1 John 5:6-8: By Water and Blood?

Christians have rightly written and sung about the blood of Jesus, for his atonement is central to the faith. But in 1 John 5:6-8 we discover that there is water as well as blood; we do not have songs about water. What does it mean to come by water and blood? Why are they placed alongside the Spirit as witnesses? And how do inanimate things bear witness?

Historically there have been three different types of answers to these questions. First, some of the church fathers linked the water and blood to the "blood and water" that came out of Jesus' side when he was pierced by a spear (Jn 19:34). Yet the essence of the cross was not that water flowed, but that blood was shed. In fact, no other New Testament text mentions water in connection with the cross. At the time of the spear-thrust Jesus was already dead; it only proved that he was in fact dead. Finally, the order of words in John 19 is different from that in John 5:6-8, which indicates that the author was not thinking of the Gospel passage when he wrote.

Second, others have seen a sacramental emphasis here. The blood stands for the Lord's Supper or Eucharist, the water for baptism, and the Spirit for the reception of the Spirit in Christian initiation. In that case part of the background would be John 3:5, being born of water (baptism) and the Spirit, and part would be John 6:53-56, the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of the Son of Man. This interpretation fits better with 1 John 5:8 than with 1 John 5:6, for the verb here indicates a completed act, not a repeating sacrament, while in 1 John 5:8 there is a present-time ongoing witnessing. Yet even there the order of the three terms is not the same as that in normal Christian initiation in which baptism (water) precedes both Eucharist (blood) and reception of the Spirit. Nor is the order the same as that in John 3:5. Finally, it would be unique to find the single term "blood" standing for the Eucharist. Even in John 6 both flesh and blood are mentioned. At the same time, since the Johannine writings are full of double meanings, it is quite possible that this is a secondary meaning implied by the author; namely, that in the Christian rites we reflect on the historical events in the life of Christ.

Third, and probably correctly, scholars have seen the water as standing for the baptism of Jesus and the blood for his death on the cross. The two events mark out respectively the beginning and end of his ministry. The context in 1 John argues that "Jesus is the Son of God" (1 Jn 5:5). What John is saying is that the human Jesus is in fact the divine, preexistent Son. This very Son is the one who had a real human existence marked by baptism and the cross. He is Jesus Christ; that is, both the human man and the divine Savior. This emphasis is reasonable in the face of the heresy John was refuting that denied that "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh" (1 Jn 4:2). He was really human, John states, for he was baptized, receiving the Spirit and entering upon a ministry open to all to see, and he died a real death marked by real blood. This whole life history of Jesus refutes the claims of the heretics.

How, then, do these inanimate elements bear witness? It is obvious that the Spirit is the central witness of the trio and the one most emphasized by John. His ongoing witness in the heart of the believers is clear throughout 1 John. The other two are historical events, but they stand as things that happened, a silent testimony to all who will accept their witness. To deny the reality of Jesus' humanity is to fly in the face of the historical data. They function as witnesses the same way that piles of stones and other inanimate objects could function in that way in the Old Testament (see Josh 22:27). Their importance is that the Spirit witnesses to something that is real--real historical events--not to something that happened only in the suprahistorical realm.

Readers of the Authorized or King James Version will notice that in the NIV and other modern translations 1 John 5:7 does not contain the three who "testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit." The reason for this omission is quite simple. The clause appears in late manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, not in the early ones. And in the Greek manuscripts it does not appear before the sixteenth century. As a result, scholars universally conclude that the original text of 1 John lacked this statement, which was probably added by a pious scribe in the margin at some later time as a "Praise the Lord" and got copied into the text by a still later scribe (doubtless thinking that the first scribe was putting in the margin something that he had accidentally left out).

These verses, then, underline the importance of the real historical nature of the life and death of Jesus. Christians do not believe that salvation comes through actions that only took place in the realm of ideas or the spiritual world. Nor did Jesus come simply as a revealer of the truth, his deeds being incidental. Rather, Jesus came to do something as a real man in space and time and history. He lived a real life, accomplished a real ministry, and died a real death. The markers of the water of his baptism and the blood of his cross point to this reality. To this the Spirit bears witness. And, in a secondary sense, the celebration of the Christian sacraments point to this historical foundation.