1 John 5:9. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God, that he hath borne witness concerning his Son. The ‘three witnesses' suggested the perfection of merely human testimony. The apostle supposes as a general truth that we receive the testimony of credible witnesses. But he does not set the Divine witness over against the human: the human and the Divine concur, the divine being ‘greater' as accompanying and rendering infallible the human witness to the Saviour's Messiahship and salvation. For, the entire series of attestations borne in the Old Testament and in the New by evangelists and apostles is no other than one grand attestation of God Himself, who witnesseth one thing only, that all His witness by man's agency is concerning His Son. But the Divine testimony is given through the Spirit; ‘we are witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Ghost.' ‘Concerning His Son' is sublimely general. What the witness is we find afterwards: here it is declared that all the objective testimony of revelation has but one object, the establishment of the claim of the Son of God to human faith.

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Old Testament