Overcomer
This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life.
“He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe” (John 19:35).
“Who is it that overcomes the world?” John asked. The answer: people who believe in Jesus, fully God and fully man, two natures in one. False teachers always separate Jesus the man from Jesus the Christ.
The single most defining element that separates Christianity from every other world religion is the God-Man nature of Jesus, as noted in this passage by John. Many world religions recognize Jesus as important in one way or another, but not the way John describes him in this epistle.
- Judaism acknowledges Jesus as a real person, but not as the Messiah, the Christ. It teaches that Jesus was a popular teacher who worked magic (not miracles) and was crucified, but not resurrected.
- Islam teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin, but was only a prophet, not God Incarnate.
- Bahá’í practitioners describe Jesus as a wise teacher whose words included the wisdom of God. While they do claim a dual nature for Jesus, they also assert that all of God’s “manifestations” do as well.
- Hinduism respects Jesus as a holy man, maybe even a god, if he is real. Some Hindus believe that Jesus is a symbol of what all humans can become, a model of divinity available to all.
- Buddhists consider Jesus an enlightened and wise teacher, even holy for some practitioners.
- Jehovah’s Witnesses call Jesus the first son brought forth by God and is also known as Michael the archangel.
- Latter Day Saints (Mormons) teach that Jesus is a spirit child of Elohim.
- Christian Science calls Jesus the “offspring of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God” (Lankhorst, 2010).
- Unity: Jesus is a Krishna who lives inside everyone.
- Spiritualists say that Jesus is a high order medium who communicated with God.
- New Age teaching claims that Jesus was just a man who held the Christ Spirit for a time.
- Eastern Mysticism believes that Jesus is a divine master.
The false teachers about which John warned separated the man Jesus from his deity. Their teaching evolved over time to Gnosticism, claiming a separation of mind and matter. At this early state, they denied that Jesus was who he claimed to be:the promised Messiah who came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). They taught that Jesus was only a human, born in the natural human way and that the spirit of the Christ came on him at baptism. As false teachers always do, they separated the man, Jesus, from the Christ.
John emphasized the uniqueness of the Lord by merging his name with his title: Jesus Christ as “one person who was simultaneously from his birth to his death and for evermore (this is the one, present tense) both the man Jesus and the Christ of God” (Stott, 1984, 178, emphasis in original). When John put together “water and blood,” he intentionally brought to mind Jesus’s words to Nicodemus in his gospel, that to be born again required being born physically AND spiritually.
Water, to Nicodemus, symbolized physical birth. In the epistle, water also extended to baptism, or a birth of faith. At Jesus’ baptism, John witnessed the Spirit of God, descending like a dove and remaining on Jesus (John 1:29-24). For Jesus, baptism verified his unique divinity, present since his human birth; “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). For the rest of us, baptism reflects our new nature as children of God (2 Corinthians 5:17). Water, then reflects two “births:” physical and spiritual. While births come through water, death comes through the blood.
Throughout the Bible, blood symbolizes protection (Exodus 12), life (Leviticus 17:14), worship through sacrifice (Deuteronomy 12; Hebrews 13), and partnership agreement/covenant (Genesis 15:9-21; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Mark 14:24). In each case, God provided the blood for the sacrifice. Humans failed to keep their side of every promise and every agreement until Jesus. Jesus succeeded where humans failed and established himself as the “guarantor and mediator of the new and better covenant” (Woolard, 2018; Hebrews 7). Westcott (1886) wrote, “The first proof of the Messiahship of Jesus lay in His complete historical fulfillment of Messiah’s work once for all in bringing purification and salvation: that proof is continued in the experience of the Church…”(182). Purification and salvation is assured by the Spirit, who testifies to the Truth because he is Truth (1 John 4:6).
The Spirit is the third party of the testimony as required by Judaic law. A birth of faith evidenced by baptism, a birth of blood making that faith possible, and the Spirit whose testimony resides inside every believer. These three are the pillars that make us confident in what we know to be true. Stott (1964) put it this way:
“God is the subject and Christ the object of the threefold testimony. The Spirit, the water, and the blood all testify to Christ, and the reason why they agree is that God himself is behind them…The perfect tense indicates the continuing validity (in itself and through the Spirit) of God’s historical testimony to Christ. It is God who testified to his Son in history, in water and the blood, and it is God who testified to him today through his Spirit in our hearts” (181).
God gave us eternal life through his Son and we live that life in the Son now and forever and He testifies that truth to us through the Spirit. Everything in heaven and earth bears witness that Jesus the man is also the Christ, offering salvation through his coming, his living, his dying, and his resurrecting. Any teaching that suggests otherwise is false and must be rejected, no matter how appealing they may sound. The dual nature of Jesus is an essential element of Christianity. Life through death by, in, and through Jesus is the only way, truth, and life (John 14:6). No other religious system offers that kind of blessed assurance.
Resources
The ESV Bible. Crossway, 2001, www.esv.org/.
Lankhorst, Jack. “Cults, Religions & Jesus Christ.” Christian Life Center Institute, 19 Oct. 2010, https://discipleshipdevelopment.org/2010/10/19/what-other-religions-say-about-jesus-christ/.
Palmer, Earl F., The Communicator’s Commentary Series, Volume 12: 1,2,3 John; Revelation. Word, Inc. 1982.
Stott, John R.W. The Letters of John. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, vol. 19, InterVarsity Press, 1964, 1988.
Wallace, J. Warner. “Who Is Jesus, According to Other Religions?” Cold Case Christianity, 4 Dec. 2017, https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/who-is-jesus-according-to-other-religions/.
Westcott, Brooke Foss. The Epistles of St. John: The Greek Text, with Notes and Essays. Cambridge, MacMillan, 1886. Robarts – University of Toronto, robarts.library.utoronto.ca. Borrowed from Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/epistlesofstjohn00westuoft/page/n7/mode/2up
Woollard, Whitney. “The Five Key Covenants God Makes With Humans in the Bible: Partnerships Between God and People.” Bible Project, 3 Apr. 2018, https://bibleproject.com/articles/covenants-the-backbone-bible/.
Defaulting to Grace 