The Johannine Comma.

Today I’m gonna discuss a passage which looks very different in different bibles. And it’s not a minor, irrelevant passage; some Christians consider it an important proof text for how God is a trinity. Not that there aren’t other passages in the New Testament which reveal God’s a trinity, but this passage puts it all in one verse, and some Christians are enraged about how they find they can’t find this passage in every present-day translation.

I’ll start by comparing the King James Version with the American Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible. KJV first:

1 John 5.6-8 KJV

6This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

This matches what we find in the Textus Receptus, and the Geneva Bible. But once the Revised Version was produced—and its American edition, the ASV—in those bibles the passage now looked like this.

1 John 5.6-8 ASV

6This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. 7And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. 8For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one.

Shorter. Y’notice verse 7 in the KJV is gone. It got replaced by the second sentence of verse 6. Now, when the RV was updated by the Revised Standard Version, and the ASV was updated by the NASB, the verses were reshuffled again: Verse 6 was restored, verse 7 was shortened to “For there are three that testify,” verse 8 was shortened to “the Spirit, water, and blood,” etc.

1 John 5.6-8 NASB

6This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7For there are three that testify: 8the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.

So what’s going on here? Why’d the “Father, Word, and Holy Ghost” get dropped from verse 7? Simply put, John didn’t write it. It was added to the text in the 900s. It’s a textual variant which can’t be supported by serious scholarship.

John didn’t write it, but it’s nonetheless named after him: Scholars call it the Comma Johanneum, or Johannine Comma. No, “comma” doesn’t refer to our punctuation mark; the ancient Greek word κόμμα/kómma means a short clause in a rhetorical argument.

And as I’ve said, it has its fans. Fans who have embraced many foolish theories about why it’s been “edited out of the bible”—complete with conspiracy theories involving liberal theologians, anti-trinitarian textual critics, Satanists, Catholics, and every other boogeyman they fear. I come across such preachers from time to time, and I’d have a little more respect for them if they bothered to quote any of the bible in context. Scholarship just ain’t their thing.

Victory in Jesus… hidden in the Law.

1 John 5.2-5.

In the Council of Jerusalem, Simon Peter got up and rebuked the Pharisees among the Christians—those who insisted before gentiles become Christian, they gotta first become Pharisees, follow the Law of Moses, and undergo ritual circumcision if they’re male.

In his rebuke, he said something which is traditionally translated,

Acts 15.10 NASB

“Since this is the case, why are you putting God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our forefathers nor we have been able to bear?”

The assumption many Christians make is Peter was speaking of the Law: Yeah, you silly Pharisees, why are you making these gentiles follow the Law to be saved, when the Law never did save anyone?

But in context, that’s not what Peter meant. The “yoke” he meant was Pharisaism. The “traditions of the elders,” the interpretations of the Law which Pharisees upheld—and which Jesus regularly violated—were the yoke both Peter, his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and a few more generations back, had been obliged to bear. But not too many generations back: Contrary what you might’ve been expecting, Pharisaism wasn’t that old. They claimed they went all the way back to Moses himself, but nah; more like 150BC or so.

Pharisaism is the yoke. Not the Law. Jesus upheld the Law. Y’know how we Christians say Jesus never sinned? He 4.15 Sin is when you transgress the Law. 1Jn 3.4 Jesus never did. He transgressed the heck out of Pharisee traditions, but never the Law. It is, he said, not passing away; not even after heaven and earth do. Mt 5.18 I should quote him more:

Matthew 5.19-20 NASB

19“Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20“For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Christians were always meant to uphold the Law, same as Jesus did. But upholding it before turning to Jesus, as if being Law-abiding facilitates our salvation, is putting the cart before the horse. We’re not saved by following Law, but by following Jesus. We don’t lose our salvation by Law-breaking, by sin. Yep, even great big deadly sins. God saves us by his grace. Nothing else.

But now that we’re saved, now what are we to do? Duh; follow Jesus. And part of following him is doing God’s will. And part of God’s will is obeying his commands. You know, the Law.

1 John 5.2-5 KWL

2This is how we know we love God’s children:

When the we love the Father,

we also do his commands.

3For this the love of God:

We should keep his commands.

His commands aren’t hard!

4Since everyone fathered by God

wins against the world,

this is the win which conquers the world:

Our trust in God.

5Who’s the winner over the world,

if not one who trusts

that Jesus is God’s son?

Obviously plenty of Christians don’t wanna follow the Law, and have come up with every excuse they can to ignore it. And teach others to do the same. Me, I’d recommend we not follow those people who are gonna be the very lowest in God’s kingdom. Stick to Jesus.

If we don’t love others, we don’t love God.

1 John 4.16 - 5.1.

As John famously said in verse 16, God is love. Those who love—legitimately love, and aren’t just using a pop-culture definition of “love,” but are doing the sort of love as defined by scripture—are, whether they know it or not, interacting with God to some degree.

In today’s passage, John adds if we don’t love, particularly if we hate people whom God’s called us to love, we’re not interacting with God. How could we be?—we’re hating the people he loves.

And between loving our family and friends, loving our fellow Christians, loving our neighbors, and loving our enemies, Jesus has pretty much instructed us to love everyone. Indiscriminately. No, not with “tough love,” which is simply anger disguised as love, and also frequently used to justify a whole lot of hateful behavior. Actual love, which is kind and gentle and patient. Which isn’t trying to manipulate people into conforming to the way we think they oughta behave, but bears all things and hopes all things. 1Co 13.7

If we stick to love, actual love, we abide in God and he in us. If we ditch love in favor of society, even Christian society—which, whenever it encourages us to not love, isn’t all that Christian—in what way are we abiding in God? We’re not following him. We’re not fulfilling his love by displaying it to others. We’re not making him known. In fact we’re leading pagans to think the very worst things about the God we believe in. Christians who lack love are monstrous—and the god of monstrous people must himself be a monster, right?

All the more reason we Christians need to exhibit God’s love towards one another, and everyone. And if you’re afraid loving too widely might lead you into error, that’s an irrational fear. Love, done properly, gets rid of that fear. John says that too in today’s passage.

1 John 4.16 - 5.1 KWL

16We knew and believed the love

which God has in us.

God is love,

and one who remains in love

remains in God,

and God remains in them.¹

17This is how love was brought to completion by us:

We can be bold on Judgment Day,

because just as God is,

we also are, in this world.

18Fear isn’t in love.

Instead, a complete love throws fear out,

because fear has negative consequences.

Those who fear

haven’t completed love.

19We love {God}

because he loves us first.

20When anyone says “I love God,”

and hates their¹ fellow Christian,

they’re¹ a liar.

For one who doesn’t love their¹ fellow Christian

whom they¹ were able to see,

aren’t able to love God,

whom they¹ weren’t able to see.

21We have this command from God,

so one who loves God

might also love their¹ fellow Christian.

1All who believe Jesus is Christ

were fathered by God.

All who love the fatherer

also love those¹ fathered by him.

No one has ever seen God. Except 74 ancient Hebrews.

Most of the reason we Christians are pretty sure John bar Zavdi wrote both the gospel with his name on it, and the letters with his name on them, is ’cause the same ideas and themes (and wording, and vocabulary) come up in them. Including today’s bible difficulty, the idea nobody’s ever seen God. John wrote it in both his gospel and his first letter.

John 1.18 NET

No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.

1 John 4.12 NET

No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

The reason it’s a difficulty? Because people have seen God. In Exodus 24, we have this interesting little story:

Exodus 24.9-11 NET

9Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up, 10and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear like the sky itself. 11But he did not lay a hand on the leaders of the Israelites, so they saw God, and they ate and they drank.

Wait, what?

Yeah, nobody bothers to read their Old Testament, so it stands to reason they’d utterly miss this one. Or any of the other God-appearances in the scriptures.

In the OT, on a regular basis, humans freak out when there was any possibility they’d see God. Jg 13.22 ’Cause a common ancient rumor was if a mortal looked upon the actual face of one of the gods, they’d die. God’s pure, holy awesomeness would consume them like a volcano taking out stupid tourists. Although you do get the occasional dark Christian claim that God would be unreasonably pissed about it, and destroy them for daring to approach his majesty. Pretty sure that second idea only reflects their twisted secret wishes about how they’d like their subordinates to approach them. God’s cool with his kids approaching him. Ep 3.12, He 4.16 But I digress.

Yeah, it was a rumor. And sometimes rumors are true. The LORD himself warned Moses he’d only get to see God’s back, because his front was much too much for the prophet.

Exodus 33.20 NET

But he added, “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.”

Yet we have this story in the middle of Exodus, where apparently 74 people saw God, had lunch with him, and lived to tell of it.

And it’s not the only instance! Abraham had lunch with God too. Ge 18.1-7 Well, more like served him lunch. Isaiah and Ezekiel saw God on his throne. Jeremiah even experienced God touching him. Jr 1.9

Whenever I point out this rather vast discrepancy, Christians flinch, then usually respond one of two ways. Either they dismiss the passages where people got to see God, or they dismiss the passages where seeing God should get you struck down. The authors of the bible must not really have meant what the text clearly says.

So John didn’t literally mean nobody’s ever seen God. What he meant was nobody’s ever known God; at least not to the level Jesus knows God, ’cause Jesus is God; “The only one, himself God, who is in closest relationship with the Father” and all that. After all, since Jesus is God and humans have seen Jesus, logically people have seen God. Jn 14.9 But have they known God?—there’s the quandary.

Or nobody has literally seen God: The 74 Hebrew elders didn’t really see him. They saw the pavement beneath his feet, and that’s all. Somehow they knew his bronze feet Rv 1.15 were on this pavement, but didn’t really see the feet; maybe he had really nice boots on, though that’s unlikely because you don’t wear shoes on holy ground. Ex 3.5 Anyway, not actually seeing God is why the Exodus passage emphasizes the sapphire pavement—it’s the only thing they could see. But they never saw his face.

So if Christians were taught to believe in inerrancy, this is how they achieve inerrancy: One of these passages must be wrong must not be literal. Which idea would you rather was true? Embrace that one, and put aside t’other.

Interacting with God’s love.

1 John 4.11-16.

If we’re gonna call ourselves Christians or Christ-followers, naturally we need to do as Jesus teaches, and follow his example. And since Jesus loves us with God’s love, naturally we need to practice God’s love—his gracious, indiscriminate, compassionate love. Especially towards one another, since Jesus told us to love one another.

In today’s passage John brings up another way we know God’s in us: We practice God’s love. His love can be seen in the world because Christians are actually, visibly loving people. God may be invisible, but when his love is visible, he’s technically visible. It’s our job—really our duty—to make him visible.

1 John 4.11-16 KWL

11Beloved, if this is how much God loves us,

we’re obligated to love one another.

12Nobody had ever seen God;

when we love one another,

God remains in us

and his love is brought to completion by us.

13This is how we know we remain in God

and he in us:

By God’s Spirit

whom he gave us.

14We saw, and still witness

that the Father sent the Son

as savior of the world.

15Whoever confesses Jesus is God’s son,

God remains in them¹ and they¹ in God.

16We knew and believed the love

which God has in us.

God is love,

and one who remains in love

remains in God,

and God remains in them.¹

True, John is practicing some circular reasoning in this passage. In verse 13 he states, “This is how we know we remain in him and he and us: By his Spirit whom he gave us.” How do we know God’s in us? Because he’s in us. Yeah, I can’t help that John’s not really following the dictates of Aristotelian logic like westerners would prefer. But John’s not giving us a logic lesson; he’s explaining what authentic, lived-out Christianity looks like. The only way we can know God’s in us is when he’s in us; the only way we can know God’s love remains in us is when we remain in God’s love. We gotta do this stuff. Once we do, we recognize God’s in it.

How God shows us his love.

1 John 4.7-10.

You might’ve noticed when I translate bible, I split it into clauses and format it like poetry. Largely it is poetry; the Hebrew sort, which repeats ideas instead of sounds.

I actually got the idea from Peter Marshall. (The Senate chaplain, not the game show host.) In his wife Catherine’s biography of him, she included some of his sermons. He wrote them out by clauses—likely so they’d be much easier for him to follow while preaching. She noted it made them look more poetic. I thought so too, and started writing out my own sermons the same way. And whenever I quoted bible verses, I wrote them out the same way too.

I noticed other bible translators, like Everett Fox, doing that with scripture, and figured I should just do it too. So I do. Again, much easier to follow.

Now, in today’s passage, the editors of the UBS Greek New Testament already put John’s lines into this format. So I’m just following along with how they did it. (Although I’d break up verse 9 a little differently.) Here it is:

1 John 4.7-10 KWL

7Beloved, we should love one another,

for love is from God,

and everyone who loves was fathered by God,

and knows God.

8One who doesn’t love, doesn’t know God,

for God is love.

9This is how God’s love is revealed in us,

for God sent his only-begotten Son

into the world so we might live through him.

10This is how love is—

not that we loved God,

but that he loved us,

and sent his Son

as a sin-offering for our sins.

Now, what John meant by it.

Personally, I consider this a significant scripture, because God’s love is the lens I use to understand both Christianity and the scriptures. God and love are so interconnected, one can legitimately say, as John does in verse 8, God is love. Our definition of love comes from a proper understanding of God, and a proper understanding of God requires us to recognize nothing he does lacks love.

Admittedly this makes some parts of the bible really hard to understand.

Lying evil spirits, and society.

1 John 4.4-6.

In the previous passage I mentioned how evil spirits like to feed us false information to drive us away from God’s kingdom. And thus far, John points out, his audience has overcome these evil spirits, and overcome the fake prophets they encouraged to proclaim false things. His audience does know Jesus, and knows better than to fall for the false teachings of people who claim Jesus isn’t human, isn’t Messiah, isn’t Lord.

1 John 4.4-6 KWL

4Children, you’re² from God.

You overcame the fake prophets,

for the Lord among you² is greater

than anyone in the world.

5They’re from society;

this is why they speak of society

and society listens to them.

6You’re² from God.

Anyone who knows God, listens to us.

Whoever isn’t from God, doesn’t listen to us.

From this, we know the spirit of truth

and the spirit of error.

The second half of verse 4, which the KJV renders, “because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world,” gets quoted a lot. And commonly misinterpreted: Christians figure “he that is in you” is Jesus, who lives inside our hearts; and “he that is in the world” is of course the devil, who got thrown down to earth after it fought Michael and lost, Rv 12.9 and ever since has been harassing Christians. Rv 12.17

I translated it a little differently. There’s no “he” in these verses; there’s the determiner ὁ/o, which usually indicates a subject noun. But when there actually is no subject noun—like we have here—it becomes the subject noun, and now it means “the one.” Which one? Well, you gotta figure that part out from context. The writers of the KJV decided to not figure it out, and go with “he,” since o is after all a masculine-form word. And like I said, Christians figured “he” refers in the first instance to Jesus, and in the second to Satan.

I have to keep reminding Christians that the person of the trinity who actually does indwell us is the Holy Spirit. “I have Jesus in my heart” is a metaphor representing how Jesus has my allegiance, obedience, trust, and love, but Jesus isn’t physically in me; he’s at the right hand of the Father. Ac 2.33 Meanwhile the Spirit is actually within us, working on us; and we Christians are collectively his temple. But rather than pedantically insert “Holy Spirit” into verse 4, I figured “Lord”—because the Spirit is Lord, same as Jesus; they’re coequal with the Father—works too.

As for the devil being the other o, I don’t know that it is. Really the other o could be anybody in the world; any malevolent person, whether evil spirit or evil human. Does it matter? The Holy Spirit can overcome them all.