Jesus Is God 1 John 5:6-12
Today we’re reading from the first letter written by John. There are five books in the New Testament credited as being written by John: the Gospel of John, the first, second, and third letters of John, and Revelation. The problem for scholars is that the author of the letters never gives us his name. In the gospel and 1st John he is completely anonymous. In John 3 and 4 he calls himself simply, the elder. I subscribe to the belief that the letters and gospel may seem anonymous to us, but to those Christians that first received these writings, they very well knew who the author was. Those early Christians attributed the writings to Jesus’ disciple John, so I do too.
In this letter, John is assuring his readers understand the truth, the truth that Jesus and God are one. John is not alone in this belief: Philippians 2:5-6, “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think equality with God as something to cling to.” Colossians 2:9-10, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.” John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God, and in the closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” And Jesus himself says in John 10:30, “The Father and I are one.”
Through time men have understood this truth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed for preaching the word to Germans in WWII wrote, “If Jesus Christ is not true God, how could he help us?” John Oswald Sanders, director of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship in the 1950’s and 60’s authored more than forty books on Christian life and faith wrote, “The deity of Christ is the key doctrine of the scriptures. Reject it, and the Bible becomes a jumble of words without any unifying theme.”
The truth that runs through the entirety of the Bible, from the first sentence to the last, is that Jesus and God are one and the same. Whether or not John read the ancient texts, he did live with Christ. He listened to Christ teach. He was the only one of the twelve to be at Jesus’ feet at his crucifixion. And along with Peter, he was among the first few to see Jesus empty tomb. All this gives Jon a unique understanding as to Jesus and God as one.
In this letter John starts by pointing to Jesus as the Son of God, 1 John 1:2, “The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it…the eternal life, which was with the Father, and has appeared to us.” John is telling his readers that Jesus is God, that he came and became one of us to bring us life and the ability to be separated from our sin.
John next tells us that this isn’t his idea, that there are witnesses to this truth, three witnesses: water, blood, and Spirit.
Verse 9, “We accept human testimony…” This refers to Jesus the man.
Man is brought into this world through a birth of water. Jesus was born a natural human birth. Man leaves this world by blood, specifically, the end of circulating blood. By coming to us through the water of human birth, and sharing in the blood of human death, Jesus unites himself with us in the entirety of our lives. He, therefore, redeems us and heals us from our birth to our death. We are forgiven all sins: past, present, and future. But a man can’t do this for us, only God can, therefore, the man Jesus must also be God. Again, we look at verse 9, “We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater…”
Once again, we turn to the mentioned water and blood. The water represents Jesus’ baptism; Mark 1:10, “Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.” The water, at Jesus’ baptism, is the beginning of God’s final solution to the world’s sin. In this context, the blood represents the crucifixion. Through his shedding of his blood on the cross, God’s Spirit concludes his holy work of salvation for all time. The water and the blood show us the holy work being done from start to finish. Holy work done by Jesus. Holy work only accomplished by God. Holy work that proves Jesus is God.
And what of the third witness, the Spirit; Verse 6, “And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is truth.” The Spirit is truth. The Spirit he writes about is the Spirit of God. And John doesn’t write the Spirit tells the truth; he writes the Spirit is truth. 1 Samuel 15:29, “The God of Israel cannot lie or change his mind.” And this God has testified to who Jesus is; Matthew 3:17 at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, whom I love…” And again at Jesus’ transfiguration, Luke 9:35, “A voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son…’”
I am my mother’s son. I am my father’s son. I’m not more one than the other, I am both at the same time, equal to both. God claims Jesus as his son, and God cannot lie. Born of a woman, Jesus is wholly human, and wholly God, equal in both at the same time. Only in this way can he accept all human sin upon himself. Only in this way can he make the one perfect sacrifice to free us from that sin. This reality of Jesus being God is so important it’s all through the Bible. I did a superficial examination of scripture and quickly found 165 verses that say it.
We do not believe in a God who hides and pulls strings from the shadows. We do not believe in a God who is absent and uninterested. We believe in a God that wants us to be with him. And unlike the ancient false gods who men believed did things to deliberately cause us grief and trouble, the one true God did something to cause us joy and life, he solved our sin nature problem for us.
Our God was born a human birth by water, baptized by water. He shed his blood on a cross and died a human blood death for us. And he did this by standing among us as human, while never stopping being God at the same time. And only by being man and God, equal to both at the same time, could Christ close the chasm between mankind and heaven.
I say to you now what Paul said to the Thessalonians in his second letter to them; “Now may the Lord of peace himself, give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.” (2 Thes 3:16)
Amen