1 John 5:5-8
5:6 a And Jesus Christ was revealed as God’s Son by his baptism in water and by shedding his blood on the cross (literally This is he who came by water and blood): John’s contemporary, the heretic Cerinthus, taught that “the Christ” descended as a spirit on the man Jesus when he was baptized but left him before he died. The truth is that Jesus’ baptism and death confirmed his identity as the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus of Nazareth was and is truly the Christ, the Son of God, from the beginning and forever.Summary for 1John 5:7-8: 5:7-8 b three witnesses: The Spirit descended on Christ at his baptism (see John 1:32-34 c). The water is the water in which Christ was baptized (see Matt 3:13-15 d; Mark 1:9-11 e). The blood is the blood that Christ shed at his crucifixion (see Mark 15:37-39 f). All three proclaim Jesus as God’s Son (1 Jn 5:6 g).
• After the phrase three witnesses, a few very late manuscripts add in heaven—the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And we have three witnesses on earth. The longer version was written in Latin several centuries after John to explain the three elements (water, blood, and Spirit) as symbols of the Trinity. This explanation found its way into some Latin editions of 1 John, including later copies of the Latin Vulgate. Eventually, Erasmus translated it into Greek and included it in what became the Textus Receptus, the “received text,” which is why it was included in the King James Version. The longer version cannot be found in any Greek manuscript prior to the 1700s and was never cited by any of the early fathers of the church. For these reasons, few modern English translations recognize the longer version as part of the authentic text.
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