Translation
And this is the testimony, that THEOS has given us eternal life and this life is in HIS SON.
Paraphrase
Herein lies the authentication of the evidence – THE CREATOR AND OWNER OF ALL THINGS has done everything necessary to grant us eternal living-quarters with Him which are made possible by what HIS CO-REGENT, Jesus did.
THE FINAL EVIDENCE IS OUR SALVATION
The authenticating confirmation that Jesus is who the Bible says He is comes from the transformed lives of God’s followers. We are witnesses to this world of what Jesus can do, which proves who He really is. In verse 8 the spirit is mentioned as one of the witnesses, but the body and soul are not mentioned. However, mentioning one of them, the one that brings in the God-factor more clearly than the others, is enough. For if the spirit of God and the spirit of a man are in agreement with the working of God to provide cleansing and atonement in his life, that man’s life is the best evidence to prove Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, the Savior for the world. What’s more, people who have been reconciled to God, redeemed from a life of sin and transformed into small reflections of what God is like, are the first-tier witnesses to who Jesus is. Transformed lives are confirmations of the other witness that is also on the top tier – the Bible. Nature is a second-tier witness. What a high privilege it is to be one of the first-tier witnesses to the saving power of God!