Download discussion questions:  1 John 5:2-21

Table Talk:  What is the “elevator speech” of your testimony (the thirty-seconds-or-less version)?

[“Table Talk” is an opening question or topic for discussion at the beginning of our time together.  The intent is to help group members (around tables, with four to six at each table) build connections with each other, as well as to guide thinking in a direction related to the passage.]

After reading through the passage, our discussion began with a hypothetical question:  You have arrived in heaven and you have the opportunity to ask the Apostle John one question about this passage.  It finally gets to be your turn (the line is long!).  What would you ask?

The almost unanimous response went to the last sentence of the entire letter:  “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).  Where did that thought come from?  This is the one and only use of the word “idol” in any of his three letters or the Gospel he wrote.  Not surprisingly, he did use the word several times in Revelation in describing problems in churches (Revelation 2:14, 2:20) and in pronouncements of judgment on the unrepentant (Revelation 9:20, 21:8, 22:15).  Why does he introduce the word here for the first time in this letter?

One member of our group suggested that idols are not always material objects, but the consensus of the group seemed to be that such a distinction applies to our culture much more than to John’s first-century audience.  In the pagan culture surrounding the church, wooden or stone or metal idols were everywhere.  Another person commented that in the immediate context (always a good place to look in an inductive study), the emphasis is on knowing the One who is true, abiding in the One who is true, the true God (1 John 5:20).  This One who is true is explicitly contrasted with the evil one and his power prevailing in the world (v. 19).  Idols were a familiar and accepted part of the culture.  John is reminding his readers that those idols were part of the evil one’s prevailing power and to be avoided.  Paul had written to the Corinthian church to avoid the attraction of combining genuine faith in Christ with the worship of idols and the demons they represented (1 Corinthians 10:19-21).  John’s main emphasis throughout the letter has been the discernment of the various versions of the faith they were hearing.  The physical idols around them were familiar.  Some probably came to faith out of those pagan temples.  “Keep yourselves from idols” was John’s final reminder:  seek the true faith in the true God.  Both the deceiving teachers and the physical idols were false alternatives.  Both must be avoided.

Then our discussion turned to another puzzle in the passage.  John makes a clear distinction:  sins leading to death and sins not leading to death (vv. 16-17).  If indeed the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:33) and “all wrongdoing is sin” (1 John 5:17a), how does some sin not lead to death?  And why does John disclaim any requirement to pray in certain cases (v. 16b)?  The first comment from our group mentioned the sober warning of Jesus:  “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:29).  Another member pointed out Hebrews 10:29, the condemnation of those who “trample underfoot the Son of God” and “insult the Spirit of grace.”  Jesus was explicit that such response (or non-response) to the Holy Spirit is the only exception to the availability of forgiveness (Mark 3:28).  The challenges to John’s orthodoxy are those who deny the Father and the Son (1 John 2:22), rejecting Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah sent by the Father.  The rejection of the Gospel, the true nature of Christ’s work and His relationship to the Father, is the sin leading to death.  In their eclectic environment, some of John’s followers might have prayed that even those who left to follow a different teaching might be saved.  John makes it clear that such a prayer would be, as one of our group summarized, “useless.”  Pray for the person to come to faith, pray for their eyes to be opened to the truth, pray for them to overcome any other sin.  The only limitation to John’s exhortation to prayer is the pointlessness of praying that God would make an exception and save someone in spite of their rejection, the sin leading to death.

Overcoming sin is the context of the seemingly all-encompassing invitation to prayer:  “we know we have the requests that we have asked of Him” (1 John 5:15b).  John’s assurance may have a broader application (and too often a misapplication), but the only illustrative example he gives for confidence in answered prayer is the prayer for “the brother committing sin” (v. 16).  Like John’s similar promise earlier in this letter (1 John 3:22), the context provides specific boundaries that John has in mind.

Perhaps the word John repeats more than any other in this passage is “testimony” (marturia, μαρτυρία; cf. English “martyr”; ten of the twelve times used in 1 John are in this passage).  He singles out two classes of testimony, “of men” and “of God” (1 John 5:9).  Our “Table Talk” discussion at the beginning of our group was about our testimonies.  After several people had shared the “30-second version,” we discussed the value of testimonies.  Whatever another person might think, for the one who had the experience it is first-hand knowledge, a non-debatable experience.  The fact that every testimony is different makes them personal and relatable.  The real story of one person can often connect with the heart of another person.  John recognizes this and adds that the “testimony of God is greater” (v. 9b).  That greater testimony can confirm the “testimony of men” and their personal experience.

The testimony of God that John describes raised more questions in our group.  What are “the water and the blood” (v. 6a)?  Why does John emphasize “not water only” (v. 6b)?  To what does the Spirit testify (v. 6c)?  Several thoughts came out about the water and the blood.  They might represent birth, the birth of Jesus and the reality of the incarnation.  They might mean the baptism of Jesus in water and the death of Jesus shedding His blood.  One member of our group commented that if the water symbolized the baptism of Jesus, John might be alluding to the Trinity.  When the Son was baptized, the Father spoke and the Spirit descended.  Whether birth or baptism and death, the testimony of water and blood address the distortions of the Gospel that were likely facing the congregation.  Some early heretics denied the reality of the incarnation.  They believed a pure and noble spirit could never interact with corrupt material flesh.  Some denied that Jesus had a real body but was more of a phantom (think of a modern-day hologram).  The idea that the Christ-spirit came upon the human person Jesus at His baptism was another twist.  Others thought that the Christ-spirit deserted the human hanging on the cross just before He died.  All of these misrepresentations of the Christian message would fit more comfortably with pagan or even Jewish ideas.  John’s extracting amplification (“not the water only but water and blood”) is probably a response to those who said that Jesus was baptized but didn’t really die.  Each of these alterations empties the efficacy of Christ’s work and the effectiveness of the Gospel.  The problems persisted for centuries, eventually prompting the creation of the Nicene Creed:  “The Church refused to weaken or compromise faith in Jesus Christ as God and man in one Person, for if he was not really God then there was no divine reality in anything he said or did, and if he was not really man then what God did in him had no saving relevance for human beings.”[1] Both are essential, and John insisted on both throughout his letter.

John also insisted on the witness of the Spirit.  It was (and still is) possible to believe in the historical existence of Jesus without accepting who He truly was and what He did.  The story of a man who was born in Palestine and was executed by the Roman Empire in the first century is generally recognized as historically accurate.  The historical facts of the water and the blood depend on the witness of the Spirit to reveal their true significance.  Earlier John clarified that only the true Spirit, who testifies that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” is to be trusted (1 John4:2).  He is the one who testifies to the power of the water and the blood.  Those three, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, combine as the testimony of God (v. 9) that provides the objective witness to complete the testimony of men, our individual stories.

Although our group did not discuss it, there is a difference in this passage in some translations.  Older versions, such as King James Version (KJV) include a longer addition in verse 7.  In addition to the brief verse in NASB, ESV, NIV, etc., KJV adds:  “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:  and these three are one.”  What a great testimony and proof text for the Triune nature of God!  The only problem is that it was a much later addition and not part of John’s writing:  “The Trinitarian formula found in the KJV of 1 Jn 5:7 is orthodox but not part of the text.  It appears in only three manuscripts – of the twelfth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – out of the thousands available, placed there by scribes who … took it from an early marginal note.”[2]  (For a brief introduction to differences in Biblical manuscripts, or “textual variants,” see the essay “Textual Variants in John 1:34.”)  I imagine a scenario similar to this:  A conscientious scribe is carefully copying Holy Scripture.  He wants to be helpful, so he adds a note out to the side of the text in the copy he is making.  Another scribe, using that manuscript as his text, finds the note so helpful that he adds it right into the text.  On down the line readers of that later copy would have no way of knowing which were John’s inspired words and which were later helpful (but not inspired) additions.  Think about that next time you write a note in your Bible!

When we considered application from this passage, the issue that had the most attention was John’s continuing emphasis on “we know.”  This passage and indeed the entire letter ring with the confidence based on the testimony of God and the resulting confidence we can have (1 John 2:28, 3:21, 4:17, 5:14).  The clear picture that John provides of the Triune God –  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and the work of the Holy Trinity in the lives of believers should be the foundation of the our confidence.  As our present understanding of the Three-Personal God[3] grows, we will increasingly know Him.  Our confidence in sharing in the joy of Their fellowship provides the anticipation that enables our endurance.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance,  The Trinitarian Faith:  Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London:  T&T Clark Cornerstones, 2016), Kindle Edition, location 2890.

[2] Craig S. Keener, ed., The IVP Bible Background Commentary – New Testament (Downers Grove, Illinois:  InterVarsity Press, 1993), 745; This is a very useful resource for background information.  There is also a companion volume for the Old Testament.

[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York:  HarperCollins, 2009), Kindle Electronic Edition:  Location 2054, page 163.