I John 5:6

This--the Person mentioned in Jo1 5:5. This Jesus. he that came by water and blood--"by water," when His ministry was inaugurated by baptism in the Jordan, and He received the Father's testimony to His Messiahship and divine Sonship. Compare Jo1 5:5, "believeth that Jesus is the Son of God," with Joh 1:33-34, "The Spirit . . . remaining on Him . . . I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God"; and Jo1 5:8, below, "there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood." Corresponding to this is the baptism of water and the Spirit which He has instituted as a standing seal and mean of initiatory incorporation with Him. and blood--He came by "the blood of His cross" (so "by" is used, Heb 9:12 : "by," that is, with, "His own blood He entered in once into the holy place"): a fact seen and so solemnly witnessed to by John. "These two past facts in the Lord's life are this abiding testimony to us, by virtue of the permanent application to us of their cleansing and atoning power." Jesus Christ--not a mere appellation, but a solemn assertion of the Lord's Person and Messiahship. not by, &c.--Greek, "not IN the water only, but IN the water and IN (so oldest manuscripts add) the blood." As "by" implies the mean through, or with, which He came: so "in," the element in which He came. "The" implies that the water and the blood were sacred and well-known symbols. John Baptist came only baptizing with water, and therefore was not the Messiah. Jesus came first to undergo Himself the double baptism of water and blood, and then to baptize us with the Spirit-cleansing, of which water is the sacramental seal, and with His atoning blood, the efficacy of which, once for all shed, is perpetual in the Church; and therefore is the Messiah. It was His shed bl…

The faith of the Christian believer (or the believer in Christ) being thus mighty and victorious, it had need to be well founded, to be furnished with unquestionable celestial evidence concerning the divine mission, authority, and office of the Lord Jesus; and it is so; he brings his credentials along with him, and he brings them in a way by which he came and in the witness that attends him. I. In the way and manner by which he came; not barely by which he came into the world, but by and with which he came, and appeared, and acted, as a Saviour in the world: This is he that came by water and blood. He came to save us from our sins, to give us eternal life, and bring us to God; and, that he might the more assuredly do this, he came by, or with, water and blood. Even Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ, I say, did so; and none but he. And I say it again, not by or with water only, but by and with water and blood, Jo1 5:6. Jesus Christ came with water and blood, as the notes and signatures of the true effectual Saviour of the world; and he came by water and blood as the means by which he would heal and save us. That he must and did thus come in his saving office may appear by our remembering these things: - 1. We are inwardly and outwardly defiled. (1.) Inwardly, by the power and pollution off sin and in our nature. For our cleansing from this we need spiritual water; such as can reach the soul and the powers of it. Accordingly, there is in and by Christ Jesus the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. And this was intimated to the apostles by our Lord, when he washed their feet, and said to Peter, who refused to be washed, Except I wash thee, thou hast no part in me. (2.) We are defiled outwardly, by the guilt and condemning power of sin upon our persons. By t…

5:6 And Jesus Christ was revealed as God’s Son by his baptism in water and by shedding his blood on the cross (literally This is he who came by water and blood): John’s contemporary, the heretic Cerinthus, taught that “the Christ” descended as a spirit on the man Jesus when he was baptized but left him before he died. The truth is that Jesus’ baptism and death confirmed his identity as the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus of Nazareth was and is truly the Christ, the Son of God, from the beginning and forever.