Eucharistic meditation, Fifth Sunday After Epiphany

1 John 5: For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are one.

John's language in this verse is a little different from most English translations. The last clause is usually translated, "the three are one" or "the three are in agreement," but in the Greek there's a preposition before "one" – "the three are to one" or "toward one" or "unto one." The last part does not say that the three witnesses are unified, but that they tend toward unity.

What sense does that make? What is the "one" toward which the three bear witness? And what does it mean for witnesses to be "toward one" anyway?

It might have an eschatological reference – the three are witnesses that point to some kind of final unity. Or it could refer to God – these three witnesses move toward the One God. But I suspect there's another possibility.

In Galatians 3, Paul sets the Mosaic covenant in the context of the Abrahamic covenant. God promised Abraham a unified people, constituted from many races and tribes and tongues. The Mosaic law comes after this promise; Moses doesn’t nullify the promise, but Moses doesn't fulfill the promise either. Moses, Paul writes, is not "mediator of the one." Because the Mosaic law institutionalizes divisions within the human race, it cannot be the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise. There has to be another covenant mediator, Jesus, who is the mediator of the "one," who unites Jew and Greek into one people of God.

John is referring to the same "one" here. John says that the three witnesses are "toward the one," they bear witness to produce the one unified people of God. The Spirit bears witness in and with the water of baptism and the blood of the new covenant at this table. Through baptism and the blood of the covenant, the Spirit actually forms the unified people of God.

Today, the church is literally made up of people from every race and tribe and nation and tongue. One of the things we proclaim and celebrate at this table is the union of the human race in Christ, a union that is achieved by the Spirit through water and blood.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, February 04, 2007 at 08:29 AM

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