1 John 5.6
v 6 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.
Repent and believe. When the Apostle John is inspired by the Spirit to relate what he has seen of the worldly testimony of Jesus Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, he is the only of the four gospel authors who does not use the word repentance. And yet he speaks the same Word, and proclaims the same Truth, and so we seek the human word repentance within his testimony built upon the Truth of the Word of God by the Spirit of Truth. When we consider what it means for John to not specifically call out this verb as the dynamic motion that the believer is engaged in by the movement of God’s miracle, the Spirit of Truth might bring us to this passage. When our hearts wonder what the lack of this human word in the Word means, the Spirit recalls us to the Truth revealed by Christ to Nicodemus: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3.3). And brings us earlier to John’s first recorded conflict between Christ and the scoffers and disbelievers, who asked on what authority Jesus put order and righteousness to his Father’s house, and he testified to his Authority from the Father to fulfill the Father’s will for reconciliation with man: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2.19). Jesus’ Testimony of the Name of God, God’s will for a relationship to man, and the means of delivering this will is consistent and indelibly is woven into all of God’s workings, in all of the movements of God and revelations for the sight of man, and always this Word declares: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. (John 3.36). Repentance as the movement of man away from God’s wrath against the wickedness he now sees within his life for he believes in the light of God’s Word, or repentance as the new life of a believer who can see the kingdom of God and lives in this hope, or repentance as the incomplete Word of God in the law and the prophets and the psalmists fulfilled in the new temple of the Body of the risen Son of God and the Body of believers he baptizes into himself and these believers by belonging to this baptism belonging to the Truth of God’s love and command: this repentance is the exhortation and instruction the Spirit gave John to declare. Repentance as being born again: such a profound change it is a totally new beginning to life and a new history of man who is now born of spirit not flesh. Repentance as being part of the new temple of Jesus Christ’s Body that as he said he would raise again in three days: such complete death the old self in the flesh that it participated and received by baptism into the death of Christ, that with him the believer may be raised to life. Repentance that believes in the Son and that by belief he is freed from God’s wrath: such a complete repentance from God’s wrath that it is only worked by the movement and miracle of God, at the price of his very Son’s unblemished body nailed to the cross. The Word proclaims of repentance and belief, and the repentance of this Word: to be born again by belief in the miracle by which we become the temple of God’s own Spirit that by the miracle we become, the righteousness of the Son of God is imparted to us in place of God’s wrath. When this repentance is revealed in the mystery of Christ by the Spirit of Truth, it profits the believer to consider the water by which Jesus Christ came.
But repentance is not alone in the Word of God; He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. The repentance called forth by the Word of God in completeness comes also by the blood, which is a new life and spirit. Cleansing with the water brings removal of the life that was, so that just as the flood waters submerged the wickedness of man, the waters of repentance remove away the sins and wickedness that makes man unclean before God. But afterwards, there must be a life of righteousness or there is no hope, only death, wrath, and loss. Yet if what was washed is to persist as it was wont to preceding, there is again no hope. That which was made unclean of its own will and accord throughout history shall, after being cleansed, return to being unclean unless the will and the accord of the vessel is changed. Uncleanliness is not a return to the initial state; uncleanliness is a return to the behavior of the thing which was made clean and cast aside this for its own will. The propensity towards uncleanness is not what the washing with water resolves for the man, but it does bring revelation of that which was unclean and needed to be removed. What is washed with water will become dirty again; what has been able to be made unclean and likewise be made clean will continue in ambivalence and vacillation between these states. Yet what God calls man to is an obedient freedom within his love, and thus, what is the now-believer to ask of God that he should be resolved of uncleanness without being absolved of freedom? He is to ask for what the Word delivers: a new life that is made to be clean and preserved by the love of God himself. God’s new life for the believer supplants the old life, that was made unclean by man supposing himself and fleeting authority over creation to be gods, and was decayed by the consuming desires of man. There is nothing wrong in the call of the master to be obedient, much as there is nothing wrong with the master leaving his trusted one in authority while he is away; but when the servant uses what was good for wickedness, or abuses for his own will what was rightfully his master’s, he has forgotten that no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him, and he has lost the blessing promised by the Word of God to those who know and do these things (John 13.16–17). What then shall be said of what the believer is to ask for? Is he to ask for a more stringent cleansing with the water, that ever smaller specks of corruption might come to light? No, the fulfillment of the law in the Son of God and his Testimony is not for the refinement of the law, which is complete in itself, but for the building up of something which is made by the miracle of God to be both clean and to no longer be made unclean. Were man to believe and put his faith in a refinement of the law and the processes of cleansing away his recurring sins with repentance, he would be trying to rebuild what he destroyed, and then he really would be a lawbreaker (Galatians 2.18). If following the cleansing by the water of the Word of God revealed by the Son, man’s resolution is to a better law and a better means of cleansing himself, he has not heard the Truth. He would be trapped within history, with a partial Word, one that could come by water only, such as the flood of Noah, or the parting of the Red Sea, or the rock of Meribah. The water reveals the dirt and the inadequacy of man, but the Grace of the Son of God coming by water and blood is that he ‘and’ brought a holy righteousness, made perfect in his life of obedient freedom under the Authority of God’s will, to baptize man into. The Word that was complete in condemnation is brought to fulfillment in the Grace and mercy and salvation of God’s plan and will from the beginning, his will that the Word that condemns might also be the Word of life (1.1), that the water which strips away the former life and reveals the filth of it, might be followed with a new blood that imparts righteousness and live by the miracle that only God can provide, forgiveness such that man is now the believer, the miracle of God made clean by the will and accord of Jesus Christ, which was and remains in perfect obedience regardless the faults and weakness of man. Again, what is the now-believer to ask of God that he should be resolved of uncleanness without being absolved of freedom? To be clean before God, he should be made clean by an Authority and a work which is beyond man’s ability to make unclean; the miracle of victory over even our faith (5.4). God’s miracle surpassing even man’s faith is that, if we confess our sins so that they are taken by Christ and nailed with him to the cross, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1.9). God’s miracle to grant freedom from all unrighteousness is the Authority by which man’s obedience is given freedom without condemnation, even unto heeding the voice of God that we “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10.15). The blood by which the Son of God came is that we might live beyond the cleansing of the water by the Word. The blood comes by the living God who likewise God of the living and not the dead, The blood that comes by Jesus Christ is the Grace of a new life: For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2.19–20). Baptism into death on the cross cleans us inside and out, yes, but also fills us with the life of Christ that we may be made clean with a righteousness enduring with the power of his miracle to forgive our confessions and overcome all, our weakness of flesh and even our weakness of faith.
If the now-believer’s history has been cleaned by repentance, and his preservation from unrighteousness is by a new life within him, by what miracle is he to speak the Truth of heavenly things which are beyond his ability to reason or fully explain to himself or others? For man to transcend himself is the love of God, but by what power and nourishment is he to participate in the active proclamation of the Word of God without the impediments of flesh and sin and history negating his heart for the will of God? The miracle of the testimony of man, is that it is the Spirit who testifies. The miracle of the effect which the testimony of the Spirit produces by the men who have been baptized into the Body of Christ is because the Spirit is the truth. Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came by water and blood, promised the Spirit of God to those whom he calls to fellowship with God by abiding in him. By remaining in the life provided by the Son of God, the variously weak and insufficient members of the Body of Christ are effective tools for the testimony of God’s Word, for the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit (John 3.34), and it is the Spirit who testifies not the man. God sent his Son to be the one who reveals and speaks the words of God, and by baptism into his water and blood, into his death and resurrection, into his law and his Grace, the now believer is likewise given the Spirit without limit to the fulfillment of God’s will for the Word to reconcile himself to those whom he calls.
