Verses 1-47
Chapter 5
5:1-9 After this there
was a Feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem,
near the sheepgate, there is a bathing-pool with five porches, which was
called in Hebrew, Bethzatha. In these porches there lay a crowd of
people who were ill and blind and lame and whose limbs were withered
[waiting expectantly for the moving of the water. For an angel of the
Lord came down into the pool every now and then and disturbed the water;
so the first person to go in after the disturbing of the water regained
his health from any illness which had him in its grip]. There was a man
there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying
there, and since he knew that he had already been there for a long
time, he said to him: "Do you want to be made well?" The sick man
answered: "Sir, I have no one to hurry me into the pool when the water
is disturbed; so, while I am on the way, someone gets down before me."
Jesus said to him: "Get up! Lift your bed! and walk!" And the man was
made well, and he lifted up his bed and walked.
There were three Jewish feasts which were feasts of
obligation--Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. Every adult male Jew
who lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem was legally bound to attend
them. If we take John 6:1-71 before John 5:1-47 we may think of this feast as Pentecost, because the events of John 6:1-71 happened when the Passover was near (John 6:4).
The Passover was in mid-April, and Pentecost was seven weeks later.
John always shows us Jesus attending the great feasts, for Jesus did not
disregard the obligations of Jewish worship. To him it was not a duty
but a delight to worship with his own people.
When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem he was apparently alone; there
is no mention of his disciples. He found his way to a famous pool. Its
name was either Bethesda, which means House of Mercy, or more likely,
Bethzatha which means House of the Olive. The better manuscripts all
have the second name, and we know from Josephus that there was a quarter
of Jerusalem actually known as Bethzatha. The word for pool
kolumbethron (Greek #2861), which comes from the verb kolumban (Greek #2860),
to dive. The pool was deep enough to swim in. The passage we have put
in brackets is not in any of the greatest and best manuscripts and was
probably added later as an explanation of what people were doing at the
pool. Beneath the pool was a subterranean stream which every now and
again bubbled up and disturbed the waters. The belief was that the
disturbance was caused by an angel, and that the first person to get
into the pool after the troubling of the water would be healed from any
illness from which he was suffering.
To us this is mere superstition. But it was the kind of belief
which was spread all over the world in ancient days and which still
exists in certain places. People believed in all kinds of spirits and
demons. The air was thick with them; they had their abodes in certain
places; every tree, every river, every stream, every hill, every pool
had its resident spirit.
Further, ancient peoples were specially impressed with the
holiness of water and especially of rivers and springs. Water was so
precious and rivers in spate could be so powerful that it is not
surprising that they were so impressed. In the west we may know water
only as something which comes out of a tap; but in the ancient world, as
in many places still today, water was the most valuable and potentially
the most dangerous of all things.
Sir J. G. Frazer in Folk-lore in the Old Testament (ii, 412-423)
quotes many instances of this reverence for water. Hesiod, the Greek
poet, said that when a man was about to ford a river, he should pray and
wash his hands, for he who wades through a stream with unwashed hands
incurs the wrath of the gods. When the Persian king Xerxes came to the
Strymon in Thrace his magicians offered white horses and went through
other ceremonies before the army ventured to cross. Lucullus, the Roman
general, offered a bull to the River Euphrates before he crossed it. To
this day in south-east Africa some of the Bantu tribes believe that
rivers are inhabited by malignant spirits which must be propitiated by
flinging a handful of corn or some other offering into the river before
it is crossed. When anyone is drowned in a river he is said to be
"called by the spirits." The Baganda in Central Africa would not try to
rescue a man carried away by a river because they thought that the
spirits had taken him. The people who waited for the pool in Jerusalem
to be disturbed were children of their age believing the things of their
age.
It may be that as Jesus walked around, the man of this story was
pointed out to him as a most pitiable case, because his disability made
it very unlikely, even impossible, that he would ever be the first to
get into the pool after it had been troubled. He had no one to help him
in, and Jesus was always the friend of the friendless, and the helper of
the man who has no earthly help. He did not trouble to read the man a
lecture on the useless superstition of waiting for the water to be
moved. His one desire was to help and so he healed the man who had
waited so long.
In this story we see very clearly the conditions under which the
power of Jesus operated. He gave his orders to men and, in proportion
as they tried to obey, power came to them.
(i) Jesus began by asking the man if he wanted to be cured. It
was not so foolish a question as it may sound. The man had waited for
thirty-eight years and it might well have been that hope had died and
left behind a passive and dull despair. In his heart of hearts the man
might be well content to remain an invalid for, if he was cured, he
would have to shoulder all the burden of making a living. There are
invalids for whom invalidism is not unpleasant, because someone else
does all the working and all the worrying. But this man's response was
immediate. He wanted to be healed, though he did not see how he ever
could be since he had no one to help him.
The first essential towards receiving the power of Jesus is to
have intense desire for it. Jesus says: "Do you really want to be
changed?" If in our inmost hearts we are well content to stay as we are,
there can be no change for us.
(ii) Jesus went on to tell the man to get up. It is as if he
said to him: "Man, bend your will to it and you and I will do this thing
together!" The power of God never dispenses with the effort of man.
Nothing is truer than that we must realize our own helplessness; but in a
very real sense it is true that miracles happen when our will and God's
power cooperate to make them possible.
(iii) In effect Jesus was commanding the man to attempt the
impossible. "Get up!" he said. His bed would simply be a light
stretcher-like frame--the Greek is krabbatos (Greek #2895),
a colloquial word which really means a pallet--and Jesus told him to
pick it up and carry it away. The man might well have said with a kind
of injured resentment that for thirty-eight years his bed had been
carrying him and there was not much sense in telling him to carry it.
But he made the effort along with Christ--and the thing was done.
(iv) Here is the road to achievement. There are so many things
in this world which defeat us. When we have intensity of desire and
determination to make the effort, hopeless though it may seem, the power
of Christ gets its opportunity, and with him we can conquer what for
long has conquered us.
Certain scholars think this passage is an allegory.
The man stands for the people of Israel. The five porches stand
for the five books of the law. In the porches the people lay ill. The
law could show a man his sin, but could never mend it; the law could
uncover a man's weakness, but could never cure it. The law, like the
porches, sheltered the sick soul but could never heal it. The
thirty-eight years stand for the thirty-eight years in which the Jews
wandered in the desert before they entered the promised land; or for the
number of the centuries men had been waiting for the Messiah. The
stirring of the waters stands for baptism. In point of fact in early
Christian art a man is often depicted as rising from the baptismal
waters carrying a bed upon his back.
It may well be that it is now possible to read all these
meanings into this story; but it is highly unlikely that John wrote it
as an allegory. It has the vivid stamp of factual truth. But we do well
to remember that any Bible story has in it far more than fact. There are
always deeper truths below the surface and even the simple stories are
meant to leave us face to face with eternal things.
5:10-18 It was Sabbath
on that day. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured: "It is
Sabbath and you have no right to lift your bed." He answered them: "He
who made me well, it was he who said to me: 'Lift your bed and walk'!"
They asked him: "Who is the fellow who said to you: 'Lift your bed and
walk'?" The man who had been cured did not know who he was, for Jesus
had slipped away, for there was a crowd in the place. Afterwards Jesus
found him in the Temple and said to him: "Look now! You have been made
well. Sin no more in case something worse happens to you!" The man went
away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Because
of this the Jews were out to persecute Jesus, because he had done these
things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them: "My Father continues his
work until now, and so do I continue mine." Because of this the Jews
tried all the harder to find a way to kill him, because not only was he
habitually breaking the Sabbath, but he also kept on saying that God was
his own Father, thereby making himself equal with God.
A man had been healed from a disease which, humanly speaking,
was incurable. We might expect this to be an occasion of universal joy
and thanksgiving; but some met the whole business with bleak and black
looks. The man who had been healed was walking through the streets
carrying his bed; the orthodox Jews stopped him and reminded him that he
was breaking the law by carrying a burden on the Sabbath day.
We have already seen what the Jews did with the law of God. It
was a series of great wide principles which men were left to apply and
carry out but throughout the years the Jews had made it into thousands
of little rules and regulations. The law simply said that the Sabbath
day must be different from other days and that on it neither a man nor
his servants nor his animals must work; the Jews set out thirty-nine
different classifications of work, one of which was that it consisted in
carrying a burden.
They founded particularly on two passages. Jeremiah had said:
"Thus saith the Lord: take heed for the sake of your lives, and do not
bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of
Jerusalem. And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath
or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your
fathers" (Jeremiah 17:19-27).
Nehemiah had been worried at the work and the trading that went on on
the Sabbath day and had stationed servants at the gates of Jerusalem to
see that no burdens were carried in or out on the Sabbath (Nehemiah 13:15-19).
Nehemiah 13:15
makes it perfectly clear that what was in question was trading on the
Sabbath as if it had been an ordinary day. But the Rabbis of Jesus' day
solemnly argued that a man was sinning if he carried a needle in his
robe on the Sabbath. They even argued as to whether he could wear his
artificial teeth or his wooden leg. They were quite clear that any kind
of broach could not be worn on the Sabbath. To them all this petty
detail was a matter of life and death--and certainly this man was
breaking the rabbinic law by carrying his bed on the Sabbath day.
His defence was that the man who had healed him had told him to
do it, but he did not know his identity. Later Jesus met him in the
Temple; at once the man hastened to tell the authorities that Jesus was
the one in question. He was not seeking to get Jesus into trouble, but
the actual words of the law were: "If anyone carries anything from a
public place to a private house on the Sabbath intentionally he is
punishable by death by stoning." He was simply trying to explain that it
was not his fault that he had broken the law.
So the authorities levelled their accusations against Jesus. The verbs in John 5:18
are imperfect tense, which describes repeated action in past time.
Clearly this story is only a sample of what Jesus habitually did.
His defence was shattering. God did not stop working on the
Sabbath day and neither did he. Any scholarly Jew would grasp its full
force. Philo had said: "God never ceases doing, but as it is the
property of fire to burn and snow to chill, so it is the property of God
to do." Another writer said: "The sun shines; the rivers flow; the
processes of birth and death go on on the Sabbath as on any other day;
and that is the work of God." True, according to the creation story, God
rested on the seventh day; but he rested from creation; his higher
works of judgment and mercy and compassion and love still went on.
Jesus said: "Even on the Sabbath God's love and mercy and
compassion act; and so do mine." It was this last passage which
shattered the Jews, for it meant nothing less than that the work of
Jesus and the work of God were the same. It seemed that Jesus was
putting himself on an equality with God. What Jesus really was saying we
shall see in our next section; but at the moment we must note
this--Jesus teaches that human need must always be helped; that there is
no greater task than to relieve someone's pain and distress and that
the Christian's compassion must be like God's--unceasing. Other work may
be laid aside but the work of compassion never.
Another Jewish belief enters into this passage. When Jesus met
the man in the Temple he told him to sin no more in case something worse
might happen to him. To the Jew sin and suffering were inextricably
connected. If a man suffered, necessarily he had sinned; nor could he
ever be cured until his sin was forgiven. The Rabbis said: "The sick
arises not from sickness, until his sins be forgiven." The man might
argue that he had sinned and been forgiven and had, so to speak, got
away with it; and he might go on to argue that, since he had found
someone who could release him from the consequences of sin, he could
very well go on sinning and escaping. There were those in the church who
used their liberty as an excuse for the flesh (Galatians 5:13). There were those who sinned in the confidence that grace would abound (Romans 6:1-18).
There have always been those who have used the love and the forgiveness
and the grace of God as an excuse to sin. But we have only to think
what God's forgiveness cost, we have only to look at the Cross of
Calvary, to know that we must ever hate sin because every sin breaks
again the heart of God.
5:19-29 This is the
truth I tell you--the Son cannot do anything which proceeds from
himself. He can only do what he sees the Father doing. In whatever way
the Father acts, the Son likewise acts in the same way; for the Father
loves the son and has shown him everything that he does. And he will
show him greater works than these, so that you will be moved to
wondering amazement. For, as the Father raises the dead and makes them
alive, so also the Son makes alive those whom he wishes. Neither does
the Father judge anyone, but he has given the whole process of judging
to the Son, that all may honour the Son, as they honour the Father. He
who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him.
This is the truth I
tell you--he who listens to my word and believes on him who sent me has
eternal life, and is not on the way to judgment, but he has crossed from
death to life.
This is the truth I
tell you--the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the
voice of the Son of God, and, when they have heard, they will live. For,
as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have
life in himself; and he has given him authority to exercise the process
of judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be astonished at this,
for the hour is coming when everyone in the tombs will hear his voice,
and will come forth; those who have done good will come out to a
resurrection which will give them life, but those whose actions were
base will come out to a resurrection which will issue in judgment.
Here we come to the first of the long discourses of the Fourth
Gospel. When we read passages like this we must remember that John is
not seeking so much to give us the words that Jesus spoke as the things
which Jesus meant. He was writing somewhere round about A.D. 100. For
seventy years he had thought about Jesus and the wonderful things which
Jesus had said. Many of these things he had not fully understood when he
had heard them. But more than half a century of thinking under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit had shown him deeper and deeper meaning in
the words of Jesus. And so he sets down for us not only what Jesus said,
but also what Jesus meant.
This passage is so important that we must first study it as a whole and then take it in shorter sections.
First, then let us look at it as a whole. We must try to think
not only how it sounds to us, but also how it sounded to the Jews who
heard it for the first time. They had a background of thoughts and
ideas, of theology and belief, of literature and religion which is very
far from our background; and, to understand a passage like this, we must
try to think ourselves into the mind of a Jew who listened to it for
the first time.
This is an amazing passage, because it is woven together of
thoughts and expressions which are all claims by Jesus to be the
promised Messiah. Many of these claims we do not now readily see, but
they would be crystal clear to the Jews and would leave them aghast.
(i) The clearest claim is the statement that Jesus is the Son of
Man. We know how common that strange title is in the gospels. It has a
long history. It was born in Daniel 7:1-14. The King James Version mistranslates the Son of Man for a son of man (Daniel 7:13).
The point of the passage is this. Daniel was written in days of
terror and of persecution, and it is a vision of the glory which will
some day replace the suffering which the people are undergoing. In Daniel 7:1-7
the seer describes the great heathen empires which have held sway under
the symbolism of beasts. There is the lion with eagle's wings (Daniel 7:4), which stands for the Babylonian Empire; the bear with the three ribs in his mouth, as one devouring the carcase (Daniel 7:5), which stands for the Median Empire; the leopard with four wings and four heads (Daniel 7:6), which stands for the Persian Empire; the beast, great and terrible, with iron teeth and with ten horns (Daniel 7:7),
which stands for the Macedonian Empire. All these terrible powers will
pass away and the power and the dominion will be given to one like a son
of man. The meaning is that the Empires which have held sway have been
so savage that they could be described only in terms of wild beasts; but
into the world there is going to come a power so gentle and kind that
it will be human and not bestial. In Daniel the phrase describes the
kind of power which is going to rule the world.
Someone has to introduce and exercise that power; and the Jews
took this title and gave it to the chosen one of God who some day would
bring in the new age of gentleness and love and peace; and so they came
to call the Messiah Son of Man. Between the Old and the New Testaments
there arose a whole literature which dealt with the golden age which was
to come.
One book which was specially influential was the Book of Enoch
and in it there appears again and again a great figure called That Son
of Man, who is waiting in heaven until God sends him to earth to bring
in his kingdom and rule over it. So when Jesus called himself the Son of
Man, he was doing nothing less than call himself the Messiah. Here was a
claim so clear that it could not be misunderstood.
(ii) But not only is this claim to be God's Messiah made in so
many words; in phrase after phrase it is implicit. The very miracle
which had happened to the paralysed man was a sign that Jesus was
Messiah. It was Isaiah's picture of the new age of God that "then shall
the lame man leap like a hart" (Isaiah 35:6). It was Jeremiah's vision that the blind and the lame would be gathered in (Jeremiah 31:8-9).
(iii) There is Jesus' repeated claim to raise the dead and to be
their judge when they are raised. In the Old Testament God alone can
raise the dead and alone has the right to judge. "I, even I, am he and
there is no god beside me: I kill and I make alive" (Deuteronomy 32:39). "The Lord kills and brings to life" (1 Samuel 2:6).
When Naaman, the Syrian, came seeking to be cured from leprosy, the
king of Israel said in bewildered despair: "Am I God to kill and to make
alive?" (2 Kings 5:6). The function of killing and making alive belonged inalienably to God. It is the same with judgment. "The judgment is God's" (Deuteronomy 1:17).
In later thought this function of resurrecting the dead and then
acting as judge became part of the duty of God's chosen one when he
brought in the new age of God. Enoch says of the Son of Man: "The sum of
judgment was committed to him" (Enoch 69: 26-27). Jesus in our passage
speaks of those who have done good being resurrected to life and of
those who have done evil being resurrected to death. The Apocalypse of
Baruch lays it down that when God's age comes: "The aspect of those who
now act wickedly shall become worse than it is, as they shall suffer
torment," whereas those who have trusted in the law and acted upon it
shall be clothed in beauty and in splendour (Baruch 51:1-4).
Enoch has it that in that day: "The earth shall be wholly rent asunder,
and all that is on earth shall perish, and there shall be judgment on
all men" (Enoch 1: 5-7). The Testament of Benjamin has it: "All men
shall rise, some to the exalted, and some to be humbled and put to
shame."
For Jesus to speak like this was an act of the most
extraordinary and unique courage. He must have known well that to make
claims like this would sound the sheerest blasphemy to the orthodox
Jewish leaders and was to court death. The man who listened to words
like this had only two alternatives--he must either accept Jesus as the
Son of God or hate him as a blasphemer.
We now go on to take this passage section by section.
The Father And The Son (John 5:19-20)
5:19-20 This is the
truth I tell you--the Son cannot do anything which proceeds from
himself. He can only do what he sees the Father doing. In whatever way
the Father acts, the Son likewise acts in the same way; for the Father
loves the Son, and has shown him everything that he does. And he will
show him greater works than these, so that you will be moved to
wondering amazement.
This is the beginning of Jesus' answer to the Jews' charge that
he was making himself equal to God. He lays down three things about his
relationship with God.
(i) He lays down his identity with God. The salient truth about
Jesus is that in him we see God. If we wish to see how God feels to men,
if we wish to see how God reacts to sin, if we wish to see how God
regards the human situation, we must look at Jesus. The mind of Jesus is
the mind of God; the words of Jesus are the words of God; the actions
of Jesus are the actions of God.
(ii) This identity is not so much based on equality as on
complete obedience. Jesus never did what he wanted to do but always what
God wanted him to do. It is because his will was completely submitted
to God's will that we see God in him. Jesus is to God as we must be to
Jesus.
(iii) This obedience is not based on submission to power; it is
based on love. The unity between Jesus and God is a unity of love. We
speak of two minds having only a single thought and two hearts beating
as one. In human terms that is a perfect description of the relationship
between Jesus and God. There is such complete identity of mind and will
and heart that Father and Son are one.
But this passage has something still more to tell us about Jesus.
(i) It tells us of his complete confidence. He is quite sure
that what men were seeing then was only a beginning. On purely human
grounds the one thing Jesus might reasonably expect was death. The
forces of Jewish orthodoxy were gathering against him and the end was
already sure. But Jesus was quite certain that the future was in the
hands of God and that men could not stop what God had sent him to do.
(ii) It tells of his complete fearlessness. That he would be
misunderstood was certain. That his words would inflame the minds of his
hearers and endanger his own life was beyond argument. There was no
human situation in which Jesus would lower his claims or adulterate the
truth. He would make his claim and speak his truth no matter what men
might threaten to do. To him it was much more important to be true to
God than to fear men.
Life, Judgment And Honour (John 5:21-23)
5:21-23 For as the
Father raises the dead and makes them alive, so the Son also makes alive
those whom he wishes. Neither does the Father judge anyone, but he has
given the whole process of judging to the Son, that all may honour the
Son, as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not
honour the Father who sent him.
Here we see three great functions which belong to Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
(i) He is the giver of life. John meant this in a double sense.
He meant it in time. No man is fully alive until Jesus Christ enters
into him and he enters into Jesus Christ. When we make the discovery of
the realm of music or of literature or of art or of travel, we sometimes
speak of a new world opening out to us. That man into whose life Jesus
Christ has entered finds life made new. He himself is changed; his
personal relationships are changed; his conception of work and duty and
pleasure is changed; his relationship to God is changed. He meant it in
eternity. After this life is ended, for the man who has accepted Jesus
Christ there opens life still more fun and still more wonderful; while
for the man who has refused Jesus Christ, there comes that death which
is separation from God. Jesus Christ gives life both in this world and
the world to come.
(ii) He is the bringer of judgment. John says that God committed
the whole process of judgment to Jesus Christ. What he means is this--a
man's judgment depends on his reaction to Jesus. If he finds in Jesus
the one person to be loved and followed, he is on the way to life. If he
sees in Jesus an enemy, he has condemned himself. Jesus is the
touchstone by which all men are tested; reaction to him is the test by
which all men are divided.
(iii) He is the receiver of honour. The most uplifting thing
about the New Testament is its unquenchable hope and its unconquerable
certainty. It tells the story of a crucified Christ and yet never has
any doubt that at the end all men will be drawn to that crucified figure
and that all men will know him and acknowledge him and love him. Amid
persecution and disregard, in spite of smallness of numbers and poverty
of influence, in the face of failure and disloyalty, the New Testament
and the early church never doubted the ultimate triumph of Christ. When
we are tempted to despair we would do well to remember that the
salvation of men is the purpose of God and that nothing, in the end, can
frustrate his will. The evil will of man may delay God's purpose; it
cannot defeat it.
Acceptance Means Life (John 5:24)
5:24 This is the truth
I tell you--he who listens to my word and believes on him who sent me
has eternal life, and is not on the way to judgment, but he has crossed
from death to life.
Jesus says quite simply that to accept him is life; and to
reject him is death. What does it mean to listen to Jesus' word and to
believe in the Father who sent him? To put it at its briefest it means
three things. (i) It means to believe that God is as Jesus says he is;
that he is love; and so to enter into a new relationship with him in
which fear is banished. (ii) It means to accept the way of life that
Jesus offers us, however difficult it may be and whatever sacrifices it
may involve, certain that to accept it is the ultimate way to peace and
to happiness, and to refuse it the ultimate way to death and judgment.
(iii) It means to accept the help that the Risen Christ gives and the
guidance that the Holy Spirit offers, and so to find strength for all
that the way of Christ involves.
When we do that we enter into three new relationships. (i) We
enter into a new relationship with God. The judge becomes the father;
the distant becomes the near; strangeness becomes intimacy and fear
becomes love. (ii) We enter into a new relationship with our fellow men.
Hatred becomes love; selfishness becomes service; and bitterness
becomes forgiveness. (iii) We enter into a new relationship with
ourselves. Weakness becomes strength; frustration becomes achievement;
and tension becomes peace.
To accept the offer of Jesus Christ is to find life. Everyone in
one sense may be said to be alive; but there are few who can be said to
know life in the real sense of the term. When Grenfell was writing to a
nursing sister about her decision to come out to Labrador to help in
his work there, he told her that he could not offer her much money, but
that if she came she would discover that in serving Christ and the
people of the country she would have the time of her life. Browning
describes the meeting of two people into whose hearts love had entered.
She looked at him, he looked at her, and "suddenly life awoke." A modern
novelist makes one character say to another: "I never knew what life
was till I saw it in your eyes."
The person who accepts the way of Christ has passed from death
to life. In this world life becomes new and thrilling; in the world to
come eternal life with God becomes a certainty.
Death And Life (John 5:25-29)
5:25-29 This is the
truth I tell you--the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear
the voice of the Son of God, and, when they have heard, they will live.
For, as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to
have life in himself. And he has given him authority to exercise the
process of judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be astonished
at this, for the hour is coming when everyone in the tombs wig hear his
voice and will come forth; those who have done good will come out to a
resurrection which wild give them life, but those whose actions were
base will come out to a resurrection which will issue in judgment.
Here the Messianic claims of Jesus stand out most clearly. He
is the Son of Man; he is the life-giver and the life-bringer; he wig
raise the dead to life and, when they are raised, he will be their
judge.
In this passage John seems to use the word dead in two senses.
(i) He uses it of those who are spiritually dead; to them Jesus will bring new life. What does it mean?
(a) To be spiritually dead is to have stopped trying. It is to
have come to look on all faults as ineradicable and all virtues as
unattainable. But the Christian life cannot stand still; it must either
go on or slip back; and to stop trying is therefore to slip back to
death.
(b) To be spiritually dead is to have stopped feeling. There are
many people who at one time felt intensely in face of the sin and the
sorrow and the suffering of the world; but slowly they have become
insensitive. They can look at evil and feel no indignation; they can
look at sorrow and suffering and feel no answering sword of grief and
pity pierce their heart. When compassion goes the heart is dead.
(c) To be spiritually dead is to have stopped thinking. J.
Alexander Findlay tells of a saying of a friend of his--"When you reach a
conclusion you're dead." He meant that when a man's mind becomes so
shut that it can accept no new truth, he is mentally and spiritually
dead. The day when the desire to learn leaves us, the day when new
truth, new methods, new thought become simply a disturbance with which
we cannot be bothered, is the day of our spiritual death.
(d) To be spiritually dead is to have stopped reprinting. The
day when a man can sin in peace is the day of his spiritual death; and
it is easy to slip into that frame of mind. The first time we do a wrong
thing, we do it with fear and regret. If we do it a second time, it is
easier to do it. If we do it a third time, it is easier yet. If we go on
doing it, the time comes when we scarcely give it a thought. To avoid
spiritual death a man must keep himself sensitive to sin by keeping
himself sensitive to the presence of Jesus Christ.
(ii) John also uses the word dead literally. Jesus teaches that
the resurrection will come and that what happens to a man in the
after-life is inextricably bound up with what he has done in this life.
The awful importance of this life is that it determines eternity. All
through it we are fitting or unfitting ourselves for the life to come,
making ourselves fit or unfit for the presence of God. We choose either
the way which leads to life or the way which leads to death.
5:30 I cannot do
anything which originates in myself. As I hear, so I judge. But the
judgment which I exercise is just, because I do not seek to do what I
wish to do, but I seek to do what he who sent me wishes to do.
In the preceding passage Jesus has claimed the right of
judgment. It was not unnatural that men should ask by what right he
proposed to judge others. His answer was that his judgment was true and
final because he had no desire to do anything other than the will of
God. His claim was that his judgment was the judgment of God.
It is very difficult for any man to judge another man fairly. If
we will honestly examine ourselves we will see that many motives may
affect our judgment. It may be rendered unfair by injured pride. It may
be rendered blind by our prejudices. It may be made bitter by jealousy.
It may be made arrogant by contempt. It may be made harsh by
intolerance. It may be made condemnatory by self-righteousness. It may
be affected by our own self-conceit. It may be based on envy. It may be
vitiated by an insensitive or deliberate ignorance. Only a man whose
heart is pure and whose motives are completely unmixed can rightly judge
another man--which means to say that no man can.
On the other hand the judgment of God is perfect.
God alone is holy and therefore he alone knows the standards by
which all men must be judged. God alone is perfectly loving and his
judgment alone is delivered in the charity in which all true judgment
must be given. God alone has full knowledge and judgment can be perfect
only when it takes into account all the circumstances. The claim of
Jesus to judge is based on the claim that in him is the perfect mind of
God. He does not judge with the inevitable mixture of human motives; he
judges with the perfect holiness, the perfect love and the perfect
sympathy of God.
5:31-36 If I bear
witness about myself, my witness need not be accepted as true; but it is
Another who is bearing witness about me, and I know that the witness
which he bears about me is true. You sent your envoys to John, and he
bore witness to the truth; but the testimony which I receive is not from
any man, but I say these things that you may be saved. He was the lamp
which burns and shines. For a time you were pleased to take pleasure in
his light. But I have a greater testimony than John's. The works which
the Father granted to me to accomplish, the very works which I do, are
evidence about me to prove that my Father has sent me.
Once again Jesus is answering the charges of his opponents. His
opponents are demanding. "What evidence can you adduce that your claims
are true?" Jesus argues in a way that the Rabbis would understand for
he uses their own methods.
(i) He begins by admitting the universal principle that the
unsupported evidence of one person cannot be taken as proof. There must
be at least two witnesses. "On the evidence of two witnesses or of three
witnesses he that is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not
be put to death on the evidence of one witness" (Deuteronomy 17:6).
"A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime or for
any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed; only on
the evidence of two witnesses, or of three witnesses, shall a charge be
sustained" (Deuteronomy 19:15).
When Paul threatens to come to the Corinthians with rebuke and
discipline he says that all his charges will be confirmed by two or
three witnesses (2 Corinthians 13:1).
Jesus says that when a Christian has a legitimate complaint against a
brother he must take with him some others to confirm the charge (Matthew 18:16).
In the early church it was the rule that no charge against an elder was
entertained unless it was supported by two or three witnesses (1 Timothy 5:19). Jesus began by fully admitting the normal Jewish law of evidence.
Further, it was universally held that a man's evidence about
himself could not be accepted. The Mishnah said: "A man is not worthy of
belief when he is speaking about himself." Demosthenes, the great Greek
orator, laid it down as a principle of justice: "The laws do not allow a
man to give evidence on his own behalf." Ancient law well knew that
self-interest had an effect on a man's statements about himself. So
Jesus agrees that his own unsupported testimony to himself need not be
true.
(ii) But there are other witnesses to him. He says that
"Another" is his witness, meaning God. He will return to that, but for
the moment he cites John the Baptist who had repeatedly borne witness to
him (John 1:19-20; John 1:26; John 1:29; John 1:35-36). Then Jesus pays a tribute to John and issues a rebuke to the Jewish authorities.
He says that John was the lamp which burns and shines. That was
the perfect tribute to him. (a) A lamp bears a borrowed light. It does
not light itself; it is lit. (b) John had warmth, for his was not the
cold message of the intellect but the burning message of the kindled
heart. (c) John had light. The function of light is to guide, and John
pointed men on the way to repentance and to God. (d) In the nature of
things a lamp burns itself out; in giving light it consumes itself. John
was to decrease while Jesus increased. The true witness burns himself
out for God.
In paying tribute to John, Jesus rebukes the Jews. They were
pleased to take pleasure in John for a time, but they never really took
him seriously. They were, as one has put it, like "gnats dancing in the
sunlight," or like children playing while the sun shone. John was a
pleasant sensation, to be listened to as long as he said the things they
liked, and to be abandoned whenever he became awkward. Many people
listen to God's truth like that; they enjoy a sermon as a performance. A
famous preacher tells how after he had preached a somber sermon on
judgment, he was greeted with the comment: "That sermon was sure cute!"
God's truth is not a thing by which to be pleasantly titillated; it is
often something to be received in the dust and ashes of humiliation and
repentance.
But Jesus does not even plead John's evidence. He says it is not
the human evidence of any fallible man he is going to adduce to support
his claims.
(iii) So he adduces the witness of his works. He had done that when
John sent from prison to ask if he was the Messiah. He had told John's
enquiring envoys to go back and tell him what they saw happening (Matthew 11:4; Luke 7:22).
But Jesus cites his works, not to point to himself but to point to the
power of God working in him and through him. His supreme witness is God.
5:37-43 And the Father
who sent me has home witness about me. You have never heard his voice,
nor have you ever seen his form. You do not have his word dwelling in
you, because you do not believe in the One whom he sent. You search the
scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is
they which bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you
may have life. I receive no glory from men; but I know you and I know
that you do not have the love of God in you. I came in the name of my
Father and yet you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name,
you will receive him.
The early part of this section may be taken in two ways.
(i) It may be that it refers to the unseen witness of God in a
man's heart. In his first letter John writes: "He who believes in the
Son of God, has the testimony (of God) in himself" (1 John 5:9-10).
The Jew would have insisted that no man can ever see God. Even in the
giving of the Ten Commandments "you heard the sound of words, but saw no
form; there was only a voice" (Deuteronomy 4:12).
So this may mean: "It is true that God is invisible; and so is his
witness, for it is the response which rises in the human heart when a
man is confronted with me." When we are confronted with Christ we see in
him the altogether lovely and the altogether wise; that conviction is
the witness of God in our hearts. The Stoics held that the highest kind
of knowledge comes not by thought but by what they called "arresting
impressions;" a conviction seizes a man like someone laying an arresting
hand on his shoulder. It may be that Jesus here means that the
conviction in our hearts of his supremacy is the witness of God within.
(ii) It may be that John is really meaning that God's witness to
Christ is to be found in the scriptures. To the Jew the scriptures were
all in all. "He who has acquired the words of the law has acquired
eternal life." "He who has the Law has a cord of grace drawn around him
in this world and in the world to come." "He who says that Moses wrote
even one verse of the Law in his own knowledge is a despiser of God."
"This is the book of the commandments of God and the Law that endureth
for ever. All they that hold it fast are appointed to life, but such as
leave it shall die" (Baruch 4:1-2).
"If food which is your life but for an hour, requires a blessing before
and after it be eaten, how much more does the Law, in which lies the
world that is to be, require a blessing?" The Jew searched the Law and
yet faded to recognize Christ when he came. What was wrong? The best
Bible students in the world, people who meticulously and continuously
read scripture, rejected Jesus. How could that happen?
One thing is clear--they read scripture in the wrong way.
(i) They read it with a shut mind. They read it not to search
for God but to find arguments to support their own positions. They did
not really love God; they loved their own ideas about him. Water has as
much chance of getting into concrete as the word of God had of getting
into their minds. They did not humbly learn a theology from scripture;
they used scripture to defend a theology which they themselves had
produced. There is still danger that we should use the Bible to prove
our beliefs and not to test them.
(ii) They made a still bigger mistake--they regarded God as
having given men a written revelation. The revelation of God is a
revelation in history. It is not God speaking, but God acting. The Bible
itself is not his revelation; it is the record of his revelation. But
they worshipped the Bible's words.
There is only one proper way to read the Bible--to read it as
all pointing to Jesus Christ. Then many of the things which puzzle us,
and sometimes distress us, are clearly seen as stages on the way, a
pointing forward to Jesus Christ, who is the supreme revelation and by
whose light all other revelation is to be tested. The Jews worshipped a
God who wrote rather than a God who acted and therefore when Christ came
they did not recognize him. The function of the scriptures is not to
give life, but to point to him who can.
There are two most revealing things here.
(i) In John 5:34
Jesus had said the purpose of his words was "that you may be saved."
Here he says: "I am not looking for any glory from man." That is to say:
"I am not arguing like this because I want to win an argument. I am not
talking like this because I want to score off you and win the applause
of men. It is because I love you and want to save you."
There is something tremendous here. When people oppose us and we
argue back, what is our main feeling? Wounded pride? The conceit that
hates any kind of failure? Annoyance? A desire to cram our opinions down
other people's throats because we think them fools? Jesus talked as he
did only because he loved men. His voice might be stern, but in the
sternness there was still the accent of yearning love; his eyes might
flash fire, but the flame was the flame Of love.
(ii) Jesus says: "if another comes in his own name, him you will
receive." The Jews had their succession of impostors claiming to be the
Messiah and every one had his following (compare Mark 13:6; Mark 13:22; Matthew 24:5; Matthew 24:24).
Why do men follow impostors? Because they are "men whose claims
correspond with men's own desires." The impostors came promising empires
and victory and material prosperity; Jesus came offering a Cross. The
characteristic of the impostor is the offer of the easy way; Jesus
offered men the hard way of God. The impostors perished and Christ lives
on.
5:44-47 How can you
believe when you are out for the glory that you get from each other, and
when you do not search for the glory which comes from the only God? Do
not think that it is I who will accuse you to the Father. You have an
accuser--it is Moses I mean--on whom you set your hopes. If you had
believed in Moses, you would have believed in me, for he wrote about me.
If you do not believe in his writings, how will you believe in my
words?
The scribes and Pharisees desired the praise of men. They
dressed in such a way that everyone would recognize them. They prayed in
such a way that everyone would see. They loved the front seats in the
Synagogue. They loved the deferential greetings of men on the street.
And just because of that they could not hear the voice of God. Why? So
long as a man measures himself against his fellow men he will be well
content. But the point is not: "Am I as good as my neighbour?" The point
is: "Am I as good as God?" "What do I look like to him?" So long as we
judge ourselves by human comparisons there is plenty of room for
self-satisfaction, and that kills faith, for faith is born of the sense
of need. But when we compare ourselves with Jesus Christ, we are humbled
to the dust, and then faith is born, for there is nothing left to do
but trust to the mercy of God.
Jesus finishes with a charge that would strike home. The Jews
believed the books which they believed Moses had given them to be the
very word of God. Jesus said: "If you had read these books aright, you
would have seen that they all pointed to me." He went on: "You think
that because you have Moses to be your mediator you are safe; but Moses
is the very one who will condemn you. Maybe you could not be expected to
listen to me, but you are bound to listen to the words of Moses to
which you attach such value and they all spoke of me."
Here is the great and threatening truth. What had been the
greatest privilege of the Jews had become their greatest condemnation.
No one could condemn a man who had never had a chance. But knowledge had
been given to the Jews; and the knowledge they had failed to use had
become their condemnation. Responsibility is always the other side of
privilege.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)