The angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people.
While I have struggled over this issue, I have always be conscious that the ordinances are right, and must be practiced faithfully, because I have rested on the text, “There are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” And what do they bear witness to? They bear witness to the mission of Jesus as the Christ, in other words to the real incarnation of God. They bear witness to the material nature of Christ. Have you ever noticed that when people have given up the two outward ordinances, they have usually betrayed a tendency to give up the literal fact that “God was made flesh!” The literal fact that Christ was really a man has generally been doubted or thrown into the background when the two outward ordinances have been given up, and I believe that these two symbolical ordinances, which are a link between the spiritual and the material, are set up on purpose to show that Christ Jesus, though most gloriously a spirit, was also a man clothed in a body of real flesh and blood like our own; so that He could be touched and handled even as He said, “Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” When I think of the Holy Spirit who bears witness that Christ was really a man, I thank Him for that witness; then I turn to the water, and when I read that Christ was publicly baptized in Jordan, I perceive that He could not have been a phantom; He could not have been a mere supernatural appearance, for He was immersed in water, He must have been a solid substantial man. The preservation of the ordinance of baptism is a witness to the reality of the incarnate God. Then comes the blood, He could not have shed blood on Calvary if He had been only a vision. There could have been no blood streaming down from His side when the spear pierced Him if He had been only a ghostly appearance; He must have been solid flesh and blood like ourselves; and as often as we come to His table, and we take the cup and hear it said, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood,” there is a third witness on earth to the fact that Jesus did appear in very flesh and blood among men. So that the Spirit, the water, and the blood, are the three standing testimonies in the church of God, that Christ was God, and that He was also really, solidly, and substantially man. I will delight in the ordinances all the more because of this. Those two ordinances serve to make us remember that Christ was really flesh and blood, and that Christianity has something to do with this flesh and blood of ours. This very body is to rise again from the tomb; Jesus came to deliver this weak flesh from corruption; and so, while we must always keep the spiritual uppermost, we are prevented from casting away the material body as though that were from the devil. Christ purified as well the realm of matter as the realm of spirit; and in both He reigns triumphant. There is great comfort here. 