1 John 5:6-8

The Threefold Testimony to the Incarnation. “This is He that came through water and blood, Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood. And it is the Spirit that testifieth, because the Spirit is the Truth. Because three are they that testify the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are for the one end.”

St. John has said that faith in the Incarnation makes the commandments easy, and now the question arises: How can we be assured that the Incarnation is a fact? He adduces a threefold attestation: the Spirit, the water and the blood. His meaning is clear when it is understood that he has the Cerinthian heresy (see Introd. pp. 156 f.) in view and states his doctrine in opposition to it. Cerinthus distinguished between Jesus and the Christ. The divine Christ descended upon the human Jesus at the Baptism, i.e., He “came through water,” and left him at the Crucifixion, i.e., He did not “come through blood”. Thus redemption was excluded; all that was needed was spiritual illumination. In opposition to this St. John declares that the Eternal God was incarnate in Jesus and was manifested in the entire course of His human life, not only at His Baptism, which was His consecration to His ministry of redemption, but at His Death, which was the consummation of His infinite Sacrifice: “through water and blood, not in the water only but in the water and in the blood”.