1 John 5:7

1 John 5:7-8 . The Water (the Lord’s consecrated Life) and the Blood (His sacrificial Death) are testimonies to the Incarnation, but they are insufficient. A third testimony, that of the Spirit, is needed to reveal their significance to us and bring it home to our hearts. Without His enlightenment the wonder and glory of that amazing manifestation will be hidden from us. It will be as unintelligible to us as “mathematics to a Scythian boor, and music to a camel”. τρεῖς οἱ μαρτυροῦντες , masculine though Πνεῦμα , ὕδωρ , and αἷμα are all neuter, because agreeing κατὰ σύνεσιν with τὸ Πνεῦμα —a testimony, the more striking because involuntary, to the personality of the Spirit. εἰς τὸ ἕν , “for the one end,” i.e. to bring us to faith in the Incarnation ( ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν ὁ Υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ). This was the end for which St. John wrote his Gospel ( John 20:31 ). There is no reference in the Water and the Blood either to the effusion of blood and water from the Lord’s pierced side ( John 19:34 ) or to the two Sacraments.

Having mentioned the Spirit’s testifying in the close of 1Jo 5:6 , he returns to give us in order, in these two verses, the whole testimony of the truth of Christianity, which he reduces to two ternaries of witnesses. The matter of their testimony is the same with that of their faith who are born of God, that Jesus is the Son of God, and the Messiah, as may be collected from what was said before, 1Jo 5:1,5 , and what is said afterwards, 1Jo 5:9 . What they believe, is no other thing than what these testify. For the first three, in heaven, that is not said to signify heaven to be the place of their testifying; for though the same thing concerning Jesus be also no doubt testified to the glorious inhabitants of that world, yet that is not the apostle’s present scope, but to show what reason we have, who inhabit this world, to believe Jesus to be Christ, and the Son of God. In heaven therefore is to be referred to three, not to bear record, or witness; as if the text were read, which it may as well: There are three in heaven who bear witness; the design being to represent their immediate testifying from thence unto us, or the glorious, heavenly, majestic manner of their testifying. So the Father testified of the man Jesus by immediate voice from heaven, at his baptism and transfiguration: This is my Son, & c.

The eternal Word owned its union with him, in that glory with which it so eminently clothed his humanity, and which visibly shone through it in the holy mount, whereof this apostle was a spectator, and whereto he seems to refer in his Gospel, John 1:14 : We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, i.e. such as sufficiently testified him to be so, even the very Son of God. And the Holy Ghost testified, descending as a dove in a visible glorious appearance upon him, at his baptism also. And these three are one, viz. not only agreeing in their testimony, as 1Jo 5:8 , but in unity of nature: an express testimony of the triune Deity, by whatsoever carelessness or ill design left out of some copies, but sufficiently demonstrated by many most ancient ones, to belong to the sacred text: of which L. Brug. Not. in loc., with the other critics, and at large, Dr. Hammond.

1 John 5:7 . For there are three, &c. — It is well known that the authenticity of this verse has been a subject of much controversy. “The arguments, on both sides of the question, taken from ancient Greek MSS. and versions, and from quotations made by the fathers, and from printed editions, have been stated with the greatest fidelity and accuracy by Mill in his long note at the end of John’s first epistle, where he observes that this verse is wanting in all the ancient Greek MSS. of the New Testament which have come down to us, except a few, which shall be mentioned immediately. It is wanting likewise in the first Syriac, and other ancient versions, particularly the Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic, and in many of the present Latin MSS. With respect to quotations from the fathers, Mill acknowledges that few of the Greek writers, who lived before the council of Nice, have cited this verse.

The same he observes concerning those who, after that council, wrote in defence of the Trinity against the Arians, and other heretics; which, he thinks, shows that this verse was not in their copies.” But, on the other hand, the proofs of the authenticity of this verse are,” 1st, Some of the most ancient and most correct Vatican Greek copies, from which the Spanish divines formed the Complutensian edition of the Greek Testament, and with which they were furnished by Pope Leo X.,” one of which Mill speaks of as peculiarly eminent, of great antiquity, and approved fidelity. “2d, A Greek copy, called by Erasmus, Codex Britannicus, on the authority of which he inserted this verse in his edition anno, 1522, but which he had omitted in his two former editions. This is supposed to be a MS. at present in the Trinity College library, Dublin, in which this, verse is found with the omission of the word αγισν , holy, before πνευμα , Spirit. It likewise wants the last clause of 1 John 5:8 , namely, and these three are one.