What does it mean that there are three that bear witness on earth (1 John 5:8)?

But the apostle had more to say in his few but pregnant words. "For three are those that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and the three agree in one." It will be noticed that the order is here reversed. Historically it was the blood, the water, and the Spirit sent from heaven in honour of Christ's redemption, to give the saints the abiding Paraclete, and to spread the glad tidings universally in God's power, not in man's, though working through man. God gives three testifiers, which agree in one testimony; but in spiritual fact the order is, "the Spirit, and the water, and the blood." Of course, literally speaking, the personal witness is the Holy Ghost, and He too is the present living power. The water and the blood are but figuratively called witnesses, and so are personified. But the Holy Spirit is a true person in the Godhead; and one of His special functions, like the Son's, is to bear witness on earth, He of Christ, as Christ of God and the Father. "And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth."

And so the three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, remain: the Spirit the living, acting, speaking Witness; the water and the blood two silent witnesses, 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 that in Him eternal life is ours, who believe on the name of the Son of God.

“There are three witnesses to the believer, the Spirit and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (1 John 5:8)—the Spirit, the One who works in sovereign grace in our hearts, who takes the divine initiative in His approach to our souls; the Water, that application of the word of God to our souls that cleanses our ways; the Blood, that which cleanses our sins away from the eye of God.

In chapter 5 of this epistle we read, “This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood” (1 John 5:6). The Lord came by water, speaking His Father’s word, and could say to His disciples, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you” (John 15:3); but although this word of the Lord produced moral cleansing, something more was needed to remove their guilt, and give them cleansing from the stain their guilt had produced; and this was the shedding and sprinkling of blood. So Jesus came not only to speak the word of God in a ministry of moral cleansing, but also to die on the cross, and shed His blood, to make propitiation that would meet all the claims of God’s throne, and set His own free from their guilt and its defilement. John witnessed the blood and water that flowed from the side of Christ, and has put it on record.

The water and the blood have not only come to cleanse, but to witness to the greatness of Him who alone was able to accomplish this great work. God has sent His Spirit also, so that we might learn from Him of the glory of Jesus in heaven, and be within us to witness to what God has done for us in the Person of His Son. But the Spirit and the water and the blood have also come from God, a three-fold, united witness to men of what Christ His Son has accomplished, and men are responsible to God regarding this witness. It is a most solemn matter to refuse the witness that has come from God.

Having thus spoken of the water and the blood, the apostle adds, "And it is the Spirit that testifies, because the Spirit is the truth." He plainly refers to the water and the blood which came out of the pierced side of the dead body of Christ, as a divine testimony which God gave concerning His Son. It was not a natural phenomenon, but a supernatural one (see John 19:35), by which God was testifying that the death of His Son provides cleansing, or a new life, and propitiation. In recording the pouring forth of blood and water from the pierced side of Christ after death, John adds, "And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true." The Spirit by John thus attests and confirms the testimony of the blood and the water.

There are, then, three witnesses: the water, the blood, and the Spirit — a threefold testimony; but a united testimony, and thus one. The Spirit and the water and the blood affirm the same thing. They unite in witnessing that life is in the Son and for men through His death. They bear their united testimony to the truth, to produce faith: — "That ye may believe that Jesus is the Son of God." In the epistle, however, John is writing to believers, and he urges that the testimony he has been speaking of is divine testimony — the testimony of God concerning His Son (ver. 9). The believer needs to have the sense of this in his soul. The power and enjoyment of the blessing that is his as a believer will be much affected by the consciousness, or lack of it, that 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. We receive the testimony of competent, trustworthy men without question; but 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.

This threefold witness to the Son of God brings to us the knowledge of Christ's great work, and what it has accomplished. Viewed individually, the Spirit has come from a glorified Christ to bear witness of His glory in the Father's presence, the evidence of God's satisfaction with His work on the cross. The water, which came from the side of Christ dead upon the cross, witnesses to us that the work that the Lord has wrought cleanses us from the foul stains of sin, and the moral pollution of the nature inherited from Adam. The blood, witnessing to an accomplished redemption, which has met all the claims of God, and glorified Him in relation to the whole question of sin, tells us that we are cleansed from all sin.

But the three witnesses unite to tell us of the greatness of Jesus: it is God's witness of His Son, One great enough to do this great work, and having done it to sit on His throne above. Moreover, they unite to tell us that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. By the Spirit indwelling us we have this witness in ourselves; the Spirit within not only giving His individual witness, but bringing home to our hearts in His own divine power the truth of the witness of the water and the blood.

"The Spirit, and the water, and the blood." Historically in the gospel we have, first the water, then the blood, and then the Lord breathing upon them and saying "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," John 20:22. In John 20 it is not quite the thought of sealing, nor is it the bringing of the disciples into one body, but it is rather the impartation of eternal life by the quickening voice of the Son of God.

But when we consider the enjoyment of these things, the Spirit is put first. How are we to be kept in the continual consciousness of these things? How are we to know and enjoy them? I am sure it is only by the Spirit of God dwelling in our hearts. He it is who brings us into the blessed knowledge of the effect of the water so that we may know that we are born of God. He it is who brings us into the wonderful liberty which has been made possible through that precious blood. We know our sins are forgiven, and hence the Holy Spirit brings to bear upon us the testimony of the other witnesses, each of which has a voice to our souls. The Spirit would remind us livingly of that moral cleansing; He would bring to bear upon us the power of judicial cleansing. Thus with the Spirit dwelling in our souls we know we are born of God; we know that our sins are forgiven, and "these three agree in one." What the Spirit is witnessing to, what the water is witnessing to, what the blood is witnessing to, is all with an objective in view.

Thirdly, as seen in verse 6 of our chapter, we read "And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." 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, by whom these things are made good in our hearts. The water has dealt with our state; the blood has dealt with our guilt; and the Spirit of God, as a result of this two-fold work, dwells in the hearts of those who are morally and judicially cleansed, in order to bring them into the living enjoyment of the wonderful circle brought to light by the incoming of the Son of God into this world.

The believer, in having received the Holy Spirit, has God’s witness within him, the Spirit bringing to us the consciousness of the witness of the water and the blood, so that we know the greatness of the Son of God, and know that God has given to us eternal life. Eternal life is in God’s own Son, and we possess it in Him, and the witness from God assures us that the life God has given to us has been secured for us because the Son of God has died.

God has come down to the weakness of men in providing such a witness to His Son. Men receive the witness of two or three as sufficient to establish a matter, God has given three witnesses, one of them His own Spirit, and the others that tell of Christ’s death, and what that death has accomplished, witness to the great love of God in giving His Son that we might be blessed. How very solemn then it is if men refuse the witness of God. Where the witness is received there is the communication of the divine and eternal life, but the one that refuses the divine witness, and has not the Son of God, has not the life that is in the Son of God.

In 1 John 5 we have a three-fold witness from God telling of the greatness of the Son of God and of the work He has wrought for the glory of God and the blessing of His own. These witnesses are the Spirit, the water, and the blood (verse 8), and they unite to tell us as believers in the Son of God that “God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (Verse 11). Only the Son of God could bring to us the eternal life, no other could make it known, for of Him only could it be said, “This is the true God, and eternal life” (verse 20). In Him there has been, and is, the expression of the eternal life that was with the Father; in Him the life is now seen where He lives before the Father; through Him the life has been made available to us; by Him it is communicated, and in Him we possess it.