Free Bible Commentary
“First John 5:5-8”
Categories: First John“Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”
--- End of Scripture verses---
In the previous verse John had written that “whatever is born of God overcomes the world,” and faith in Christ is “the victory that has overcome the world.” The apostle had previously told us that the makeup of “the world” is “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life (1 John 2:16). When our faith in Christ leads us to be born again through the waters of baptism, and to consistently comply with His commandments in loving faith, He empowers us to resist the allurements of sinful lusts and damage of prideful self-will. In verse 5, for the third time in two verses, the writer tells us of a necessary component of the kind of faith that “overcomes the world”—belief that “Jesus is the Son of God.”
This probably sounds fairly basic and obvious to those of us reading this text, but its simplicity is both profound and extremely consequential. When we accept and profess that Jesus is the Son of God we acknowledge that He bears all the attributes, authority and privileges of eternal, almighty, omniscient deity. To say that Jesus is God’s Son is to proclaim that “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). Most people in “the world” will acknowledge that Jesus was a good man, a teacher or righteousness, even a prophet sent from God. But the kind of belief that overcomes “the world” with all its empty, human philosophies and tenuous, theological theories is faith in the fact that Christ Jesus is Jehovah God and deserving of all our love, reverence, loyalty and subservience.
Jesus is the “One who came by water and blood” (verse 6). Jesus intentionally emerged from relative obscurity and launched into His public ministry when He was baptized by His cousin John in the Jordan river (Matthew 3:13-17). The heavens were opened, the Spirit descended, and God the Father proclaimed that Jesus was His Son in whom He was well-pleased. Jesus also came by blood—that is to say that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and literally bled and died for the sins of the world. Despite the insistence of the false teachers that God could not possibly come in the form of a human because of their false belief that flesh was inherently evil, Jesus truly did. He was the literal Son of God as pronounced by the Father at His baptism, and continued to be so all the way to the point of bleeding and dying on a Roman cross like a common criminal.
“It is the Spirit who testifies” of this “because the Spirit is the truth” (verse 6). Under Jewish law, by the testimony of three witnesses all facts may be established and “a matter may be confirmed” (Deuteronomy 19:15, Matthew 18:16). The “three that testify” (verse 7) are “the Spirit and the water and the blood” (verse 8). It is ultimately the Holy “Spirit who testifies,” however, because He is the divine revelator of the word who inspired John and the other Apostles to declare all truth about Jesus, including the water and the blood (John 16:13). Jesus called Him “the Spirit of truth” indicating that everything John was inspired to say was completely true and trustworthy, and in total “agreement” with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Please read 1 John 5:9-12 for tomorrow.
Blessings!
-Louie Taylor
