It is God’s argument, based on the facts of history and the confirming work of the Holy Spirit, that faith in Jesus Christ alone secures for us eternal life.

Well, it’s good to be back with you, church. My family and I had a wonderful time away in Michigan over the last few weeks. I had an opportunity to teach middle school kids for a week at camp. So that was interesting. That was fun. Our kids had a chance to serve at camp, which was fun. They taught handcrafts and washed dishes and things like that. We parasailed for the first time. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that before, but that weird. It was fun. If you’ve never done that, it looks terrifying, but it’s actually quite peaceful up there. We just had a good time all around. Except for the part where my son for the second vacation in a row got us all sick again. He got sick, and then we all got sick. So if you if you see him, look at him disapprovingly for me. I appreciate that. Yeah. I want to thank our preaching team for doing such a great job faithfully walking us through the verses of First John. Didn’t they do a good job? They did a great job. Some of these guys were handed two verses to preach. Two verses. When your passage is small, it’s very easy to launch off into all sorts of different directions and not stay focused on what John is teaching in those two verses. But they did a fantastic job showing us exactly what John wants to teach us from his letter with his apostolic authority.

But those guys sure am glad that I’m back, because my return this morning coincides with what is, without a doubt, the oddest and most difficult passage to interpret in this entire letter. I would even put it in the top 20 weirdest passages in the Bible. It’s one of those passages that when you come to it in your private reading time at home, you just immediately look to the study notes at the bottom. You don’t even think about it for a second. You’re just like, what does that say? What are they saying that says right. But not to worry. With some careful reading and some cross-referencing and even some process of elimination, we can get a pretty good idea of what John means in this passage. And really, the tough part is only a small portion of a larger passage that is clear and it’s profound, and it’s encouraging for the believer. And it’s challenging. It’s an offer to the non-believer. This sermon will be a bit more complex than the average week here at Calvary. So settle in because this morning God puts forward his argument for why you should trust in Jesus. And if you already trust in Jesus, why your trust and your confidence is secure. You know, I love listening to people make an argument for what they believe.

Let me be clear. I do not like arguing. Okay. I love hearing arguments. There’s a big difference between those two things. We use the word arguing for fighting, right? We use those interchangeably. So what the Bible calls quarreling, getting heated, yelling, things like that. That is a product of sinful anger. That is not what I’m talking about. An argument is a defense of a position based on evidence. Think about a courtroom where a lawyer presents a closing argument, right? It’s a set of facts laid out in an orderly way to try to persuade. And I appreciate it very much when someone lays out the reasons and facts that serve as the foundation for what he or she believes. I want to know what you believe, but I also want to know why you believe it. And everything has an argument. Everything. Everything you can think of right now has an argument behind it. Everything from your philosophy for life, right down to your preferred way to barbecue has an argument behind it. And the more important the belief is, the more sound the argument must be. The importance of our topic today cannot be overstated. It’s literally life and death, or more precisely, eternal life and eternal death. It’s an argument that eternal life can be acquired exclusively through Jesus Christ. The facts in support of this argument are the ministry of Jesus Himself, and the internal witness of the Holy Spirit, and the one making his argument today is God.

In our passage today, John is going to lay out what he calls the testimony of God. It’s God’s argument based on the facts of history and the confirming work of the Holy Spirit, that faith in Jesus Christ alone secures for us eternal life. Now, it might seem odd to you that God would argue for his position. You say, why? Why would God have to make a case for his position? But consider this. God has made us, and he has made us reasonable creatures, hasn’t he? He’s given us a brain that is capable of thinking through facts and weighing arguments and coming to conclusions. So it’s not really surprising at all that in a sinful world that’s full of misleading ideas and temptations and bad arguments, that God’s gospel, his good news would come to us with external facts and internal experiences that confirm those facts. So let’s get into this. If you have your Bible, you can open it to First John chapter five. We’re going to begin in verse six today. I would encourage you to keep your Bible open so you can keep referring back to it. The argument has three stages to it. So first, John lays out God’s witnesses, and then he lays out the main reason for believing these witnesses.

And finally, he challenges us to consider how we respond to this whole argument. Our passage last week, you’ll remember, ended with a rhetorical question who is it that overcomes the world, except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? And the answer to the rhetorical question is no one. No one overcomes the judgment and destruction of this sinful world except the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Now, here’s the argument to back that up. This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify; the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. So clearly this is the weird part, right? You can see that, right? No one on the preaching team was clamoring for this one, including me, by the way. I’ve not been looking forward to this. Church I can tell you what this says. I can tell you what it says. John writes actually in a very plain Greek. So this is a good translation of the words. The apostle John is clear here, but he hasn’t talked like this throughout the letter. And now suddenly Jesus is coming by water and blood, not just the water, he clarifies, but by blood too.

If there are ever times when you are in your personal Bible reading and you come across a passage that you aren’t sure how to understand because it’s so obscure. I want you to be encouraged this morning. That’s all of us. All of us come to passages like this and say, what is going on here? Me too. Me included here. Scholars are divided on exactly what John is referring to here. And when I say scholars, I’m not just talking about modern commentary writers. I’m talking about people like Calvin and Luther disagreed with Augustine on this. But don’t lose heart. We have a pretty good idea of what this means, and I’m going to take some time this morning to wrestle through this with you, as opposed to just telling you my conclusion. Because I think this is a great opportunity to learn some biblical reasoning here. First, it’s important for us to remember that the original recipients of this letter would have known exactly what John is talking about. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have written it. So we need to think in first-century ideas. And we also need to remember that John is combating a particular heresy that said that Jesus wasn’t truly a man. They said that he was God, but he was not human. And that’s the reason that John wrote this letter. Okay. So keeping that in mind, let’s untangle this.

Jesus Christ, the object of our belief is the Son of God through whom we have eternal life. And we know this because he came by water and by blood. And John clarifies here, not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. So the error that he’s correcting here is that someone would say that Jesus came by water, but not by blood. Now, I know I haven’t described what those things are yet, but to understand what the water and blood are, it helps to know what John is correcting. And that’s what he’s correcting here. So again, the people coming with this false gospel, they believe that Jesus was God but not man, and that he came by water but not blood. By the way, if this is your first week here at Calvary, I just want you to know that our sermons don’t usually sound like a Sherlock Holmes case, okay? It’s not how we usually do it. It’s pretty rare that we would do this like this, but we do take the Bible very seriously. So we want to get this right. Okay. All right. So what do these symbols mean? Let’s start with the blood because that’s the easier of the two. The word blood is used throughout the New Testament as a stand-in for the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Okay?

It’s a word that means the whole event. The apostle Peter in First Peter chapter one says that we are ransomed with the precious blood of Christ. He’s referring to the whole event of Jesus death on the cross that ransoms us, it redeems us. I am 99% certain church that that is what John is using when he uses the word here. That’s what he’s referring to. He’s using it in the same way. He’s referring to the historically verified event of Jesus going to the cross and dying for our sins. And the best piece of evidence that that is how John is using it here in this verse, is that he has already used this word in this way in the letter. If you remember back in chapter one verse seven, he wrote, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son, cleanses us from all sin. He’s referring to the cross there. So when John refers to the blood, he means the historical event of the cross, the death of Jesus. And this event, he says, is a witness. It is evidence. It’s been put forward by God that Jesus is the Son of God. So when John says Jesus came by blood, he means that the death of Jesus on our behalf is proof that Jesus is the Son of God sent for us.

He’s probably coupling this in his mind with the resurrection, which proves that Jesus triumphed over death. That’s what the first-century church would be thinking. And so we should be thinking of that as well. Okay, so then what does it mean to come by water? This is where a lot of the speculation takes place. But I think we can narrow this down considerably. It’s almost certainly a reference to an event. Right. To parallel the other, he’s saying these are two events. So just like the blood, the water is an event. Some think that this refers to Jesus birth, with the water being the amniotic fluid sac that breaks at birth. Sorry for the details there, but I figure you’re mostly Mayo, you can handle it, right? So, they think that’s what it’s referring to. But that makes no sense. No sense at all. Because remember, the heretics deny Jesus humanity, but they accept the water as a witness to Jesus as God’s Son. The day you’re born is the greatest evidence of your humanity. Okay, so, that’s not what he’s talking about here. Augustine, who I mentioned earlier, saw this as a reference to the blood and the water that flowed from Jesus side when he was stabbed with the spear on the cross. That doesn’t make sense in this letter, because then it would be another reference to Jesus death. So the blood and the water would mean the same thing, referring to the same event, so how would you accept one and deny the other? That’s redundant. And that also would be another reference to his humanity, his death. John Calvin and Martin Luther saw this as a reference to baptism and communion. But that doesn’t work as an argument because it gets the symbols out of order. You wouldn’t argue I believe Jesus is the Son of God because I got baptized and take communion. You’d say I got baptized and take communion because I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. They would follow, not precede. Right. So we’re looking for an event in Jesus life that has to do with water, that testifies to Jesus deity as the Son of God. And probably most of you in the room are now starting to hone in on what this is referring to. Plus, you also remember the reading from earlier in the service, right? Is Jesus baptism. It’s talking about Jesus baptism here. When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, the people present saw a visual representation of the Holy Spirit descend onto Jesus. Like a dove, it says. And they heard an audible voice, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. It was God the Father’s public declaration that Jesus was not just another teacher, but that he was God incarnate.

So what we have here with the water and the blood is a bracketing of Jesus public ministry, the beginning and the end. It begins with the public declaration that he’s the Son of God, and it culminates in the fulfillment of the mission of the Son of God to save us from our sins through faith in Jesus death and resurrection. The false teachers who only believed in Jesus deity but not in his humanity. They were fine with a triumphant declaration from God the Father that Jesus is His son. But they didn’t accept a crucified man on a cross. And John’s just simply saying, here it’s both. It’s both. You can’t have one without the other. The Son of God, the glorious Son of God, he came and died for us. He became a man and died for us. The glorious God of the universe became a man so he could die a horrible death. You cannot remove that and still have the gospel. This is a 2000-year-old clarification. That’s what we’re reading here. And this old clarification of Jesus ministry might seem unimportant to you today. You might say, well, I don’t struggle with this, and I don’t really see why this is helpful for us today. But I believe that it is still a very much needed correction for our culture. See, there’s a lot of critics of biblical theology who work very hard to shave off the parts of Jesus ministry that they don’t like.

Twenty years ago, a British guy named Stephen Chalke, called the idea of Jesus substitute sacrifice on the cross, he called it cosmic child abuse. His view of justice and his way of seeing the world could not include God allowing violence. And so because of that, because of that preconceived idea that he held, he mocked the core of the gospel itself. Different writers and thinkers who claim to be Christian have echoed that idea right up to today. People who reject violence and say that they can’t believe in a wrathful God, a righteously wrathful God, they will trim the cross out of the gospel, or they’ll explain it away as not really part of God’s plan. They’ll say, bad people killed Jesus, and it’s tragic, but it certainly wasn’t God, they would argue. In Acts chapter two, Peter is very clear when he preaches to the people of Jerusalem in the streets that Jesus was indeed killed by lawless men. That is true. But he also says that it was the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. God the Father made Jesus to be sin, Paul tells us in second Corinthians five, to be sin. He was made the recipient of our sins so that he could then, in turn, be the recipient of the Father’s wrath against our sin. It’s how we’re forgiven. That’s the basis on which God forgives us. If the Son of God wasn’t willing to do that, we would receive God’s wrath.

But because the son took the wrath for us, we can be children in God’s family. We can be forgiven. John 8:36, this is Jesus speaking of himself. If the son sets you free, you are free indeed. Sometimes there’s an inclination within Christians, people who love Jesus, there’s this inclination within Christians to move past the cross. They don’t deny it. They know it’s important. They just don’t want to talk about it. They don’t. They don’t want to talk about sin. They don’t want to talk about sins, consequences, punishment, what Jesus did. They’d like to move past the cross and simply talk about God’s blessings and new life. You’ll see this a lot in prosperity gospel circles, but you can find it in churches like ours as well. Friends, the greatest triumph of God, the greatest blessing of God, the greatest declaration of Jesus role as the Son of God, is when he went to the cross and he bought us with his blood. That’s the greatest triumph. He triumphed over death. We don’t move past the cross. We’re going to be singing about the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross for our sins, for eternity. We’re going to be singing about this. We celebrate the victory of the cross. The historical event of Jesus baptism, and the historical fact of his death and resurrection are the proof offered by God that Jesus is His Son.

These are the objective, external, verifiable facts based on the eyewitness accounts. But there’s a third witness here, too. The Holy Spirit who indwells the believer gives inner testimony about who Jesus is. Now, this is proof that we can’t point to. It’s an event that we can’t document like baptism or the cross, right? The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is no less true than those other events. But it’s a reality that’s only experienced personally by the believer. So when John says that the Holy Spirit is the truth, he means that the Spirit testifies in your heart about what is true. So when the Spirit fills you, you then accept the argument. You accept the evidence of the water and the blood. Let me put that a different way. Let me see if I can approach that from a little bit of a different angle. You know, you can deny any argument, really, any argument. You can just say, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. You can just deny any, any argument that anybody makes about anything. People do this all the time. They will reject loads of evidence so that they can believe the things that they want to believe that are clearly wrong. That’s why we still have people today that believe in a flat earth, or they deny the Holocaust, or they deny the moon landing.

They’ll also people who reject the evidence so that they don’t have to believe the things that are clearly true and correct. We are very good at explaining away evidence for things that we don’t want to believe. God’s argument to save people is this. Here’s the argument. There is eye witness testified evidence of Jesus as the Son of God that is available to everyone, and there is an internal work of the Holy Spirit that will confirm this truth for God’s people. And this is why Christianity can be explained both as a personal experience and an historic reality. Okay. It’s both. It’s something that happened in history and it is confirmed by God himself in my heart. There’s an objective and a subjective. It’s all real, but both parts are there in God’s argument. These witnesses are in agreement, John says. But there are lots of arguments that contain lies and errors. So why should we believe this argument? If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning His Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God, has made him a liar. Because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning His Son. So just like with all arguments, the believability of an argument is partially determined by the character of the person that’s making it. We have all known people, or currently know people, who are liars. They’re just people who, when they open their mouth, you’re like, I’m probably not going to believe what you’re saying because you’ve got a track record for not telling the truth. So when they say things, even reasonable things, convincing things, you kind of don’t believe it until you verify it. You know what I mean? They could tell you the sky is blue and you’re like, we’ll see. Right. It’s the character of the person speaking. John acknowledges this. Okay? This is what he’s talking about. He says, if you’re willing to accept the testimony of people, who may or may not be telling the truth, how much more should you accept the testimony of God who never lies and is the embodiment of truth? Remember, verse six above says that the Holy Spirit is the truth. That’s a statement of the nature of God. God never misleads. God never gets his facts wrong. He never gives us wrong information. His arguments are sound from beginning to end. So whatever we receive from God can be trusted as the truth. Just for a moment, I’d like to speak to the skeptics who are in the room. Okay? I know, you’re here. I want to speak to you just for a moment.

You might question God’s character. You might take issue with those statements I just made. You might think God is capricious or meddling or a mixture of good and evil. Let me ask you, why do you think that? What’s your reason for believing God is that way, that he can’t be trusted? What are the facts that support your argument for why God is to be doubted and that the gospel of Christ is to be rejected? I think if you’re honest, you’ll find that your argument is not nearly as well founded as the biblical view of God that’s been verified by those who walked with Jesus and has been tested for 2000 years since his resurrection. And here’s the thing. I’m not belittling your doubts. I’m not. I welcome your doubts. I’m not belittling them at all. I’m simply saying that you should give your argument just as much scrutiny as you give the Bible. This testimony of God divides people into two camps. One camp is filled with people who look at the eyewitness testimony of Jesus full ministry, and they say yes to all of it. All of it. Yes, I believe this happened. The Holy Spirit has confirmed this truth in their hearts, and they are entirely convinced that Jesus is the Son of God who alone can save us by his blood. In other words, Christians.

They’re Christians. That’s the biblical definition of what a Christian is. And no other definition matters because all other definitions are man-made compromises on the Bible. I don’t know why anybody identifies as a Christian without believing the testimony of Scripture. They do. There are plenty of people who do that, but it’s a different religion. They’re actually in the other camp. The other camp is filled with people who, to some degree, deny the testimony of God, which is to deny the gospel. And John says this is the equivalent of calling God a liar. They have not believed God’s own testimony concerning Jesus. Rachel and I once had over for dinner a Hindu couple that we were getting to know, and the wife was especially interested in talking about spiritual matters. It was a really delightful evening, talking about things, and she wanted to talk about what she believed, including her view of samsara, which is the natural cycle of the world of creating, preserving and dissolving. And then before a new creation comes, that’s the Hindu way of seeing time. Okay. And she believed that we were currently in a time of dissolving. Which was interesting because we were discussing the parallels with the biblical worldview, as I see it. But when they started talking about ancient history, the cycles before the one that we’re in now, and the activities of their gods in that earlier cycle, I asked if what they believed was all historical. All the things that they were talking about that their gods did, did it all really happen? Did it actually happen? And I’ll never forget their answer. They said it doesn’t really matter if it actually happened, or if it’s historical or not, it’s just what they believe. God’s testimony is not like that. The biblical scriptures are not like that. God’s testimony is founded on historical and spiritual reality. Jesus entered history. He was audibly confirmed as the Son of God at his baptism by the Father. He then performed miracles observed by witnesses. He went to the cross and he died physically, verified by Romans who were professionals at killing people. Three days later, his raised body was seen first by the women of the tomb, then by his disciples, then by hundreds of other people. The disciples, including our author, including John, spent 40 days with risen Christ, learning about the kingdom of God. And then they watched him ascend into the sky. And after that they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they preached Christ in the streets to anybody who would listen. And every single one of those apostles would die for their belief that Jesus is the Son of God, including John, who would be exiled as an old man to the island of Patmos, where he would die in prison. That is the proposition of the gospel. If it did not happen, it does not matter.

If the water and the blood and the Spirit are telling the truth, then it’s what matters the most. That’s God’s testimony. You have to decide if you believe the facts as he has laid them out. And here’s the final summary. I call it God’s offer. And this is the testimony – that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. There is no offer in these verses. It’s just a final statement of the facts. But they imply an offer. God has given us eternal life. That’s never-ending, life renewed, on earth, that’s been restored. A restored heaven and earth that’s different than the broken one that we live in now. Lord, bring it right. Lord, bring a new heavens and a new earth. Just about every single day I have a moment where I just can’t wait for the new life to come. Because I’m so fed up with what’s happening in the world, or in my heart, right? What’s going on inside of me as well. And every once in a while, every once in a while, doesn’t it seem you get a glimpse of it? Just like a little, little piece, a little moment where you get a little glimpse of what eternity free of sin is going to look like.

We experience it a little bit in part when we gather together to worship, when we’re praising the Lord together. Sometimes I’ll be on a pristine, uninhabited lake in a boat with a fishing pole, and the sun’s coming up, or it’s going down, and I think, well, this might be close. But it’s probably not. It’s probably not close. God has brought us eternal life. That’s what he’s saying here. It’s a gift. It’s a gift to you. But it is only found in the Son. Jesus alone paid for the sins that keep us from gaining eternity with the Lord. The message of the testimony of God is not complicated. It’s not unclear. If you have the Son, you have eternal life. If you don’t, you don’t. This is the implied offer. This is where it is. If you don’t have the Son, if you have not accepted the historic reality of Christ and his work on the cross on your behalf, there is nothing preventing you right now from receiving it. Nothing. You can confess your sin and your need for a Savior right now. You can go to him and say, I receive this gift. I trust in this Son. And you’ll say to me, well, but Kyle I’ll find a different way. There is no other way. That’s the biblical proposition. There is no other way. You can’t. God’s testimony states, eternal life is found only in Christ.

And you say, well, I got a different way of seeing the world. I have a different approach to life. Well, perhaps you won’t be convinced. Not this morning anyway. But let me leave you with a quote from a friend that I was interacting with earlier this week. He’s a retired Mayo doc. And he meets each week with a bunch of other retired Mayo doctors. And they come from all walks of life, all different people, all gathering together from different walks of life, different backgrounds, different religions, worldviews represented in the group. And he said, the one thing that they all have in common is that they’re all getting older and they’re having friends and colleagues pass away. And of course, they all have to then interpret that sobering reality through their way of understanding reality. See, they’re trying to make sense of eternity and establish their foundation for hope. And as my friend engages with them on this, and he watches them wrestle with their worldview, he wrote this to me. He said, I knew, but now I really know that all other belief systems run out of gas as we age. They all run out of gas. Nothing holds up like the gospel. Church, nothing holds up like the gospel. And that’s because it’s true. The gospel is true. It’s not a man-made religion. It is a God-testified reality. Let’s pray.

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