The Testimony of God by water and blood · the Spirit testifies · the three witnesses · whoever has the Son has life

Greek Text (SBLGNT)

The Greek text below is the Society of Biblical Literature Greek New Testament (SBLGNT), edited by Michael W. Holmes — © 2010 SBL and Logos, released CC BY 4.0. This is the established critical text; it does not contain the so-called Comma Johanneum, the spurious Trinitarian expansion of vv. 7–8 known from the later Latin tradition and the KJV — see the dedicated textual note below.

Working Translation

An original literal rendering, not borrowed from any copyrighted translation. Brackets mark phrases added for English clarity.

Note on vv. 7–8: this is the genuine, shorter text. The familiar KJV expansion ("in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit…") is the Comma Johanneum and is absent from every Greek manuscript of the New Testament for some thirteen centuries; it is not Scripture and is not translated here. See the dedicated textual note below. Note on v. 8: εἰς τὸ ἕν ("unto the one") means the three witnesses converge on one thing — they agree.

Passage Structure

These seven verses unfold the basis of saving faith in a tight chain of "testimony" (μαρτυρία) language. Having said in v. 5 that the conqueror is the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God, John now grounds that confession in witness — first the witness of the Spirit, water, and blood, then the greater witness of God himself, and finally the content of that witness: eternal life in the Son.

• vv. 6–8 — The threefold witness to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is "the one who came through water and blood" — and not by water only, but by water and blood. The Spirit also bears witness, "because the Spirit is the truth." Three witnesses are then named together — the Spirit, the water, and the blood — and "the three are unto the one," that is, they converge in a single, agreeing testimony.
• v. 9 — From human witness to divine witness. A lesser-to-greater argument (qal wachomer in form): if we routinely accept the testimony of men, how much greater is the testimony of God — and this is precisely the testimony of God, that he has borne witness concerning his Son.
• v. 10 — Believing or making God a liar. Two responses divide humanity. The believer "has the testimony in himself"; the unbeliever, by refusing God's witness about his Son, "has made God a liar." There is no neutral third option.
• vv. 11–12 — The content of the testimony: life in the Son. "And this is the testimony": God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. The paragraph lands on a blunt either/or — whoever has the Son has the life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

The connective thread is the noun-and-verb cluster of μαρτυρ- ("witness, testimony"): the participle τὸ μαρτυροῦν (v. 6), the participle οἱ μαρτυροῦντες (v. 7), the noun μαρτυρία (vv. 9, 10, 11), and the perfect verb μεμαρτύρηκεν (vv. 9, 10). The whole movement is from external, public witness to the inward possession of that witness by faith, and finally to its content — the gift of eternal life located entirely "in the Son."

Verse-by-Verse Notes

A Note on the Text of vv. 7–8 (the Comma Johanneum)

The most famous textual controversy in the New Testament touches these very verses. In the later printed Greek text — and in the King James Version — vv. 7–8 read with an extra, expanded clause about three heavenly witnesses. This addition is called the Comma Johanneum ("the Johannine clause"). The SBLGNT text printed above does not contain it, and rightly so. Here, clearly labeled as the disputed and spurious reading and not as Scripture, is the form of the longer text (the bracketed words are the interpolation): "…there are three that bear witness [in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth], the Spirit and the water and the blood…"

Why it is not part of the text. The evidence against the longer reading is overwhelming and the case is essentially settled:

• The expansion is absent from every Greek manuscript of 1 John until roughly the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, surfacing then only in a tiny handful of very late minuscules — and in several of those it appears to have been added in the margin or back-translated from Latin.
• It is quoted by no Greek church father, even where the Trinitarian debates would have made it the perfect proof-text had it existed in their Bibles.
• It is absent from all the ancient versions made directly from the Greek (Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and the early Latin), arising instead within the Latin tradition, where it grew up as a pious gloss and gradually crept from the margin into the body of some Latin manuscripts.
• It entered the printed Greek text only through Erasmus, who omitted it from his first two editions (1516, 1519) for lack of Greek evidence and added it, under external pressure, from his third edition (1522) onward once a single late Greek manuscript containing it was produced.
• From Erasmus it passed into the later editions that became the Textus Receptus, and so into the KJV. It is rightly omitted by all modern critical editions, including the SBLGNT and NA28.

What is at stake theologically? Nothing essential — and this is the crucial point. The doctrine of the Trinity does not rest, and never rested, on this verse. It rests on the whole witness of Scripture: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each fully God, yet God is one. A spurious gloss neither establishes that truth nor, by its removal, weakens it. Honesty about the text actually strengthens our confidence: the church confesses the Trinity on the broad and secure foundation of the canon, not on a late marginal addition. Defending a reading we know to be a later insertion would only hand critics a weapon and substitute a counterfeit for the genuine, sufficient testimony of God's Word.

For the wider question of how the New Testament text has been transmitted and how variants are weighed, see Text & Manuscripts; for the parallel handling of a genuine textual variant in the Gospel of John, see the note on John 1:14–18 (v. 18). On the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity established across the whole of Scripture, see Jesus Is God.

Key Greek Words and Phrases

Grammar and Syntax that Affect Interpretation

1. Aorist participle ὁ ἐλθών ("the one who came") — v. 6. Points to the completed historical mission of Jesus, framing "water and blood" as the events of that mission (baptism and death).
2. Shift from διά ("through") to ἐν ("in"), with emphatic οὐ … μόνον ἀλλά ("not only … but") — v. 6. The repeated correction insists that the blood (the cross) is no less essential than the water (the baptism). The grammar carries the polemic against separating Jesus from "the Christ" at the cross.
3. Causal ὅτι in "the Spirit testifies, because the Spirit is the truth" — v. 6. Grounds the reliability of the Spirit's witness in his very nature; he cannot testify falsely.
4. Neuter subjects and εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν ("are unto the one") — vv. 7–8. The three witnesses are neuter (Spirit, water, blood), and the idiom asserts their agreement, not a metaphysical oneness. This is one reason the later Trinitarian gloss does not fit the grammar of the genuine text.
5. Conditional εἰ … λαμβάνομεν with comparative μείζων — v. 9. A real-condition, lesser-to-greater argument: we do accept human testimony; God's is greater. The form drives the logic.
6. Perfect μεμαρτύρηκεν ("has testified") — vv. 9–10. God's witness about his Son is an accomplished act with abiding force — a standing testimony, not a fleeting one.
7. The two constructions of "believe" — v. 10. πιστεύων εἰς ("believing into / trusting in") the Son vs. πιστεύων τῷ θεῷ ("believing God," crediting his word). The shift distinguishes saving trust in the Son from mere acceptance of a report — and shows that to disbelieve God's report is to reject the Son.
8. Perfect πεποίηκεν ("has made [him] a liar") — v. 10. States a settled condition that results from unbelief: not a passing failure but a fixed verdict the unbeliever has pronounced against God.
9. Cataphoric αὕτη … ὅτι ("this … that") — v. 11. The forward-pointing demonstrative makes the ὅτι-clause the explicit content of God's testimony: eternal life given, and that life located in the Son.
10. Balanced articular participles ὁ ἔχων / ὁ μὴ ἔχων — v. 12. Two categories of people defined by their relation to the Son. The antithesis is absolute: having the Son and having life are coextensive; so are their negatives.

Theological Significance

The full reality of the incarnate, crucified Son. Verse 6 anchors salvation in the historical Jesus who came "by water and blood" — really baptized, really crucified. By refusing to separate the water from the blood, John guards both the genuine humanity and the saving death of the Son. There is no abstract heavenly "Christ" detached from the man who bled on the cross; the same Jesus Christ is the Son of God from the Jordan to Golgotha. This is the bedrock of any orthodox Christology.

The Spirit who bears witness. The Spirit is "the truth" and testifies to Christ — outwardly through the apostolic word and the events of Jesus' life, and inwardly in the believer who "has the testimony in himself" (v. 10). The objective witness of God in history and the subjective assurance of the Spirit in the heart are not rivals; the same Spirit who certifies the historical facts also seals their truth within those who believe.

The authority of God's testimony. John's lesser-to-greater argument (v. 9) confronts every age: we extend trust to fallible human witnesses constantly, yet stumble at believing God. To refuse God's witness about his Son is not cautious skepticism but the gravest insult — calling God a liar (v. 10). Faith, in this light, is simply taking God at his word about Jesus; unbelief is the audacious accusation that God has lied.

Eternal life located in the Son alone. The climax (vv. 11–12) is one of the clearest statements in Scripture of the exclusivity and the location of salvation. Eternal life is God's gift, and it is in his Son. It is not available anywhere else, on any other terms, through any other mediator. "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." This is at once the sweetest assurance for the believer and the most sobering warning to the unbeliever — and it is the goal toward which John writes (cf. 5:13).

Common Misreadings and Careful Corrections

1. Reading the Comma Johanneum as Scripture. The genuine text of vv. 7–8 names only the Spirit, the water, and the blood. The heavenly-witnesses expansion is a late Latin gloss absent from every Greek manuscript for some thirteen centuries; it must not be defended or quoted as Scripture. The Trinity rests on the whole canon, not on this clause (see the textual note above).
2. Over-reading "water and blood" as the church's two sacraments. Some take the water as baptism and the blood as the Lord's Supper. The aorist participle "the one who came" points rather to the events of Jesus' own mission — most naturally his baptism and his death. Sacramental application may be made, but the verse's first reference is christological and historical, not liturgical.
3. Driving a wedge between Jesus and "the Christ." The very error John combats is the separation of the man Jesus from a divine "Christ" who supposedly left before the cross. The text insists on one Jesus Christ who came by water and blood. Any Christology that diminishes the reality of the Son's death contradicts v. 6.
4. Treating εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν ("are unto the one") as a proof of the Trinity. The phrase asserts that the three witnesses agree, not that three persons are one in essence. (Ironically, it was partly this misreading that produced the spurious Comma.) The doctrine of the Trinity is true and well-grounded elsewhere; do not rest it on a strained reading of this clause.
5. Reducing faith to bare intellectual assent. The Johannine πιστεύων εἰς ("believing into") the Son is personal, committal trust, not mere agreement that certain facts are true. James reminds us even the demons "believe" facts and shudder. To "have the Son" (v. 12) is to be vitally joined to him, not merely to hold correct opinions about him.
6. Softening "does not have life" into something less than it says. Verse 12 admits no middle category and no alternative source of life. The exclusivity is stark by design. Faithful teaching neither sharpens this into harshness nor blunts it into universalism; it states plainly that life is in the Son and warns lovingly those who do not have him.

Cross-References

• 1 John 5:5 — "who is it that overcomes the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God"; the confession this passage now grounds in testimony.
• 1 John 5:13 — "that you may know that you have eternal life"; John's stated purpose, lying just beyond vv. 11–12.
• John 19:34–35 — blood and water flowed from the pierced side of Jesus, with the eyewitness's emphatic testimony. A possible echo behind "water and blood" in v. 6; note it as possible, not certain — the primary reference is to Jesus' baptism and death.
• John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13 — the Spirit of truth who bears witness to Christ; background for "the Spirit is the truth" (v. 6).
• Deuteronomy 19:15; John 8:17–18 — a matter is established by two or three witnesses; the legal principle behind the threefold witness of vv. 7–8.
• Matthew 3:16–17 — the baptism of Jesus, where Father, Son, and Spirit are publicly displayed; the "water" of v. 6.
• Romans 8:16 — the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit; parallel to "has the testimony in himself" (v. 10).
• John 3:36 — "whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life"; a close parallel to the either/or of v. 12.
• John 1:4; 11:25; 14:6; 20:31 — life is in the Son; believing that Jesus is the Christ, you may have life in his name. Background for vv. 11–12.
• 1 John 1:1–3 — the eyewitness testimony to the Word of life "made manifest"; the same witness-and-life theme that frames the letter.
• John 5:31–39 — Jesus' own discourse on the witnesses to him (the Father, the works, the Scriptures); a wider Johannine frame for "the testimony of God."

Preaching / Teaching Summary

1 John 5:6–12 answers a question every honest seeker asks: why should I believe that this Jesus is the Son of God? John's reply is not a leap in the dark but a chain of witnesses converging on one verdict. Three lines preach.

First, the testimony is real and it agrees. Jesus came by water and blood — really baptized at the Jordan, really crucified at Golgotha — and the Spirit, who is the truth, bears witness to him still. Three witnesses, one verdict: this Jesus is the Son of God who came in the flesh and died for sinners. The gospel does not ask us to believe against the evidence; it sets before us a sufficient, agreeing testimony and asks us to receive it. And it will not let us file away the cross as optional: not the water only, but the water and the blood.

Second, to refuse God's witness is to call God a liar. We trust human witnesses every day — doctors, courts, the news, our friends. Yet when God himself testifies about his own Son, we hesitate. John strips away the pretense of neutral caution: unbelief is not modesty, it is an accusation. The one who will not believe God "has made him a liar." Faith, by contrast, is the humblest and most reasonable thing in the world — simply taking the God who cannot lie at his word about Jesus, and finding that witness confirmed within by his Spirit.

Third, life is in the Son — and nowhere else. Here is the whole gospel in a sentence: "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." Eternal life is not a reward we earn or a force we tap; it is a gift God has given, and he has put it in his Son. So the question is not finally about religion or morality or sincerity in the abstract. It is one question: do you have the Son? To have him is to have life now and forever. To be without him is to be without life, however much else one possesses. Come to the Son, and you have everything; the testimony of God himself stands behind the offer.

Memory and Review Questions

1. What do "water and blood" most likely refer to in v. 6, and what error is John guarding against?
   Most likely Jesus' baptism (water) and his death (blood) — the whole arc of his mission. By insisting "not by water only but by water and blood," John guards against a teaching that separated the man Jesus from a divine "Christ" who supposedly departed before the cross, denying the saving significance of the Son's real death.
2. Why does the change from διά ("through") to ἐν ("in"), with "not only … but," matter in v. 6?
   The emphatic repetition presses the point that the blood (the cross) is no less essential than the water (the baptism). The grammar carries the polemic: one and the same Jesus Christ came by both.
3. Why is the Spirit a reliable witness, according to v. 6?
   "Because the Spirit is the truth." The Spirit's witness shares the very nature of the God who cannot lie, so his testimony to Christ is utterly trustworthy (cf. John 16:13).
4. Who are the three witnesses in vv. 7–8 in the genuine text, and what does εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν mean?
   The Spirit, the water, and the blood. "The three are unto the one" means they converge on a single, agreeing verdict — they coincide in their testimony. It is a statement of agreement, not of an ontological oneness of persons.
5. What is the Comma Johanneum, and why is it not part of Scripture?
   It is the spurious expansion of vv. 7–8 about three heavenly witnesses (Father, Word, Holy Spirit). It is absent from every Greek manuscript for some thirteen centuries, quoted by no Greek father, arose in the Latin tradition, and entered the printed Greek text only through Erasmus (from 1522) and so the Textus Receptus and KJV. All modern critical editions rightly omit it; the Trinity rests on the whole of Scripture, not on this gloss.
6. What kind of argument does John make in v. 9?
   A lesser-to-greater argument: if we routinely accept the testimony of fallible men, the testimony of God is far greater and more authoritative — and this is God's testimony, that he has borne witness concerning his Son.
7. What two ways of responding to God's testimony does v. 10 set out?
   The one who believes in the Son "has the testimony in himself" — inwardly owned and confirmed by the Spirit. The one who does not believe God "has made him a liar," because he has rejected God's witness about his Son. There is no neutral third option.
8. What is the difference between πιστεύων εἰς and πιστεύων τῷ θεῷ in v. 10?
   πιστεύων εἰς ("believing into / trusting in") the Son is personal, committal trust; πιστεύων τῷ θεῷ ("believing God") is crediting his word. The shift shows that saving trust in the Son and accepting God's testimony belong together — and that to disbelieve God's report is to reject the Son.
9. What is the content of "the testimony" finally stated in v. 11?
   That God gave us eternal life, and that this life is in his Son. Eternal life is God's gift, located in Christ and available nowhere else.
10. How does v. 12 state the exclusivity of life in the Son?
    In a balanced antithesis on the verb "have": "Whoever has the Son has the life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have the life." There is no middle ground and no alternative source — to have the Son is to have life; to be without him is to be without life.
11. Should John 19:34 ("blood and water") be cited as the meaning of v. 6?
    It may be noted as a possible echo, but not as the certain or primary meaning. The primary reference in v. 6 is to Jesus' baptism and his death; the connection to the pierced side is a possibility to hold loosely, not a foundation for doctrine.