For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
The familiar wording about three bearing record in heaven is not part of the original text but an added gloss that should be omitted and not treated as Scripture. Without it the passage is complete in saying that the Spirit, the water, and the blood bear witness and agree in one. The doctrine the added wording seems to state is taught throughout Scripture apart from this verse and remains firm, including by 1 John 5:6 and 1 John 5:8. Those who hold the added wording as genuine understand it to teach that the one living and true Godhead consists of the Father, the Word who is Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost as three distinct personal Beings who are one not as one person but in perfect unity and agreement of testimony, truth, purpose, and work. Their united witness is the record about the Son that eternal life is in Him, borne by enlightening the understanding and impressing the moral nature, and the Spirit who bears it always agrees with and never leads contrary to the written Word, which is the standard for testing spirits and marking the path of obedience.
Text and Authenticity
The familiar wording about three bearing record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three being one, is not a genuine part of the original text but an unauthorized interpolation that should be omitted and not treated as Scripture. It began as an explanatory gloss written in the margin and was later copied into the text by copyists. Late authorities reject the text.
The wording is absent from nearly all early Greek manuscripts, from the Greek and Latin Fathers, from the ancient versions including the old Vulgate manuscripts, and from the early printed Greek editions. It appears in only two Greek manuscripts, both from no earlier than the fifteenth century. It is absent in 112 of 113 manuscripts examined, appears in no manuscript before the tenth century, and is missing from early Greek manuscripts reaching back to almost the first century, being found only in late and inferior copies. The few copies or citations containing it are late, vary in wording, and lack sufficient authority to authenticate it.
The wording first appeared in an eighth-century Latin Vulgate. Its first appearance in Greek was in a 1215 translation of the acts of the Council of Lateran. It may have been added in the margin after the Arian controversy and later copied into the text. It entered the Complutensian printed New Testament in 1514 through a Latin-based text. Erasmus omitted it from his 1516 edition because it was not in his Greek manuscript, then added it in a later edition after being told of a Greek manuscript that was likely modern and derived from the Latin Vulgate. Earlier English Bibles marked it as spurious, and Luther refused to include it. Knapp marks as spurious and omits the words between records and the Spirit as one of seven interpolations, the only doctrinally important one.
Without the added heavenly-witness wording the passage is complete and clearer, saying that the Spirit, the water, and the blood bear witness and agree in one. Including it repeats the Spirit as a witness in heaven and on earth. It disrupts the parallel number of witnesses in heaven and on earth and reduces the intended six witnesses to five. It raises difficulties about why heaven needs witnesses and how the Son or Word could bear witness to himself.
Because of its textual weakness the verse is not reliable evidence for doctrine. Either reading conveys the same great truth, which is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture. The doctrine it appears to express, including the Trinity and the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit and the personality of the Spirit, is taught throughout Scripture and remains firm apart from this verse. That support includes 1 John 5:6 and 1 John 5:8, which early writers applied to those doctrines without citing the disputed wording.
Oneness and Godhead
The verse names three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word who is Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost or Spirit of truth, and declares that these three are one, teaching that the one living and true Godhead consists of three Beings. The Word is Jesus Christ, the Son is honored together with the Father and the Comforter in prayer for grace, and together the three are set forth as directors of the King's work. Their oneness is held together with their distinct identities, affirming three distinct personal Beings and not one individual bearing different names. The Father and the Son are separate persons, and the Holy Ghost is also a divine person who can be sent and can teach.
That oneness does not mean they are one person, and even taken as genuine the verse would not prove that the Father and Christ are one person. It can mean unity while remaining distinct persons, as with a husband and wife joined yet distinct. Their oneness is unity and perfect agreement in testimony, truth, purpose, and work, with no discord between them so that they never act alone but always act together. The Spirit is closely associated with the Father and Christ from the beginning and agrees with their testimony, making him the Spirit of truth, and guiding by the Spirit always leads in harmony with the Word which is the standard by which spirits are tested. This three-yet-one unity is expressed by one baptism into their name.
Their unity is a harmony of purpose and action in work for human salvation, for which each is due gratitude and praise. The Father plans the gospel, Christ serves as sin-bearer, high priest, advocate, mediator, and Saviour, and the Holy Ghost comforts, empowers, reproves, guides, intercedes, and transforms character. The testimony they bear belongs to the record God gave about his Son, including that eternal life is in the Son, and believing this record is central to receiving life in Christ. The Spirit bears this witness because the Spirit is truth, with a personality distinct from that of Christ.
Witness in Christian Life
The three heavenly witnesses are in perfect agreement with no discord between them, never acting alone but always acting together, and the Spirit agrees with and testifies to the same truths as God's written Word. That Word was written by the direction and through the power of the Spirit, and because God does not change the Spirit never contradicts it nor leads anyone to walk contrary to it. Any inward impression that leads contrary to Scripture is not God's leading, and Scripture is the standard by which spirits are tested and by which the path of purity, obedience and truth is marked. The one fully guided by the Spirit will be guided into all truth and taught all things in sweet accord with the written Word, so that guiding by the Spirit always leads in perfect harmony with the Word.
The Spirit works through the Word and brings it to remembrance and comes through the Word rather than working independently of it. The Word contains the Spirit, yet the Spirit is not confined to the Word, nor, as those who regard the heavenly-witness wording as absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts and ancient versions and therefore spurious hold, is the Spirit confined to heaven. Rather the Spirit connects the Father and Christ with their children, is near to supply their needs, and marks with the Word the path of purity and tests obedience. For this reason leading by the Spirit is always in harmony with the Word.
The record and witness are borne by enlightening the understanding and impressing the moral nature and thereby shaping people. That bearing of record expresses the unity of faith, obedience, and the power of the Spirit as necessary for faithful witness and a good confession. When the Holy Spirit bears witness with the believer's spirit that he is a child of God, the Father and the Son bear that same united heavenly record, for the three are one in the record they bear in heaven. Their united testimony gives assurance to those in Christ Jesus that God does not condemn them and that their blood-purged conscience no longer condemns them, so they have confidence toward God, and the three are honored together in prayer for grace as the Father, Christ the Son, and the Comforter.
The witness of 1 John 5:6-8 stands alongside the eyewitness account of Jesus' pierced side, where blood and water flowed from him. That eyewitness testified truthfully so that people might believe. This testimony is connected with the fulfillment of Scripture concerning his unbroken bones and pierced body.
The familiar wording about three bearing record in heaven is not part of the original text but an added gloss that should be omitted and not treated as Scripture. Without it the passage is complete in saying that the Spirit, the water, and the blood bear witness and agree in one. The doctrine the added wording seems to state is taught throughout Scripture apart from this verse and remains firm, including by 1 John 5:6 and 1 John 5:8. Those who hold the added wording as genuine understand it to teach that the one living and true Godhead consists of the Father, the Word who is Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost as three distinct personal Beings who are one not as one person but in perfect unity and agreement of testimony, truth, purpose, and work. Their united witness is the record about the Son that eternal life is in Him, borne by enlightening the understanding and impressing the moral nature, and the Spirit who bears it always agrees with and never leads contrary to the written Word, which is the standard for testing spirits and marking the path of obedience.
Text and Authenticity
The familiar wording about three bearing record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three being one, is not a genuine part of the original text but an unauthorized interpolation that should be omitted and not treated as Scripture. It began as an explanatory gloss written in the margin and was later copied into the text by copyists. Late authorities reject the text.
The wording is absent from nearly all early Greek manuscripts, from the Greek and Latin Fathers, from the ancient versions including the old Vulgate manuscripts, and from the early printed Greek editions. It appears in only two Greek manuscripts, both from no earlier than the fifteenth century. It is absent in 112 of 113 manuscripts examined, appears in no manuscript before the tenth century, and is missing from early Greek manuscripts reaching back to almost the first century, being found only in late and inferior copies. The few copies or citations containing it are late, vary in wording, and lack sufficient authority to authenticate it.
The wording first appeared in an eighth-century Latin Vulgate. Its first appearance in Greek was in a 1215 translation of the acts of the Council of Lateran. It may have been added in the margin after the Arian controversy and later copied into the text. It entered the Complutensian printed New Testament in 1514 through a Latin-based text. Erasmus omitted it from his 1516 edition because it was not in his Greek manuscript, then added it in a later edition after being told of a Greek manuscript that was likely modern and derived from the Latin Vulgate. Earlier English Bibles marked it as spurious, and Luther refused to include it. Knapp marks as spurious and omits the words between records and the Spirit as one of seven interpolations, the only doctrinally important one.
Without the added heavenly-witness wording the passage is complete and clearer, saying that the Spirit, the water, and the blood bear witness and agree in one. Including it repeats the Spirit as a witness in heaven and on earth. It disrupts the parallel number of witnesses in heaven and on earth and reduces the intended six witnesses to five. It raises difficulties about why heaven needs witnesses and how the Son or Word could bear witness to himself.
Because of its textual weakness the verse is not reliable evidence for doctrine. Either reading conveys the same great truth, which is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture. The doctrine it appears to express, including the Trinity and the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit and the personality of the Spirit, is taught throughout Scripture and remains firm apart from this verse. That support includes 1 John 5:6 and 1 John 5:8, which early writers applied to those doctrines without citing the disputed wording.
Oneness and Godhead
The verse names three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word who is Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost or Spirit of truth, and declares that these three are one, teaching that the one living and true Godhead consists of three Beings. The Word is Jesus Christ, the Son is honored together with the Father and the Comforter in prayer for grace, and together the three are set forth as directors of the King's work. Their oneness is held together with their distinct identities, affirming three distinct personal Beings and not one individual bearing different names. The Father and the Son are separate persons, and the Holy Ghost is also a divine person who can be sent and can teach.
That oneness does not mean they are one person, and even taken as genuine the verse would not prove that the Father and Christ are one person. It can mean unity while remaining distinct persons, as with a husband and wife joined yet distinct. Their oneness is unity and perfect agreement in testimony, truth, purpose, and work, with no discord between them so that they never act alone but always act together. The Spirit is closely associated with the Father and Christ from the beginning and agrees with their testimony, making him the Spirit of truth, and guiding by the Spirit always leads in harmony with the Word which is the standard by which spirits are tested. This three-yet-one unity is expressed by one baptism into their name.
Their unity is a harmony of purpose and action in work for human salvation, for which each is due gratitude and praise. The Father plans the gospel, Christ serves as sin-bearer, high priest, advocate, mediator, and Saviour, and the Holy Ghost comforts, empowers, reproves, guides, intercedes, and transforms character. The testimony they bear belongs to the record God gave about his Son, including that eternal life is in the Son, and believing this record is central to receiving life in Christ. The Spirit bears this witness because the Spirit is truth, with a personality distinct from that of Christ.
Witness in Christian Life
The three heavenly witnesses are in perfect agreement with no discord between them, never acting alone but always acting together, and the Spirit agrees with and testifies to the same truths as God's written Word. That Word was written by the direction and through the power of the Spirit, and because God does not change the Spirit never contradicts it nor leads anyone to walk contrary to it. Any inward impression that leads contrary to Scripture is not God's leading, and Scripture is the standard by which spirits are tested and by which the path of purity, obedience and truth is marked. The one fully guided by the Spirit will be guided into all truth and taught all things in sweet accord with the written Word, so that guiding by the Spirit always leads in perfect harmony with the Word.
The Spirit works through the Word and brings it to remembrance and comes through the Word rather than working independently of it. The Word contains the Spirit, yet the Spirit is not confined to the Word, nor, as those who regard the heavenly-witness wording as absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts and ancient versions and therefore spurious hold, is the Spirit confined to heaven. Rather the Spirit connects the Father and Christ with their children, is near to supply their needs, and marks with the Word the path of purity and tests obedience. For this reason leading by the Spirit is always in harmony with the Word.
The record and witness are borne by enlightening the understanding and impressing the moral nature and thereby shaping people. That bearing of record expresses the unity of faith, obedience, and the power of the Spirit as necessary for faithful witness and a good confession. When the Holy Spirit bears witness with the believer's spirit that he is a child of God, the Father and the Son bear that same united heavenly record, for the three are one in the record they bear in heaven. Their united testimony gives assurance to those in Christ Jesus that God does not condemn them and that their blood-purged conscience no longer condemns them, so they have confidence toward God, and the three are honored together in prayer for grace as the Father, Christ the Son, and the Comforter.
The witness of 1 John 5:6-8 stands alongside the eyewitness account of Jesus' pierced side, where blood and water flowed from him. That eyewitness testified truthfully so that people might believe. This testimony is connected with the fulfillment of Scripture concerning his unbroken bones and pierced body.