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.