1 John
1Jo 5:6-8 - Faith's Object
This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (1Jo 5:6-8)
Our value of faith can take on no more value than its object and fulfillment. Christian philosophers often refer to our present age as "post-modernism" or at times "post-Christian." One of several characteristic ideas on the rise in this era teaches that faith, regardless of its object, rules. Think of what this means. You may have faith in your grandmother's photograph. It really doesn't matter. The only important point is that you have faith! This absurd idea grows out of the prevailing emphasis on relativism. Even Christians who would strongly defend their faith, at least their perception of their faith, adopt this non-Biblical view of faith. If questioned, they likely offer, "We walk by faith and not by sight," a correct quotation from Paul, but not a correct interpretation of his teaching. (2Co 5:7) This man who emphasized that knowing anything other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified would hardly accept the idea of faith apart from any objective link to Christ! And he would equally reject the relativistic idea that faith equates to one's private perception. For Paul faith was both public and objective.
John takes us through deep theological and spiritual waters in our study passage. His objective stands in emphatic harmony with Paul's. Objective Biblical faith must reside in one worthy of its claims. Therefore to realize the joy of our faith's certain victory we must cement this faith to its object, Jesus Christ, in both His incarnation and His uncompromised deity. Faith in a vague shadowy something accrues no more value than its object, and thus becomes nothing more than a vague shadowy something of an influence in our life, powerless and without direction.
Faith's object must appear in this worldview as the same God-man who came by water and blood, God incarnate and suffering for our sins. Almost certainly, John used these two terms, water and blood, in reference to his eyewitness memory of Jesus' crucifixion. From the crucifixion narratives in the gospels, it appears that John was the only apostle who remained at Calvary to witness the entire crucifixion and even the subsequent visit by the soldiers who pierced Jesus' side. Notice the parallel in John's gospel account of this moment. "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water." (Joh 19:34) This verse so precisely and specifically affirms Jesus' literal connection with His material body as to refute all Docetic claims that He didn't inhabit a material body. For John God in material human flesh represented the supreme essential truth of Christian doctrine. For the Docetic gnostic it represented the most despicable elements of Christianity.
Then John affirms the Holy Spirit's involvement in the incarnation as the confirming witness from God to incarnation truth.
Verses seven and eight are among the most disputed verses in the New Testament. To be honest, ancient manuscripts vary in their inclusion or exclusion of these verses. Most ancient manuscripts omit them. However it should be noted that these verses contain nothing that cannot be readily proved by other Scriptures. It should be further noted that a Christian apologist in the late second century quoted these verses in his defense of the doctrine of the Trinity. For that reason we should have no qualms at receiving them and including them as presented in our Bibles. If you were discussing the doctrine of the Trinity with a cult member who opposed them as possibly not included in John's original writing, you could easily go to other passages and prove the doctrine of the Trinity. The cults that generally oppose the doctrine of the Trinity typically allege that the Trinity grew out of the Nicene Creed and was not affirmed by Christians prior to that date, ca. 325 A. D. This allegation is false. Numerous citations could be offered from pre-Nicene writings that deal specifically with the doctrine of the Trinity. Because the Nicene Creed dealt with the Arian heresy that denied the doctrine of the Trinity and asserted that Jesus was a created being and a "lesser" god, it predictably defended this doctrine forthrightly. But it in no way introduced a new doctrine not formerly believed and defended by Christians throughout the first three centuries of the faith.
The simple (if you could call it that) point of the doctrine of the Trinity appears in this passage. Nowhere, this passage included, does the Bible or orthodox Christian doctrine assert that the Trinity consists of three and one in the same sense or way. In one sense there are three Persons, or persona, within the being of God. But Trinitarians reject any implication that there are three gods! And in another sense, the ontological essential being of God, there is one and only one God. We struggle with the complexity of human makeup. Does man consist of two parts or three? Is he simply made up of material and immaterial components, spirit and soul being synonymous? Or does the immaterial component itself consist of two distinguishable parts, spirit as distinguished from soul? Christians of almost all stripes have differed on this question throughout the centuries. It does not touch an essential doctrine of the faith. But if we can't precisely define the complexity of human life and composition, why should we react with surprise that we can't define or explain with precision the complexity of God's being? Various Scriptures specifically assert that the Father is God, that Christ is God and that the Holy Spirit is God. Various Scriptures attribute unique traits of individual identity to each, denying the allegation that the three terms are merely different words used in reference to the same Person. Equally concise passages assert that there is but one essential Being to whom we refer as God. Therefore Trinitarians are not tri-theists; they do not believe in three gods.
This amazing truth John presents as concisely as could be expressed in human language. There are three...and they are one. Several years ago the Watch Tower Tract and Bible Society published a booklet entitled Should You Believe in the Trinity? Aside from multiple misrepresentations of Christian writers and documents, this tract attacks Trinitarian doctrine in a number of ways. (The tract frequently extracts brief sentences out of context from Christian writers who strongly believe the doctrine of the Trinity, but represents them so as to imply to the uninformed reader that these men and documents rejected the doctrine.) A devout Christian Robert Bowman wrote a reply to this tract defending the doctrine of the Trinity and exposing many of the misrepresentations contained in it. The contemporary Watch Tower view of this doctrine is precisely Arius' view, exposed and rejected as heresy in the Nicene Council and Creed. As old truth survives despite hostile attacks, old error also survives at times despite concise and Biblical rejection.
At the core of Docetic gnosticism we find one of two views. As with modern New Age philosophers, ancient gnostic advocates seldom agreed among themselves. One view, the specific group identified with the Docetic heresy, held that Jesus may well have been God visiting man, but that God could not touch anything material. Therefore He could not possibly inhabit a human body. How did they defend their ideas against men and women still living who were personal eyewitnesses to the incarnate Christ? They said He merely appeared to have a material body. As angels, who are not material beings, sometimes appear in the form of humans, so Jesus actually possessed only a spirit body that appeared to be material, but it wasn't.
Another school of gnosticism alleged that Jesus was born a mere man, but at His baptism the divine Christ descended on Him and then ascended from Him prior to His crucifixion.
Something of a tangential view to this one was the idea that He was born of Joseph and Mary, a mere man. During His lifetime He studied under gnostic masters and grew into godhood. They often assert that He studied under these masters during the period between His appearance in the temple at age thirteen and the beginning of His public ministry at around age thirty. John has done the faith and us a tremendous service in this concise lesson.
None of these ideas measures up to the Biblical view of Christ or of the Trinity. Either they diminish Him and move toward the gnostic philosophy John rejected, or they compromise the person and character of God.