Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 John 5:11-12

1 John 5:11-12. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. These closing words concerning that testimony of which the beginning of the Epistle spoke, go beyond anything yet said. They declare that the witness of the apostles concerning ‘the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us' is the witness of God Himself, and moreover that it is the one supreme testimony, the sum and substance of all testimonies. Here we have the close of the whole section; and this last saying must throw its light back upon all. The witness of the water and the blood was simply this, that One had come who was the gift of eternal life to man: His baptism with the Spirit was His reception of the Spirit of life for us; His baptism of blood was our deliverance from death. The witness of the blood and water which flowed from His side was simply the testimony of heaven that deliverance from death and the impartation of new life were the one gift of His atoning passion: the one mingled stream for ever flowing from His Person lifted up. He who rejects this, resists the drawing of the Son of man, and makes the Lord who gave the seals a liar. The next words really end the Epistle by an emphatic aphoristic saying that repeats the words concerning the subjective witness, the presence and absence of which is the final test of truth for all profession of Christianity. St. John knows no ‘believing in God' which is not ‘trusting in the witness;' and he knows of no trusting in the witness which is not followed by ‘the witness in himself;' and the internal witness is not to have the knowledge of forgiveness, or the assurance of sonship, as in St. Paul, but these as contained in the possession of ‘the life;' and, finally, the life is with him nothing less than the Son Himself possessed. The Son of God hath life in Himself eternally; He is the source of redeemed life; and He is the author or Prince of that life in every believer. The closing testimony of the Bible for there is nothing after these words is that he that hath the Son hath the life: the life which is fellowship with God, which sin forfeited, is given back to him in union with Jesus. It can by no other means be restored than by union with the Divine life which has been given to man ‘bodily' in Christ: the disbeliever or unbeliever, who rejects the witness of God concerning His Son, is in this testimony said to abide in death, or rather to be without the life. He that hath not the Son hath not the life. There are many terrors threatened elsewhere against the despiser of God and the rejecter of Christ; but here in the final witness, the sad issue of all is stated in its awful negation, ‘the life he has not.'

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 John 5:11-12

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