Referring to what he claimed in the previous verse, namely, that Jesus is the Son of God (i.e. that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, see Psalm 2 and its interpretation in Acts 4:25-28), John told his readers in 1John 5:6 that he, i.e. Jesus, the Christ, had come by water and blood. Then for emphasis John rephrased that statement by saying, he, i.e. Jesus, came not by water only but also by water and blood. Thus, showing the water and blood cannot be interpreted as a single witness alone, but rather as two witnesses, each in its own right. But, how should we understand John’s statement, for truly this verse and those immediately following have proved themselves to be difficult to understand by both ordinary reader and scholar alike?
Some scholarship maintains that the water signifies Jesus’ water baptism through which he entered his public ministry, and the blood refers to his death on the cross, which ended that ministry.[1] On the other hand others have held that John mentioned this to combat the erroneous doctrine of the Gnostics of his time,[2] so he testified that Jesus was truly a human being, born of water (cp. John 3:5) and shed his own blood at death. Yet, much of the controversy of the New Covenant text seems to have been that Jesus was merely a man, not that he was divine as the Gnostics supposed. The Gospel narratives and the epistles that followed all testify of the divine origin of Jesus in contradistinction to Jewish unbelief that Jesus was no more than a man, who was executed as an evil doer. Therefore, there really is no place for a Gnostic interpretation here, at least not in the primary sense of John’s epistle.
If John did, indeed, mention water as a reference to Jesus’ baptism, it seems odd that Jesus, who is said to have come by water, didn’t baptize anyone (John 4:2). Moreover, the same could be stated about anyone who was baptized by John, so, if Jesus ‘came’ by water (baptism), how is this a peculiar witness to the fact that he was sent by God? Indeed, some may object by saying that a voice was heard at that time (Matthew 3:16), and the Spirit (as a dove) was seen by John (Matthew 3:17; John 1:32-34). While this is true, other than the folks who saw or heard these things at Jesus’ baptism, how is this a witness to the world that Jesus is the Christ?
While I don’t mean to make light of the rite of baptism in the Church, I do mean to say that its symbolism points to our confession of Jesus being the Christ, not to John’s statement that Jesus’ baptism bore witness to the fact that he is the Christ. There is a difference. To reiterate, John claimed that Jesus ‘came’ by water and blood, not by water only, but by water an blood. John isn’t introducing a new fact at this point in his epistle. Rather, he is simply restating what he has already claimed about Jesus earlier in his epistle, and all we need to do to understand that is to ask ourselves not how Jesus came (1John 5:6), but why Jesus came (John 1:18), then ask ourselves how that was done. John opened his epistle with the words:
“That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life… that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1John 1:1, 3).
In other words, John’s witness to his readers was all about the words and the works of Jesus. Moreover, Jesus claimed that he spoke only what the Father told him to say (John 8:26, 28) and did only what the Father told him to do (John 5:19-20, 30), thus revealing the Father to the world (John 1:18).
However, what does this mean in the context of Jesus coming by water and blood? We are told in Scripture that almost all things are cleansed by blood, because the life was in the blood (Hebrews 9:22; cp. Leviticus 17:11). What was not cleansed by blood was cleansed by water (Ezekiel 36:25). If the blood of Christ cleanses everyone from their sins (1John 1:7), what is the water of Christ that cleanses us from sin? It is the word of Christ (cp. Ephesians 5:26), which John had already claimed he heard and witnessed to his readers (1John 1:1, 3). So, if one denies he has any need of forgiveness (viz. the antichrists), the word of Christ isn’t in that one to cleanse him from his sins (1John 1:9-10). On the other hand, the love of God is fulfilled in those who keep his word (1John 2:5), because the commandment (word) of Christ is that we love one another as he had loved his disciples and gave himself for them (John 13:34; 15:13).
Jesus came, not by water only. That is, he didn’t come merely to give us a great doctrine about life (cp. 1John 3:18), but, as he spoke or as he taught, so he lived it as well (John 13:34) and gave us an example that we should follow (John 13:15). So, whether in life or in death, whether in word or in deed, whether in water or in blood, Jesus came to bear witness of the Father, to show mankind what God is like (John 1:18), so merciful, so forgiving, so loving. This Jesus did so that we would be able to visualize whom we should love with all our heart, soul mind and strength (Mark 12:30) and imitate in all we say and do (cp. Genesis 1:27).
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[1] See Barnes Notes: “Tertullian, Theophylact, among the church fathers, and Capellus, Heumann, Stroth, Lange, Ziegler, A. Clarke, Bengel, Rosenmuller, Macknight, and others, among the moderns.
[2] This understanding stands or falls purely on the assumption that John wrote his epistles during the 90s of the first century AD. Had they been written, as I believe them to have been, during the 60s and just prior to the Jews’ war with Rome, this interpretation is debunked. Moreover, if John really had the Gnostics in mind, why wasn’t he more straightforward in his writing? Hence, This understanding is purely subjective. It has no real objective support in the Scriptures._
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