1 John 5:10 Commentary and Bible Study

Faith has the power to take an objective testimony coming from outside us – from Scripture, or from a preacher, or from a witnessing Christian – and to make it subjectively our own, a truth which we live by and on which we build our lives. But it is the Spirit who creates and maintains faith in us by witnessing with our spirit – for faith is ‘the gift of God’ and the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ – so that to our great advantage we have the witness of God in ourselves. We do not perceive the Spirit of God dwelling in us as a separate agent whose thoughts cut across our thoughts, for he is the retiring member of the Godhead who does not speak of himself but of Christ (John 16:13-14). His work is to point not to himself but to Christ so that we depend fully on the Lord, and the evidence that he is in us is not that we sense him directly but that we are enabled to confess from our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God. At no stage does this witness within us replace or do away with the need for the objective witness of Scripture for the Spirit does not set aside the Scripture which he has inspired; we always need the witness of Scripture because this is the only sure and authoritative revelation that God has given us.By contrast, he who does not believe the witness of the Spirit, the water, and the blood has made God a liar, for this is God’s witness which the unbeliever rejects as untrue. John drives us towards the starkest conclusion because we are not dealing with human testimony. God cannot be mistaken for he knows all things, nor can he have given us insufficient evidence that we should remain in doubt, for as our Creator he knows our constitution perfectly; he knows what amounts to sufficient grounds for faith, and he has said that we have enough so that unbelief is without excuse.