Blessed Assurance Pt 6 – Testimony of God
Readings: 1 John 5. 6-21
John as he draws his letter to its close returns to the theme he opened his letter with, the assurance that what those he is writing to have come to believe is true, that it’s rooted in actual events and facts. But he’s moved from pressing on his own testimony, the fact that he is an eyewitness to what has happened in the life death and resurrection of Jesus, to leaning now on the testimony of God.
If you’re willing to believe human testimony, he says, how much more should we accept God’s testimony. If God is saying it, not mere humans, we should take note. And throughout Jesus’ ministry God the Father has again and again been saying ‘this is my Son, this is my Son, this is the one in whom I take delight’.
Let’s take the words which opened our reading ‘This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement’.
What’s going on there. John doesn’t elaborate, it seems it would have been obvious to those he’d have been writing to. The problem is, it’s not so obvious to us. What’s he talking about?
Well there have been a number of theories which in many ways overlap, but here’s what’s at the heart of all of them. John is writing to this church because there are people who have come to them claiming that what they believe about Jesus isn’t true. False teachers have come and are teaching against what these Christians have received. That’s why John is determined in this letter to assure them that they are on track, he doesn’t want them to listen to these other teachers.
From what we know of this era from Irenaeus (a second century Bishop in what is now southern France) and that area it seems that these false teachers were teaching that Jesus was an ordinary human man, the ordinary son of Mary and Joseph right up until his baptism. And that at his baptism he received the spirit of the Messiah, the Christ. And then right before his death the spirit of the Messiah left. What they seemed to be doing was taking their own assumptions about God; how he worked, what he would do, and placing them over the Gospel and reworking it to fit.
And we might say, well that’s clearly a bad idea, but we do it so often. We have our own assumptions about who God is, what he is like, and we bring them with us when we read the Bible, discounting anything that doesn’t fit or forcing it to fit. We need to allow God to testify for himself, to reveal himself to us as he see’s fit, not as we assume he will be or want him to be. That’s why he has given us this book, it’s his testimony about himself, about his Son.
Now not only is rewriting the Gospel to fit our prior assumptions, as these people were doing, a bad idea, it also robs the Gospel of it’s power, robs God of his glory. Because they assumed God would never become one of us, the Messiah, God’s Son, couldn’t be a human, he’d just work through a human. But that isn’t what God has done. In Jesus we find one person, fully God, fully human. Inseparably united. Not a new being – part God, part human. But fully and completely both. Which means that the God of the universe knows what it is to be human. It means that he knows our struggles and temptations and challenges from the inside.
It means that as he wades into the water of the river Jordan amidst a crowd of people who are there to say sorry for their sins, their wrongdoing, who are coming to have it all washed away, that’s God himself stood in our midst saying ‘I’m with you, I’m here as one of you’. That’s the testimony of the water that John is talking about. Jesus there in the Jordan with us for his baptism. As God speaks over him ‘this is my Son, my delight, the one in whom I rejoice’. As he’s stood in our midst, God is pointing to him, rejoicing in him. God doesn’t say, you’re now my Son, as the false teachers would say, Jesus has been God’s Son in the flesh right from conception.
And jumping ahead in Jesus life to his crucifixion and death. The false teachers couldn’t conceive of a god who would die. The spirit of the Messiah had to get out of there quick before the end came. And yet that’s not the Gospel. Just as Jesus waded into the river amidst all our sin and wrongdoing, so now as he hangs upon the cross the God of the Universe is bearing all that upon himself, carrying it with him down into death, right down into hell to leave it there. That’s the testimony of the blood that John is talking about, Christ’s death on the cross. It reveals to us what God is like, that God will even go right down into death to bring you home, that he will bear upon himself your failures, your sins, your wrongdoing, so that you can have a relationship with him.
The false teaching of these other teachers is why John is so insistent on the blood bearing witness ‘He did not come by water only, but by water and blood.’ God the Son has gone right down into death, for you. The God of the universe has done all of the things we assume God cannot do. He has been born, born as one of us, walked among us. And he has died, gone right down into death to give you his life. You might assume you know all about God, the God you believe in, the God you reject, and yet the God of the Bible breaks our assumptions, let’s not speak for God, let us allow him to testify to himself.
And if we believe it, that testimony is in our hearts. That’s what John says, if we accept God’s testimony, that testimony is in our hearts. In other words it’s multiplying. As God testifies, so do we, and all our brothers and sisters with us. The testimony of God is multiplying amongst his people as we join with God’s testimony that Jesus is God in the flesh, come to live as one of us, to die for us and raise us with him to everlasting life. And it will continue to grow and multiply until that day when all creation, when all God’s people join in in worship and rejoicing in Jesus as he makes all things new.
But it is only through Jesus that we get there. If we believe in Jesus, we have life, we know God. If we don’t, we remain dead in our sins, we don’t belong to God. It’s binary, John leaves us no wiggle room, neither does Jesus in his preaching. The only way to God is through Jesus, the only way to everlasting life, indeed the only way to truly live is through Jesus. That’s why we’re to share our faith.
That’s why before his Ascension Jesus commissions the Apostles, and us, to witness to him, to share the Gospel with everyone we meet. He knows the only way is through him, and so he, by the Spirit at work in us, sends us out to bear witness, to tell people so that they can find life in Jesus’ name, so that they can share with us in the joy of creation renewed and made whole when he comes again.
The testimony of God is multiplied in us, not solely for our own benefit, although it gives us the assurance that we are saved, but also for the whole world, so that they might come to know too the God who breaks all our assumptions of what God is like and what he would do.
These three testify, the Spirit, the water and the blood. The Holy Spirit who is always bearing witness to God the Son, to Jesus. And the Spirit reveals God incarnate, Jesus Christ, in his baptism and in his death. Both the water of his baptism and his blood shed for us on the cross reveal the God of the Universe. And why do they testify? So that we might believe and know.
As John draws his letter to a close that’s what he wants us to take away, he says ‘I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life’. Knowing that this is our God, that he is love himself, that this love manifests itself in our love for our fellow Christians, that our love for God is revealed in how we keep his commands. Knowing the testimony of John, and with him and over him the testimony of God, we can know for ourselves, be assured in ourselves that we have eternal life.
Based on what God has revealed about his Son, through our believing in him, through his love overflowing from us, we can know and be assured that we have everlasting life. It began the moment we believed, and it will go on forever with him.
Amen.