
To get it we must come to Christ, and go nowhere else.
"Have" here is not a vague sympathy for Jesus. It has content — a definite faith about who He is and what He did.
The test of life is whether you possess the Son of God, by faith and by the Spirit of God. Some have no living faith in the glorious Son of God, who gave Himself for our sins and who lives in the presence of the Father. They do not possess eternal life. To have the Son means accepting His deity, His true humanity, and His finished work on the cross to make propitiation. Refusing any of these great truths means the Son is not known in the heart, whatever the lips claim.
Propitiation is the work of Christ that answers to God for our sins.
The second half of the verse is deliberately absolute. It does not weigh what a person has against what he lacks; it says the lack settles the matter.
"Whoever has the Son has life"; and if someone does not have the Son of God, it does not matter what else he may have — he does not have life. Life is in the Son, and only in Him.
That includes the religious name a person carries. The words fall hard on a Christianity that is only a label:
Do not be deceived. Has the Holy Spirit brought you, as a lost sinner, to receive Jesus as your Saviour? He is your Saviour from the guilt and condemnation of sin, by His death on the cross. He is also your living Saviour, to free you from the present power of sin. If that has not happened, then no matter what you claim, and no matter what you have, you do not have Christ, and you do not have life.
The positive and the negative stand side by side, so there is no middle group. The verse also puts ordinary human life in a striking light.
Here it is either eternal life or no real life at all. From this viewpoint, man's natural life is mere existence, for after all it is a dying thing, subject to decay and corruption. Eternal life is living, vital, untainted, far above and beyond all that is mortal.
The second clause uses the fuller title, "the Son of God." Some have argued that this means something different from "the Son." One writer answers that the verse itself settles it:
The alleged difference between "the Son" and "the Son of God" is rash and wrong, and the text itself refutes it. It is true that "Son of God" is said of Christ as the King of Israel (in Psalm 2 and elsewhere, as John 1:49, as well as Luke 1:35). But if you want one clear disproof of that error, you could not have a more decisive one than 1 John 5:12.
If God had handed the life to us to look after, we could lose it. The verse says otherwise.
What is it to have eternal life? It is to have Christ... Observe, it is the gift of God, and it is "in His Son." It is not in our keeping, but is secured for us in Christ... Faith believes the record of God, receives Christ, and passes from death to life.
- Source. Eternal life is not produced in us; it is in the Son. It is in us as a gift, in Him as its source.
- Gift. We do not earn this life. God gives it, and faith receives Christ.
- Person. To "have" the Son is living faith in who He is — His deity, His true humanity, His finished work — not a name on the lips.
- Line. Whatever else a person holds, without the Son he has no life. There is no third group between eternal life and no real life at all.
- Certainty. Because Christ keeps this life, and not us, it is secure.