EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/19/2025 9:13 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 Intro
to: “The Witness of God”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 5:6-12
Message of the verses: “6 This is he who came
by water and by blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only but by water and by
blood. 7 And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is true. 8 There are
three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and all three are in
agreement. 9 If we take the witness of men to be true, the witness of God is
greater: because this is the witness which God has given about his Son. 10 He who has faith in the Son of God has the
witness in himself: he who has not faith in God makes him false, because he has
not faith in the witness which God has given about his Son. 11 And his witness
is this, that God has
given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 He who has the
Son has the life; he who has not the Son of God has not the life.”
There is only a little bit here in order to finish this
introduction to these verses and so I think that I will quote from MacArthur’s
commentary, and then we will dig into the first section in tomorrow’s SD, Lord
willing.
“In this section of his epistle, John elaborates on the
theme of his gospel, which was ‘written so that [people] may believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing [they] may have life in His
name’ (John 20:31). The gospel of John
records that the Father witnessed to the deity of Christ from a variety of
sources: Scripture (5:39-40), John the
Baptist (1:6-8, 34), the disciples (15:27), Christ’s words (8:14, 18; 18:37),
His works (5:36; 10:25, 38), the Holy Spirit (15:26), and the Father Himself
(5:37; 8:18).
“The key to this section is the word testify, which in its noun and verb forms appears nine times in
verses 6-12. The root word from which
both derive is martus, a common word
that appears nearly 175 times in its various forms in the New Testament. It has the basic meaning of remembering
something and testifying concerning it.
That testimony could be in a legal setting (as Mark 14:63; Acts 6:13;
7:58; Heb. 10:28), or in the general sense of recounting firsthand knowledge
(as Luke 11:48; 1 Tim. 6:12; Heb. 12:1; 1 Peter 5:1). Perhaps because so many people who testified
to the true gospel paid with their lives, martus
became the root of the English word martyr.
“In the Old Testament, God called the people of Israel to
be witnesses that He alone is God (Isa. 433:10-13; 44:6-8). The New Testament is supremely God’s witness
to His Son. The Gospels record the story
of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; the book of Acts describes the
initial theological meaning of His life, death, resurrection ascension, and
second coming; the book of Revelation reveals the consummation of God’s
redemptive purpose in Him.
“In keeping with the biblical injunction that ‘every fact
is to be confirmed by the testimony of two or three witnesses’ (2 Cor. 13:1;
cf. Deut 19:15; Matt. 18:16; 1 Tim. 5:19; Heb. 10:28), John presents three
aspects of God’s witness to Jesus Christ.
Then, after delineating the particulars of the Father’s testimony to the
Son, the apostle reveals the purpose of that testimony, and finally, closes
this section by illustrating its power.”
Lord willing, tomorrow we
will look at “The Particular of God’s Testimony” which covers verses 5:6-9.
3/19/2025 9:37 PM
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