February 27, 2022
John 5:19-47
As we turn our attention to God’s word this morning, let’s consider what that statement really means. Each Sunday we turn our attention to God’s word. We gather together, do our best to calm and collect ourselves. We sing, hear announcements, read a psalm, pray, and receive an offering, but the main course is God’s Word and coming under its authority as His very word. Attention implies authority. Think of a line of soldiers being called to “Atten-TION!” Why do they snap to attention? Because they recognize authority—a chain of command.
In a normal week or day, all sorts of things vy for our attention. Sometimes we intend to give them our attention; sometimes circumstances demand our attention, but our minds can really only attend to one thing at a time. So when we gather to worship and attend to God’s word together, we are acknowledging and submitting ourselves to God’s authority. Don’t just come here for Bible advice: Well, I better go pick up a few nuggets of Bible wisdom for the week ahead… And don’t view this sacred time together as just a chance to get the Bible’s or the preacher’s angle on things: Well, I’ve got some big decisions coming up; maybe the Bible or pastor has a perspective I can factor in with all the other perspectives, angles, and opinions I’m getting so I can make the best decisions… No! This is not a Sunday morning advice or angle session! There are newspaper columns, talk shows, and life coaches galore to give you that. When we gather under God’s word, we’re not looking for advice or a better angle; we are yielding to supreme authority.
The authority of Scripture is derived from and concentrated in the authority of its central figure: Jesus Christ! The authority of Jesus is the central issue in the latter part of John 5. You could say it’s the central issue of the gospel or even of all Scripture. It’s certainly the central issue of the great commission where, before Jesus commands the disciples to ‘go make more disciples, teaching them to obey all of His commands and baptizing them,’ he grounds that commission in what fact? As he says in Matt. 28:18, “All AUTHORITY in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore…” Jesus’ authority is certainly the core issue in his teaching ministry. What’s the comment the gospel writers so often report the crowds muttering in astonishment when Jesus teaches? “He’s teaching as one having authority...” Jesus’ authority is also the issue in his healing ministry. It’s not only how but why he heals the lame man at the pool of Bethesda earlier in the chapter. It’s how he heals him because Jesus is the Author of life, thus all creation and creatures are subject to him. But authority is also why Jesus heals the man—and in particular on the Sabbath—which he knew would anger the Jewish religious leaders. By that authority Jesus says to the healed man in v. 14: “See you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” But it’s also the basis for what he then says to the Jews in v. 17: “My Father is working until now and I am working.” This turned their anger from a persecuting ‘Just stop it and shut up’ kind of anger to a murderous ‘This guy’s got to die!’ kind of anger, as John says in v. 18: “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” Jesus cannot be equal with God and have less than God’s full authority!
So as we look at vv. 19-47, let’s do so with this BIG Idea in mind: There can be no new life in Christ apart from a full embrace of the authority of Christ. To say it another way: Receiving life in Christ entails receiving the Lordship of Christ.
John says in v. 19, “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.’” The ‘them’ to whom Jesus says this is the Jews seeking to kill him in v. 18; and Jesus purposefully takes his statement about his Father working in v. 17 even further. You know how when Elmer Fudd gets so mad at Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck that he clinches his fists, puts his arms straight down, and a line of redness slowly rises from his hands all the way to his head? I don’t know if that red line could be seen rising on the faces of these Jews or if actual steam was visible spewing from their ears, but the more Jesus talks, the madder they get. Why? Again, they don’t like that he healed a guy and commanded him to “work” on the Sabbath by picking up the sickbed he laid on for 38 years; but what really riles them up is Jesus’ claim that the Father is working and that he’s working with his Father thus making himself equal with the Father. Equal in what way? Equal in authority!
When an American ambassador delivers a message from the President to another government, that messenger is not the President but carries the authority of the President in delivering that message. Jesus is not just the appointed messenger of God the Father to mankind; he’s not just God the Father’s adored messenger to mankind; he’s God the Father’s fully-divine, fully authorized messenger to mankind. “For the Father loves the Son,” Jesus says in v. 20, “and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.” God the Father acts and speaks through God the Son. And when the messenger is persecuted and hated, the Sender is persecuted and hated as well.
Think about your own life. Even the very best, kindest authorities in our lives can stir within us a sinful resistance if we don’t keep watch over our hearts. It flows out of our flesh’s desire to usurp authority—a desire awakened within the hearts of the first man and woman when tempted by the serpent to question God’s word. Being saved doesn’t mean this temptation goes away or that we’ll never succumb to it, but it does mean that by the Spirit’s power we can exercise self-control (one of the fruits of the Spirit) and choose to live in a submitted way towards others out of reverence for Jesus, the one to whose authority we owe ultimate submission. Jesus sets that perfect example for us by living in absolute submission to His Father as the Father’s fully authorized redemptive agent on the earth.
What effect does this have? John says in v. 21, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” This doesn’t mean that the Father raises some from the dead and the Son raises others. They aren’t divvying up the raising of the dead and life-giving duties. Please don’t sit there wondering Hmmm, was I raised from the dead and given new life by the Father or by the Son? What Jesus is saying is that every person the Father chooses to raise from the dead and grant new life, He is the agent who carries out that will.
Likewise, as vv. 22-24 state,
“The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
Oh, please don’t miss Jesus’ wonderful echo of John 3:16 here: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” To receive the gift is to accept the Giver as well! “The Father judges no one…” is not the Father divesting Himself of judging authority because He has better things to do; it’s the Father entrusting judging authority to the Son. The Father has such absolute confidence that the Son will judge mankind rightly—exactly as He would judge—that He bestows that authority upon the Son. Look at vv. 25-26:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he (the Father) has given him (the Son) authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.”
This is a crucial point. Recall how Jesus describes the Father to the woman at the well in Samaria in 4:24 (“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth”). Well, Jesus is God too, but he’s God incarnate—he has a body, a human body! God the Father being purely and perfectly spiritual and thus invisible entrusts not only his life-giving authority but also his judging authority to God the Son who is purely and perfectly spiritual but also purely and perfectly embodied. In other words, we can see Jesus; we can relate to him. We can see his perfections and thus be accountable before the Holy and perfect invisible Father by seeing his holy and perfect visible Son. As the apostle Paul says in Colossians 1:15: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”
Think about our justice system. Who renders the verdict in criminal cases? It’s not the judge behind the bench–not exactly anyway–but the jury— “a jury of one’s peers.” That language comes from the Magna Carta in Old England and shows up in the 6th Amendment of our Constitution, but I contend it has its roots in the Incarnation. God the Father, the Judge of all the Universe, oversees His court of justice, but shares judgment with the Incarnate Son, our human (yet divine) “Peer.”
Jesus says in vv. 28-29,
“Do not marvel at this (he knew the Jews were marveling—their clinched jaws may have literally dropped open by this point), for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”
In this paragraph Jesus speaks of two “hours” (v. 25 & v. 28). In v. 25 he says that “an hour is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God…and will live.” He doesn’t say “is now here” of the hour in v. 28. That hour hasn’t come yet—but it’s coming! The ‘hour’ that’s here in v. 25 is the hour of gospel proclamation—it’s the Church’s hour to go in the authority of Jesus and announce salvation in Jesus’ name that those to whom the Father and Son have granted life may believe and receive eternal life. The ‘hour’ in v. 28 is the hour of final resurrection and judgment; it’s the hour when every soul will stand either righteous or condemned before God. Yes, our works whether good or evil will be considered in that hour, but the “good” that gains a resurrection to life and the “evil” that gains resurrection to judgment is the good of receiving Christ as Lord or the evil of rejecting him as Lord.
In the final paragraph of the chapter (vv. 30-47) Jesus chases out this theme of delegated judging authority. “I can do nothing on my own,” he says in v. 30. “As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” But he says in v. 31, “If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true.” He knows there is strength in a plurality of witnesses, so he brings in other corroborating voices. He obviously has the Father in view, but since the Father is invisible, he knows that won’t satisfy the Jews (and he knows how angry it makes them when he makes himself equal with the Father), so he brings up John the Baptist:
“There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John.”
And what is that greater testimony than John’s?
“For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.”
How were the Jews to know that the invisible Father was really affirming Jesus as his redeeming authority? His miracles! By virtue of the fact that a man lame for 38 years was now healed and whole by some invisible power! That man did not become whole by their adherence to Scripture, or their insistence that everyone live in to-the-letter like they did. “You search the Scriptures,” Jesus says in v. 39, “because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” They saw John the Baptist, but they didn’t see the Christ he proclaimed. They searched the Scriptures, but they couldn’t see the Christ they proclaimed. They can see the lame man healed before them, but (what’s the key word Jesus uses?) they “refuse” to come to Christ in faith that they may have life.
Jesus says in v. 41, “I do not receive glory from people.” He’s not after their affection; he’s not here to be adored by people but to save people. Jesus is not short on adoration. He is on earth to please and be glorified by One Person: his Father. Nevertheless, he condemns them in v. 42, “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.” The world is awash in mutual self-exaltation. Jesus says in v. 43, “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. (He didn’t come on his own credentials). If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” Remember, that’s where Jesus seeks his glory. And as the perfect human, He shows us that’s where we ought to seek our glory too, not from one another. “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
So the very one (Moses) who wrote the law, who spelled out the rules for a righteous life, Jesus says will in fact be the basis of their condemnation. Why? Because Moses didn’t just write rules. He wrote a story of God redeeming His people who could never keep the rules! A God who gave a son to old Abraham and barren Sarah. A God who granted rescue to Israel through Joseph who’s brothers betrayed him to slavery. A God who brought a grumbling ungrateful nation through the wilderness and into a promised land.
Jesus is here telling the Jews, “My Father loves you enough to send and authorize me to redeem you fully. My works prove my message: You are not going to be saved by good deeds. You must trust me and believe that I am the Father’s rescue plan.”
Are you hearing that message today? Have you received and embraced that rescue plan by faith? Christian, have you resisted Christ’s authority of late? Align yourself again by submitting obediently to Him today, and begin to reap the benefit of joy that will result.
ShepherdMySheep 