V ERSE 10. Having described the na ture of the testimony (the three fold drive witness to the Son through the Spirit, the water and the blood), John proceeds to unfold its results (10-12). The purpose of testimony to Christ is to evoke faith in Christ (e.g. John 1:7, 20, 31). Receiving the testimony leads naturally to believ ing in the One to whom the testi mony is borne. Indeed, to “receive the witness . . . of God” (9) and to “believe on the Son of God” (10) are virtually synonymous expressions. Further, so identical in meaning are the two phrases, that at the end of the verse John can use the proposi tion eis with the record that God gave of His Son, making the object of our personal confidence, not the Son, but God’s witness to Him. The results of belief and disbelief are starkly contrasted. The believer hath the witness in himself, or “in his own heart” (NEB). That is, he is given a yet deeper assurance by the inward witness of the Spirit that he was right to trust in Christ, a strik ing example of the spiritual princi ple that “to everyone who has will more be given” (Matt. 25:29; Luke 19:26, RSV; cf. Mark 4:25). Testi mony is thus both the cause and the consequence of belief, and belief is a stepping-stone between God’s first and further testimony. The unbeliev er, on the other hand who “has not believed” (RSV, the perfect tense indicating a past “crisis of choice” —Westcott), forfeits the possibility of receiving any further testimony from God because he has rejected the first and in so doing hath made Him a liar. Unbelief is not a misfortune to be pitied; it is a sin to be de plored. Its sinfulness lies in the fact 26
that it contradicts the word of the one true God and thus attributes falsehood to Him. Another example of “making God a liar” is to be found in 1:10. Verses 11 and 12. John now for gets the unbeliever and summarizes the blessing granted to the believer who receives and responds to the tes timony of God. “This is the record” is the same expression as that in verse 9, “this is the witness.” There it looks back to what I have called the “first” testimony, that of the water, the blood and the Spirit. Here it seems to include also the “fur ther” testimony which, according to verse 10, the believer receives “in himself.” This becomes more plain when we consider how the record is here described, namely that God hath given (RSV, rightly, “gave”) to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. To what event does it refer? Some commentators refer it to the historical career of Jesus (cf. 1:2 and John 10:20, 28; 17:2) and some to our conversion, at which we per sonally appropriated, or were given, the life that is in Christ (cf. 3:14). Perhaps both are true, and both are part of the “record,” historical and experimental, which God has given concerning His Son. Historically, God’s witness concern ing (peri, verses 9, 10) Jesus is not only that He is the Divine-human Christ, but that He is the Life-giver, “the Sav iour of the world” (4:14); not only that He is the Son, but that in Him is life. Eternal life is emphatic in the sentence; i.e., the record is that it is eternal life which God gave us in giving His Son. But the witness is not only objective to Christ as the life-giver but subjective in the gift
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