This is the one who came through water and Blood, Jesus Christ,
not by water alone, but by water and Blood.
The Spirit testified that Jesus was the Son of God at his baptism, when Jesus first sanctified the waters that would later cleanse the people of his Church. The Spirit who testified to Jesus would be made made available to anyone who was thirsty, who would come to him to drink the living water that would flow from his heart (see John 7:37-39). The temptation in response to such a gift might be to overly spiritualize it, to focus on the water only. Yet to do so would not be sufficient to explain the baptism of Jesus or the promised gift. For the baptism itself was deeply related to the death wherein Jesus not only gave living water but shed his blood for us. Hence the Spirit could not be given until Jesus himself was glorified (see John 7:39). It was precisely from his heart, a living, human, heart, pumping human blood, that the living water would flow. It would not do so without being first pierced by the lance, by the sins of humanity.
So there are three who testify,
the Spirit, the water, and the Blood,
and the three are of one accord.
The testimony of the three witnesses pointed toward one who was both God and man, who could pour out life-giving and living waters of the Spirit, but precisely through suffering and dying as a man. We would tend to prefer a baptism unconnected with death, or at least sufficiently sterilized that we could receive it as only a spiritual gesture that left our normal day to day mortal lives untouched. But it was the very fact that Jesus was not merely God, the fact that he came by the blood as well as the water, that his coming was able to address itself to us as thoroughly and deeply as it did.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (see Romans 6:3).
Jesus, in becoming human, and in pouring out his gift through his humanity, allowed our own humanity to be redeemed. Relying on the water alone would remain a temptation, that of thinking and professing spiritual sounding things while remaining fundamentally unaffected in our own hearts and in our lives day to day. Instead, the shedding of his blood was part of the testimony of the Spirit, a testimony which now calls for a response from us.
Now the testimony of God is this,
that he has testified on behalf of his Son.
Whoever believes in the Son of God
has this testimony within himself.
The blood was what called his people to offer their own suffering for the sake of his body, the Church (see Colossians 1:24). The blood called Christians to become living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (see Romans 12:1). It was a gift of the life giving water of the Spirit, but that could only be received if we are willing to welcome it together with the gift of the blood. We could only be saved by the Savior who was able to offer us both saving streams, the one who was both truly God and truly man.
“Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”
Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
It was not merely by his word that Jesus healed us. It was also by his touch, by the sacramental instrumentality of his human nature. In the mass we ask that he only "say the word" but his response is always to provide a feast of his own Body and Blood, a feast, in which those of faith receive fire and Spirit and Saint John Paul the Great said (see Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 17).
Let us avail ourselves of both saving streams. Let us desire and seek to receive more and more the fullness of the Spirit. Let our hearts be opened to receive also the transforming power of the Precious Blood of Jesus which divinizes us even as it heals us and makes us more fully human. It is the source of spectacular miracles and hidden interior graces of charity. It is the fullness of John's meaning when he says that one can have "this testimony within himself". This is so precisely because it is Christ himself whom receive, and to whom, in receiving, we are conformed.
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