Of all the arresting and intensely significant happenings at Golgotha none seems to have been so eloquent to John the eyewitness as that flow of blood and water soaking into mother earth at the foot of the cross. Concerning this especially he felt impelled to give his own personal guarantee of truth: “And he that saw it bear witness, and his witness is true.” I saw it with my own eyes!
John’s story of the crucifixion has already given evidence of its mystical interpretation of many an otherwise insignificant detail. And here his distinctive use of two words for “true” (19:35) shows that once again his symbolic mind is busy enriching his readers’ appreciation of the momentous happening of that Day. Any doubt on that score is set at rest by the emphatic way in which John makes allusion to this very thing in his First Epistle: “This 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. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (1 John 5:6,8). Clearly, like so much else in John’s First Epistle, this reference to water and blood looks back to the gospel narrative for its meaning. But what meaning?
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Author: Harry Whittaker
Keywords: blood and water, Jesus pierced, pierced, Jesus' side pierced, spear pierced his side, spear pierced, spear pierced Jesus side
Bible reference(s): John 19:34, 1 John 5:6
Source: Studies in the Gospels.
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.