Witnesses to Jesus (John 5:31-47)

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We’ve all watched enough courtroom television shows, or perhaps had some personal experiences, to know that when a person is put on trial for something, the defendant is allowed to give his defense to the charges, and then witnesses are summoned to provide supporting evidence for each side. In the end, the judge and jury have to determine which side has the most supporting evidence, and cast a final verdict on the matter. Well, the Lord Jesus is not in a courtroom in this passage, but He has been accused of a terrible crime. Going back to the beginning of Chapter 5, when He healed the lame and helpless man by the pool, He was accused of violating the Sabbath. His defense, in response to that charge, was that it is impossible for God to violate the Sabbath, therefore it is impossible for Him to violate the Sabbath since God is His Father, and He is the Son, and therefore also God. This entire section of John’s Gospel is rich in Trinitarian teaching about how the one true God of the universe exists in the person of Father, of Son, and (less explicit here), of Holy Spirit; not three gods, but one God, eternally existent in three persons of equal deity. Of course, this hardly got Jesus off the hook of the allegations of Sabbath breaking. It merely added another charge against Him, namely that of blasphemy, for the Jewish officials understood clearly that by claiming God as His Father, and claiming to be the Son of God, He was making Himself out to be equal with God. In response to this charge, Jesus spoke of how He did nothing on His own accord, but only and exclusively the will of His Father, who had given Him the power to have life in Himself and to bestow it as He so desired, and the authority to act as judge of entire human race. They say Jesus blasphemed, and it would be blasphemy indeed, if it wasn’t true. But is it true? That is the question. And you are the jury. You must decide, based on the evidence supplied by the witnesses, if Jesus truly is who He claims to be. And if He is, then we are compelled to make a personal response of faith, devotion, worship, obedience, and service to Him as Lord. If He isn’t, then we can just write Him off as a lunatic lawbreaker. So, which will it be?

The Law that God had given to Israel through Moses specified that a fact has to be established on the basis of multiple witnesses. Concerning capital offenses, of which both Sabbath breaking and blasphemy both were, Deuteronomy 17:6 said that the conviction must be based “on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses” (cf. Numbers 35:30). But even on any other charge, Deuteronomy 19:15 said, “A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.” Jesus does not violate God’s Law in any point at any time, and this is no exception. He admits in verse 31, “If I testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.” Well, Jesus is testifying about Himself, so does that mean He is lying? And if He is lying, then can we claim Him to be the sinless Son of God? Actually, what Jesus is saying here is that, if He alone testifies about Himself, the people have no reason to believe Him. His testimony about Himself is not valid unless it is corroborated by other evidence from other witnesses. He is saying that He would not expect anyone to regard His claims as true simply on the basis of His own testimony about Himself. So, He says matter-of-factly, “There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.” Who is this other witness? Well, Jesus goes on to describe the witnesses who testify to to His claims and His identity, and we will hear the testimony of each of them as we examine this text.

I. The witness of John the Baptist

When Jesus speaks of this “other witness,” undoubtedly the minds of His accusers went immediately to John the Baptist. Perhaps some of us thought that is who He had in mind as well. After all, we read in John 1:7 that John the Baptist “came as a witness, to testify about the Light (Jesus), so that all might believe through him.” And these religious officials have “sent to John.” Jesus is referring to the events described in John 1:19-28 when the Pharisees had sent a delegation of priests and Levites from Jerusalem to inquire about his identity and his ministry. And when they sent this delegation to John, Jesus says that “he has testified to the truth.” John had told the delegation that he was not the Christ, but was the one that Isaiah had foretold of as the voice that cried out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. He told them of another One, whom they did not know, “the thong of whose sandal,” John said that he was “not worthy to untie.”

John’s ministry was unique. He was the first prophet to come announcing God’s Word to Israel in 400 years. John 1:8 says of him, “He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.” Of course, that Light is Jesus. John 1:4-5 says of the Lord Jesus, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” No, John was not the Light, but Jesus says that he was “the lamp.” Lamps do not create light, but they bear light. They hold up light so that all can see it. And John did that in his ministry. The light that others saw in John’s ministry was not his own, it was the Light of Jesus, that John was lifting up for all to see. Jesus says that John was the lamp that was burning and shining.” The Greek wording here might be translated, “He was the lamp that was ignited and gave light.”[1] He was a man on fire, and he had been set on fire by God Himself, to burn and shine as a witness for Christ. When God sets a man on fire, the world will come to watch him burn. They did that by the multitude as John burned and shined. But Jesus expresses the sad reality of their interest in John: they were “willing to rejoice” in his light, but it was only “for a while.” Sometimes when a preacher’s message starts stepping on too many toes, we say that he’s “gone from preachin’ to meddlin’.” And John had done that. He was calling the Jews to repent and be baptized, but Jews did not believe they needed baptism or that they needed to be made right with God. Jews only practiced baptism on Gentiles who converted to Judaism. But here was John saying that everyone, including the Jews, needed to get right with God. He denounced the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders, and even called out King Herod for his immorality (which ultimately led to his execution). And when John went from preachin’ to meddlin’, the interest of the people began to wane and they turned away from the light that burned and shined in this lamp set ablaze by God. If they had heeded John’s testimony, then they might have been saved. And it was not too late! In verse 34 Jesus reminds them of John’s testimony, not because He needs the testimony of John to validate him, but because they need to hear and heed what they heard John saying in order to be saved!

But Jesus says here that John was not His only witness. He says here that there is a testimony that is greater than the witness of John.

II. The Witness of God the Father

If you’ve ever had to apply for a job and were required to supply a list of references, you know that most of the time they tell you not to include your family members. The assumption is that, of course, your family members are only going to say good things about you even if they aren’t true, because they want you to get the job. You have to supply impartial references, who will tell the truth about you, even if the truth means that you won’t get the job. Now, here Jesus says, “There is another who testifies about Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true” (v32). But this “another” is not John the Baptist. He is greater than John. So who could it be? After all Jesus said, “Among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11). “Those born of women” seems to pretty accurately describe the entire human race, with the exception of Adam and Eve. So if John is the greatest human, but Jesus has a witness, a testifier, a reference (if you will) who is greater than John, then this witness must not be human. And He is not. In verse 37, Jesus says that “the Father who sent Me Has testified of Me.” Now, we might protest and say, “You can’t list your Dad as a reference!” But here’s the thing: what is the charge? The charge is blasphemy because Jesus has claimed God as His Father, thus equating Himself with God. Now, if that is not true, then God is most certainly not going to add His testimony to that. God has declared, “I will not give my glory to another” (Isaiah 42:8; 48:11). We are told in Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie;” and in Titus 1:2 we read that God “cannot lie;” and Hebrews 6:18 says that it is “impossible for God to lie.” So if God validates the testimony of Jesus, then that testimony is true. So, how is it that God the Father has testified to the claims of God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ?

First and foremost, there was a direct testimony given at the baptism of Jesus. In one of the great Trinitarian texts of Scripture, in Matthew 3, as God the Son emerged from the baptismal waters, God the Holy Spirit descended visibly upon Him in the form of a dove, and God the Father spoke from heaven audibly declaring, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” So, there, that one scene, the entire Triune Godhead is on display as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are manifested publicly. Again, later at the Mount of Transfiguration, the Father will speak from heaven and declare, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him” (Matt 17:15; Mk 9:7; cf. 2 Peter 1:17). But this particular group of Jewish leaders to whom Jesus is speaking now could plead, “We were not there! We never heard such an utterance from heaven!” And so Jesus speaks of other ways that the Father has testified of Him.

He speaks first of the works which He does (v36b). Jesus says that these works were given to Him by the Father to accomplish. So, in the doing of them, the Father is testifying through Him. The works proclaim that Jesus has been sent by His Father to do His will. This was obvious to those who could suspend their prejudice against Jesus. Even Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee and in party with these leaders who are opposing Jesus in the present context, could say as he came to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2). In John 7:31, we read that a large crowd of people were saying, “When the Christ comes, He will not perform more signs that those which this man has, will He?” Jesus spoke of the testimony of these works repeatedly, saying in John 10, “The works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me. … If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (10:25, 37-38). Everything that Jesus did was evidence of the Father’s testimony of His as the divine Son of God. The Gospels record at least three dozen supernatural miracles performed by Jesus, and John tells us that there were “many other signs Jesus also performed … which are not written” (20:30). Of course, the ultimate work that the Father gave to Jesus to accomplish was the work of redemption which was finalized in His substitutionary death on the cross for our sins, and His glorious resurrection. But until that event occurred, all of Jesus’ other miracles were signs pointing to this ultimate work that He would do on behalf of all humanity.[2] When John the Baptist wondered if Jesus was truly the Promised One who was to come, Jesus said to take word back to him that “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Matt 11:3-5); and all of these were fulfillments of the prophecies that had been made about the Messiah, as well as signposts pointing to the glorious salvation that He would make available to all humanity through His death and resurrection. The Father was testifying of Jesus Christ through these works that He performed.

But notice that Jesus also says that the Father testified of Him through His word. Jesus says in verse 39 that the Scriptures testify of Him. Now, no one in history has ever more fastidious about the study of the Scriptures than the Pharisees and their peers in ancient Israel. They devoted vast portions of their waking hours every day to the study of the Scriptures, and Jesus acknowledges that they “search the Scriptures.” But their approach to the Scriptures was all wrong. They believed that by their effort in reading, studying, and memorizing the Scriptures, that they were earning favor with God and eternal life, merely by the physical exercise of it. The esteemed Rabbi Hillel claimed that the more one studied the Law, the more life one would have, and that if a man gains for himself the words of the Law, he will gain for himself life in the world to come.[3] But Jesus says here that they were missing the point. For all their study of the Scriptures, they completely missed the fact that they were pointing to Him all along in the words of prophecy, in the typological images, in the events of redemptive history, and in the provisions for salvation found within the Law. If they would only come to Him, as the Scriptures testified of Him, then they would find life in Him. But He says “you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.”

Thus, there is a fourfold indictment against the unbelieving religious leaders in verse 37: (1) They have not heard the voice of God at any time. They did not hear His voice announcing His approval of the Lord Jesus at His baptism; nor have they heard His voice speaking through the Scriptures. (2) They have not seen His form. They might protest and say that no one could see the form of God. That had been true for the most part through all of history, but it all changed when Jesus came on the scene. John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” When Jesus spoke with His disciples on the eve of His crucifixion, He said, “If you had known Me, you have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him. … He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:7-9). But when these religious leaders looked at Jesus, they didn’t see God in Him. Therefore, they never saw the form of God at all, because the only place He can be seen is in Jesus. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6 that God has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (3) They do not have His word abiding in them. For all their time spent studying the Scriptures, the word has not taken root in their hearts. If it had, they would have seen the Scriptures pointing to Christ as the divine, promised Messiah who had come to save them. But they didn’t. (4) Jesus says in v42, “You do not have the love of God in yourselves.” They would claim to love God more devoutly than anyone in the world, but it is lip service, because Jesus has come, not in His own name, but in the name of His Father, and they have not received Him. Ironic, considering that multitudes turned in belief to any one of dozens of false Messiahs who came to Israel in their own name and making boastful claims of themselves, telling the people only what they wanted to hear. So the tables are turned. It began as an indictment against Jesus for Sabbath-breaking and blasphemy, but He has responded with testimony to vindicate Himself. Now, He has now turned the incident into an indictment against unbelieving Israel, which could be broadened to include the entire unbelieving world. The evidence of these indictments is simple: “You do not believe Him whom He sent.” If they would hear the voice of God testifying through the words and works of Jesus, and see God in Christ, and allow the Scriptures to take root in their hearts, they would turn to Him in faith and repentance and be saved.

Jesus has already announced that there is coming a day of judgment, when He will exercise the authority given to Him by His Father to judge the entire human race. And He warns here, “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.” They had set their hope on Moses as the deliverer of the Law and the mediator of the covenant God established with Israel. But Jesus says that Moses will testify against them, and he will be their chief accuser on that day of judgment, because ultimately, though they claimed to regard the writings of Moses, they did not truly believe them. The entire Old Testament was pointing the way forward to Jesus, and He says, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

What then is the verdict on the matter? Is Jesus who He claims to be? Well, we have seen in this text that it is not He alone who testifies of Himself. John the Baptist has testified of Him, but even more significantly, God the Father has testified of Jesus through His word, through the works of Jesus, and in the words of Hebrews 1:1, “in many portions and in many ways.” So who is He? He is God-incarnate, the supreme and almighty God of the universe, who became a man and lived a life of perfect righteousness, died to redeem us from sin by bearing our sins in His body on the cross, and conquering sin, death, and hell through His resurrection from the dead, which provided additional testimony to His identity and His mission of redemption. The question for every human being therefore is: Do you believe in Him? Not just in a historical, intellectual sense, but have you received Him? Have you come to Him? These are the words that Jesus uses in His indictment of His critics in this passage: believe, receive, come to. To believe in Jesus, or receive Him, or come to Him, means to turn to Him in faith as your only hope of life eternal and abundant. It is to receive Him as the life-giving Savior who rescues you from your sin. It is to come to Him in total abandon of all your other beliefs and practices in which you trust to make you right before God. Hope is found in Him and in Him alone.

If you do not believe in Him in this way, then you are like these who opposed Him in our text today. The indictments fall on you as well. You have not heard the voice of God, nor beheld His form in the person of Christ, nor do His word or His love abide in you. And yet, you will stand before Him as your righteous judge when you step into eternity. What hope will you have? You have not only rejected Him, but you have rejected the testimony of Moses, of John the Baptist, and even that of God the Father Himself. And the outcome will be condemnation and eternal separation from God, when the offer of life, free, abundant, and eternal was extended to you by Jesus Christ. There is still hope while you have life and breath, but the hope is found only in Jesus, so come to Him; receive Him; believe in Him. Trust Him as Lord and Savior by faith, not blind faith mind you, but faith that rests confidently on His own word, that of His Father, and that of a multitude of witnesses, including those of us here whose lives have been transformed by His grace.

And remember, if you have turned to Jesus and received Him as Lord and Savior, that you too are called to be His witness. You are the living proof of His power to save sinners. May His love and His word abide in you as you walk through this fallen world, pointing the way to Christ that others may know the joy of His salvation.

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[1] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 261.

[2] F. F. Bruce, The Gospels and Epistles of John (1-volume edition; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 1:135.

[3] Carson, 263. 

Giving Life to the Dead (John 5:25-30)

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I suppose sooner or later in everyone’s life, they wrestle with the question, “Is there life beyond death?” It is an age-old question. Most biblical scholars seem to agree that the Book of Job is the oldest writing in our Bibles. Though the events of the first half of Genesis pre-date the events of Job, they were not recorded in writing until the time of Moses, whereas Job seems to have been written long before Moses’ day. And, in Job, we find the suffering patriarch wrestling with the question, “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14). I remember the first time I wrestled with that question. Somehow, I had avoided it for the first 18 years of my life. But, in the summer following my high school graduation, my grandmother died, and my cousins and I were pallbearers at her funeral. It was the first funeral I had ever attended, and it was the closest that death had ever struck me. I distinctly remember the sound of the mausoleum vault closing, and as it echoed I was perplexed with mixture of despair, fear, and curiosity. The questions that kept bouncing around in my head were, “Now what? Is that the end, or is there something more?” God used those questions and emotions that I wrestled with to draw me to Himself. And it was there I found the answers in His Word. I found that not only is there life after death, but there is also a death before death. I was afraid of what would happen when I died, all the while not knowing that I was already dead and in need of being brought to life by Jesus. So, these are the kinds of things that Jesus is talking about here in this brief text today. He is talking about His power to give life to the dead.

I. Jesus has the power to give life to the spiritually dead. (vv25-26)

Many of you have undoubtedly noticed that there is a craze going around about zombies. What is a zombie? Well, in popular folklore, a zombie is a dead body that has been enlivened by a mystical or paranormal power. In short, zombies are the semi-living, walking dead, or the “undead” as they are commonly called. Walk into any bookstore, and you will find titles like The Zombie Survival Guide or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In the toy aisle of your local big box store, you will find a whole line of “Monster High” dolls. Movies, TV shows, and video games commonly feature human beings pitted against hordes of the undead, and on a somewhat regular basis, otherwise mainstream news outlets report stories dealing with the fears of a zombie apocalypse. In fact, in September of this year, the Centers for Disease Control launched a campaign to prepare citizens for a zombie apocalypse, and just a couple of weeks ago in San Diego, United States Navy and Marine personnel engaged in zombie apocalypse training exercises.[1] Now, admittedly, those training exercises and the CDC campaign were promoted with tongue-in-cheek, suggesting that if you are prepared for a zombie apocalypse, you will be well prepared for any sort of emergency that may arise.[2] But they are capitalizing on the popularity of the zombie meme in contemporary popular culture. It’s all kind of foolish, don’t you think? This idea that we can be invaded by multitudes of walking, undead corpses? Well, what if I told you that I believe you are already surrounded by walking corpses? You might want to call in some professionals to evaluate my mental well-being. But in a very real and spiritual sense, we are surrounded by the living dead: spiritual zombies.

Notice in verse 25 that Jesus says, “An hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” Now, notice the phrase “and now is.” Jesus is talking about something that is taking place, not in the future (though it will happen then as well, for He says “an hour is coming”), but it is happening in the present, at the time of His earthly ministry. The dead are able to hear His voice and those who hear will live. Now, we know that Jesus did in fact raise the dead to life on a few occasions: Lazarus (John 11:1-44), the son of the widow at Nain (Luke 7:11-17); and Jairus’s daughter (Matthew 9:18-26). Aside from these three, we do not know how many others experienced this unusual and temporary deliverance from death. That doesn’t seem to be what He is speaking of here. Notice that here, in the present tense, Jesus speaks of giving life to the dead, but it is not universal in effect. Though He says that the time now is when “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,” He seems to indicate that not all will hear, and thus not all will receive life. Contrast this with verse 28. There, we do not find any mention of a present work, only future; and those who are described as “dead” in verse 25 are contrasted with those who are described as “in the tombs” in verse 28. In the present state, in verse 25, not all receive life; whereas in verse 28, in the future, all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come forth. So it seems that Jesus is saying that not all who are dead are in the tombs. There are some others who are dead outside of the tomb, and if they will hear His voice, they will receive life. So, what is going on here?

The dead that Jesus is describing in verse 25 are what I would call “the living dead,” these spiritual zombies who are walking around in human bodies, but who are dead spiritually. Who are they? Well, in fact, every member of the human race is born in this condition, and a good plenty remain that way. Turn over to Ephesians 2:1, and let’s look at this for a moment. Here Paul says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” He does not say, “You were sick,” or “you were disabled,” or “you were a little unwell.” He says, “You were dead.” You remember that God told Adam that in the day that he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would surely die. Now physically, Adam did not die that day. Sin brought about a condition in him that would ultimately lead to an eventual physical death. But immediately, at the very moment of his sin, he died spiritually. And the terminal disease of sin has been spread to all of humanity; thus, we are all born dead in the spiritual sense, and we are all susceptible to physical death – we live in dying bodies with dead spirits – because of the effect of sin on the human race. So, Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” So, what is the natural condition of a human being? Dead and dying; spiritually dead and physically dying because of sin.

Now, you might say, “But I feel pretty good. I don’t feel dead.” A couple of weeks ago I was engaged in the first battle of annual war on leaves in my yard. And in the course of the battle, I was attacked by a multitude of yellowjackets. So, I went to the store to find something to deal with the yellowjacket problem, and I found this can of Raid that was supposed to do the trick. It said, “Raid Kills Bugs Dead.” That’s good. I wanted to kill them. And I wanted to kill them dead. So I sprayed the whole can into their nest. The next day I went out, and those yellowjackets were still swarming all over the place. It occurred to me that if that Raid had indeed killed the yellowjackets, it had not killed them dead. There must have been some kind of live kind of killing that the Raid had accomplished. When I think about that, I am reminded of how sin works in us. It kills us. But we are still buzzing around, aren’t we? Sin kills us, but it has not yet killed us dead. There’s some kind of live kind of killing that sin is accomplishing in us. But it will kill us dead eventually. Before that physical death occurs, however, we are spiritually dead in sin.

What does spiritual death look like? Notice how Paul describes it in Ephesians 2:2. He says that these spiritual zombies “walk according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air (that’s Satan), of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” So, their lives are characterized by an enslavement to worldly values that are disobedient to will and Word of God, and which are dictated by Satan himself. Then in verse 3, he says that spiritual zombies live in the lusts of their flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and by nature they are children of wrath. They live under the condemnation of God because they serve their own warped desires as a god. To be spiritually dead is “to be insensible to the things of God and totally unable to respond to Him.”[3] That part of our being that communicates and interacts with God is dead within us from birth.

But notice the most amazing thing about this passage. Paul says in verse 1, “you were dead.” That’s past tense. In verse 3 he says that we formerly lived this way. So how did we go from being spiritual zombies to being spiritually alive? Paul says it this way in verses 4 and 5 of Ephesians 2: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” What is he saying? He’s saying exactly what Jesus is saying back in our text in John 5. The hour is coming, and Jesus says that hour is already here, when those who are dead – these spiritual zombies – will hear the voice of the Son of God. And when they hear His voice, He brings them to life. We are transformed from spiritual death to spiritual life by the effectual call of Christ through the Gospel. The voice of Christ comes breaking into the life of spiritually dead person like “a kind of summons from the King of the universe, and it has such power that it brings about the response that it asks for in people’s hearts. … This calling has the capacity to draw us out of the kingdom of darkness and bring us into God’s kingdom.”[4] It raises us up from spiritual death and makes us finally spiritually alive. And that happened to you the moment you heard and believed the promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You were made alive in Him. We call it being born again.

Now, how is it that the Son, the Lord Jesus can give life? He says in verse 26 that it is because He has life in Himself. You see, our lives are “derived.” Most immediately, our lives our derived from the lives of our parents, who “gave life” (for lack of a better word) to us through procreation. But more ultimately, all human life is derived from God, who created humanity, who gave life to man, and with it the ability to procreate, and who upholds and sustains human life through His providential care. Thus, when Job was presented with the news that his children had died, he responded, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And concerning that response, the Bible says, “Through all this, Job did not sin nor did he blame God” (Job 1:21-22). Job understood that human life is a derived life. But when it comes to the life that is in Jesus, it is not derived in any way. He has life in Himself. His is self-existent, and the life that He has, He is able to impart to others.

But what are we to make of the idea here in verse 26 that the life that Jesus has in Himself was given to Him by the Father? Admittedly, this is a complicated and mysterious truth, bound up in the infinite mystery of the Trinity. But the idea here seems to have something to do with the condescension of the Son in the incarnation as He took upon Himself human flesh and a human nature. Philippians 2:6-8 describes it this way: “although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself….” Theologians refer to this as the kenosis, a Greek word that means “emptying.” Christ emptied Himself of His divine glory and power to become a man. But it was pleasing to the Father that Christ should retain some of His divine attributes even as He condescended to human nature. And one of these attributes was the power to have life in Himself and the power to grant that life to others. Thus, we read in John 1:4 that in Him (in Christ, the Living Word of God) was life, and the life was the Light of men.” The Father was pleased to grant the Son to retain His self-existent nature – this life-in-Himself, which He has the power to give to the spiritually dead who hear and respond in faith to the call of His voice in the proclamation of the Gospel. Jesus says in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” When we were dead in our trespasses and sins, the voice of Christ came flooding in and brought life to those spiritually dead who heard His voice in the Gospel and turned in faith to receive Him as Lord and Savior. The hour is coming, Jesus says, and now is. If you are spiritually dead, having never turned in faith to the Lord Jesus, then He is calling out to you even today to announce that through His sinless life, His sacrificial death for your sins, and His glorious resurrection, your sins can be washed away and you can have life – eternal and abundant – beginning even in this very moment. The spiritual life that Jesus gives to the spiritually dead here and now foreshadows a coming day, yet future, which is described in the following verses.

II. Jesus has the authority to raise and judge the entire human race

Donia and I have been married for 15 years. For the first six years of our marriage, we lived beside of a cemetery; and for the last 7 years of our marriage we’ve lived beside of another cemetery. People often ask us, “What’s it like living beside of a graveyard?” Well, we don’t have to worry about noisy or nosey neighbors, so it really has some significant advantages. There’s not a lot of activity in most graveyards. But that won’t always be true. There is a day coming, the Lord Jesus says, in which there will be a great upheaval in every cemetery in the world. That day remains in the future. Unlike verse 25, there is no present tense component of this promise. How far in the future will this event occur? We don’t know. But we do know that every day that elapses brings us one day closer. In the previous section we were talking about the spiritual dead – those spiritual zombies who are walking around among us every day. But now we are talking about the physical dead – they are in the tombs. And one day, “all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth.” The same voice that brings life to the spiritually dead here and now will call the dead to rise from their tombs and stand face to face before Him. Thus Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).

For at least 350 years, and probably much longer than that, as Christians gather to bury their dead, words similar to this are spoken: “we commit this body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from the dead unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This wording originates in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer from 1662, but certainly the ideas that these words express are rooted in the Word of God itself. No matter the circumstances or the degree of sorrow in my heart over the death of a loved one, when I officiate at the graveside of a believer, I find tremendous joy as I utter the words, “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.” Folks, I really believe that, and I hope you do too! For the believer in Jesus Christ, death is not the end. We are confident by faith that the day is coming when the soul of our departed loved one, who is already with the Lord, will be reunited with a risen and glorified body! Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have a sure and certain hope of resurrection from the dead unto eternal life! There is no greater comfort a grieving Christian can know that this!

However, what we do not often express verbally at the graveside is that there is also a sure and certain promise of resurrection for those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no hope and comfort in that promise. Though the unbeliever has the promise of resurrection and conscious existence beyond death, it is not a joyous existence in the glorious presence of Christ in heaven. It is a perpetual, eternal existence of judgment and condemnation. It seems odd to even call it life. It is at best a mere existence in the most agonizing of conditions. But it is a real, conscious, and unending existence, and that is a sure and certain promise made by none other than the Lord Jesus Himself. Therefore, we can believe it, and as He says in verse 28, we must not marvel at the truthfulness of these words.

When all who are in the tombs come forth in response to the voice of Christ, there will be a great separating of humanity. Now, this text really says nothing about chronology or time. There are other texts in Scripture that seem to indicate that the resurrection of the righteous dead will occur long before the resurrection of the unrighteous dead. This text does not contradict that. It merely asserts that all humanity – saved and unsaved; righteous and unrighteous – will be raised will be separated into two populations. Jesus says here that those who “did the good deeds” will be raised “to a resurrection of life.” It would be easy to mistakenly infer that Jesus is saying here that people will earn eternal life on the basis of their works, but that is most definitely NOT what He is saying. The Bible makes abundantly clear from cover to cover that works do not and cannot save human beings, for as spiritually dead people we are unable to do anything in our own power to bring pleasure to God, and our so-called righteousness is nothing but filthy rags in His sight. So, how then will those who did the good deeds be raised to a resurrection of life? We must rely on the whole context of Scripture to understand this. In John 6:28, the people asked Jesus, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” He responded (6:29) by saying, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” What is the “good deed” that leads to the resurrection of life? It is believing on the Lord Jesus Christ! It is not a doing of something, but the receiving of something that has been done for you! It is the receiving of Christ as Lord and Savior on the basis of His sinless life, the death He died in your place for your sins, and the power of His resurrection. And when a person has received Him, they are transformed from spiritual death to spiritual life here and now, and will eventually be raised to eternal life with Him in the glory of heaven. The validity of this person’s faith in Christ is demonstrated by perseverance in a God-glorifying of righteous living, not done in an effort to earn salvation; but done as an overflowing of His life within us. These deeds are not the working of our own power to appease God; they are the outworking of the indwelling Christ within us. As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” So the good deeds that lead to a resurrection of life are not even our own. We merely receive and appropriate for ourselves what Christ has done for us, and He lives and works through us those deeds that demonstrate that our relationship with Him is real and viable. Works do not make a person a Christian, but they can and should reveal whether or not a person is a genuine Christian, and not merely one who calls himself or herself Christian.

Apart from life in Him, the best that we can do is sin. Sin so totally corrupts the spiritually dead person that our self-instigated acts of righteousness amount only to unrighteousness. Thus, Jesus says that those who committed the evil deeds – that is, they did not believe upon Christ; they did not receive spiritual life in their state of spiritual death; they do not have Christ in them as the hope of glory – these will be raised, but not to eternal life with Him. These will be raised to a resurrection of judgment. The word also means condemnation. It describes the eternal, conscious existence which is separated from Him in hell, where for all eternity the condemnation of our sins is experienced moment by moment.

For a multitude of people, this message is now and always has been a highly offensive message. Christians who proclaim this truth are called judgmental and narrow-minded. It is often said that Christians do not reflect the nature of Christ in making statements like this, but I remind you that these are the words of Jesus Himself. He has been granted the authority by His Father to execute judgment, and the judgment is based on human response to Him as Lord and as Savior of the world. Verse 27 says that the Father has given Him this prerogative “because He is the Son of Man.” We’ve discussed this title before many times, and noted that it is the favorite title that Jesus uses to refer to Himself. In fact, no one else ever calls Him this; He alone uses the title, and more often than any other title, to refer to Himself. It is rooted in the messianic announcement of Daniel 7:13-14, in which we read that the Son of Man will receive from the Ancient of Days an everlasting dominion and kingdom which will never pass away. This is a vivid picture of the authority that is granted to God the Son by God the Father. Because the Son is the eternal God, and has been invested by the Father with this authority, and because He has become man and lived in perfect obedience to His Father’s will, He has demonstrated His authority to judge all humanity. Though some will object that this judgment is unfair, that all humanity should be saved or perish on the basis of Christ, and Him alone, Jesus says in verse 30 that His judgment is just. It is based on the will of His Father, who sent Him for this mission and purpose. Peter announced in Acts 10:42-43 that Christ has “ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead,” for “through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.”

Thus, by the Lord Jesus’ very own words, we have the sure and certain promise that there is a life that exists beyond death. All who are in the tombs will come forth. Those who have received life in His name have been cleansed of sin and covered in His righteousness. Our sins have been dealt with fully and finally in Christ crucified. He died to bear the wrath of our sin, that we might be brought forth from death into life – a spiritual quickening of our dead spirit that we might know the abundant life Christ offers to us here and now, and the physical life of resurrected glory after death has done its best to destroy us. In Christ we overwhelmingly conquer sin and death and hell, and are raised to a life that shall never end. But for those who do not experience the gift of His salvation which transforms us from death to life, eternity shall hold for them no hope or comfort – only the conscious experience of eternal torment, separated from Him in the despair and agony of hell. That reality can lead you to live in fear and dread, wondering against all odds how you will fare on the day of resurrection and judgment. Or, this promise can beckon you to call out to Him and know the glory of being raised from spiritual death to spiritual life here and now. He calls out to you even in the state of spiritual death. And so it is for good reason that the warning is given to us in Hebrews 4:7, saying that God has fixed a certain day and called it “Today,” saying, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”  His voice comes to you through message of His death and resurrection for your sin and for your salvation, saying as it were, “Awake sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph 5:14).

If today you are a spiritual zombie – a dead spirit walking around in a living body – hear the voice of the Son of God calling and turn to Him and live. Then you will know the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from death unto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord. And if you have already experienced that transformation from death to life in your spirit, live in the hope and glory of it. Show those around you who are dead what it really means to live by resting in Him and allowing His life to break forth into the world through you. The world may not always like what they see of Him in you, but fear not. The worst that this world can do to you is kill you. But take courage, Christ has overcome the world, and He has overcome death, and He will call you forth from the tomb and you will rise to life eternal with Him. 

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[1] http://news.yahoo.com/no-prank-halloween-us-military-forces-train-zombie-162141684.html. Accessed November 8, 2012.

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm. Accessed November 8, 2012.

[3] John MacArthur, John 1-11 (MacArthur New Testament Commentary; Chicago: Moody, 2006), 196-7.

[4] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 692.

Epaphras: A Model of Christian Ministry (Colossians 1:1-7; 4:12-23)

(Audio)

This past Lord's Day, we were so blessed to have Wes & Beth with us, dear missionary friends serving the Lord abroad who have deep ties to our church family. Wes proclaimed a powerful and challenging message, enhanced by a testimony from Beth, about the man named Epaphras that we meet in the book of Colossians.

His outline for the message is as follows:

I. We have a responsibility to be teachers of God's Word (1:7)
"You learned it from Epaphras"

II. We have a responsibility to be team players (1:7)
"Our dear fellow servant"

III. We have a responsibility to be faithful (1:7)
"a faithful minister of Christ"

IV. We have a responsibility to reach out to the people around us (4:12)
"Epaphras, who is one of you"

V. We have a responsibility to be people of prayer (4:12)
"always wrestling in prayer for you"

VI. We have a responsibility to have a missions vision that begins at home and extends to the nations (4:13)
"working hard for you, and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis"

Like Father, Like Son (John 5:16-24)

Audio (technical difficulty, poor sound quality after 17 minutes)

I will never forget a particular Sunday morning early in my preaching ministry when I had been invited to speak at the church of some friends of ours. One of the only suits I had was a hand-me-down that my father had given me; and the same was true of my inherited necktie collection. I put on the grey, checked suit and the red tie with the grey pattern, and I went to look in the mirror. I was alarmed because it seemed that my father was standing there looking back at me. It was the first time in my life that I had seen the resemblance so vividly. I will also never forget the day that Donia and I went to have an ultrasound while she was pregnant with Solomon. As the technician pointed out the various things we were looking for, the shape of his head and the profile of his face came into focus, and I said, “He looks just like me.” People laughed when I said that, and said there was no way I could see that from a sonogram picture. But, twelve years later, not a day goes by that someone doesn’t say to him, “You look just like your dad.” Aside from our physical resemblances, there are ways in which my dad, my son, and I think alike, act alike, and talk alike. As soon as I could hold a ball, my dad was teaching me how to throw it. I did the same with my son. I have tried to share experiences with my son that were important between me and my dad. We have good reasons for talking about someone being a chip off the old block, or saying that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Essentially we are saying, “Like father, like son.” And, essentially, that is what Jesus is saying to his critics here in this passage.

The passage that we have read today is contextually tied to the previous passage, which we studied together last Sunday. You recall that Jesus has healed a man who has been lame for 38 years. Rather than rejoicing in the power and grace of God that was revealed in this miracle, the religious officials of Israel opted to indict the man for violating their man-made regulations regarding the Sabbath. The penalty for this was death. In his defense, the man claims that he’s been framed. He was only doing what Jesus told him to do, and so he turned Jesus over to the officials to save his own neck. And so, verse 16 says, “For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.” Now, Jesus could have responded to this situation by arguing with the officials about the validity of their regulations which they have appended onto the Law of God. But He didn’t. Though their Sabbath rules have no footing in the will and Word of God whatsoever, Jesus ups the stakes of the issue and chooses instead to focus on His identity and His nature.

In verse 17, Jesus raises two points. The first of them is that the Sabbath regulations do not apply to God, for He is always at work. Indeed, Genesis tells us plainly that on the seventh day of the creation week, God “rested” from His work of creation, but it was not because He was tired or needed a break. It was because He was finished; all had been created in six days, and there was nothing more to create. But it was universally agreed among the Jews that God did not cease working entirely on the seventh day, because He never stopped His work of upholding, maintaining, and preserving the universe He created. Can you imagine what the world would look like if God took a day off? No, the Sabbath restrictions do not apply to God, and about that there was no disagreement.

But it is His second point that causes the rub. His second point is that the Sabbath rules also do not apply to Him, because God is His Father, and therefore He can work, like Father like Son. Now, notice how they respond to this. Verse 18 tells us that they are no longer content to merely persecute Him; now they are all the more intent on killing Him. Not only is He guilty of breaking the Sabbath, but He has called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. The meaning of His words was obvious to those who heard Him. And had they been mistaken, then the rest of this Chapter doesn’t make any sense. Jesus never once says, “Oh no, you guys misunderstood Me! That’s not what I meant!” Rather, He begins a lengthy discourse to demonstrate that this is exactly what He meant. He was indeed claiming that God was His Father in a unique way that no one else could. This was an audacious claim, and one that asserted in no uncertain terms that Jesus is indeed “equal with God.” He is claiming to be of the same nature and substance as God. He is not claiming to be a second, or rival God, but to be one and the same with the one true God. The point He is making here in verse 17 is that if you cannot indict God for breaking the Sabbath, neither can you indict Jesus for breaking the Sabbath, for He indeed is God. In their minds, this is a flagrantly blasphemous statement, one that was worthy of death. And so they set out to kill Him, beginning on that day.

So, is Jesus God? He says He is, and in these verses, He defines the nature of His relationship as Son to the Father. In so doing, we have some of the clearest teaching in all of Scripture regarding the mystery of the Trinity. Christians believe that there is one God, and only one God. When the whole of Scripture is examined we find that this one God is revealed in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are not three gods, but one God in three persons: a Tri-Unity, or Trinity. Calvin warns, “the greatness of the mystery warns us how much reverence and sobriety we ought to use in investigating this.”[1] That’s good advice as we begin to investigate the intertrinitarian relationship of the Father and the Son that is revealed in these verses. Here, that relationship is defined. So, as we look at verses 19-24, we want to consider these all-important words of Jesus that explain to us the nature of His relationship with the Father.

I. The Son is Dependent on the Father (v19)

It is perfectly clear that Jesus has made Himself out to be equal with God by calling God His own Father. But, He is not claiming to be a rival of God, or an additional deity that is separate from the one true God. He clarifies here that He “can do nothing of Himself,” or on His own initiative, as if He was acting independently of God the Father. He only does what He sees the Father doing, and He does it in “like manner” as the Father. His relationship, as God the Son, is one of subordination to and dependence upon the Father. This dependence and subordination does not in any way suggest that the Son is inferior to the Father, but rather that the Father has a specific divine role, as does the Son. The Son and the Father are equal in nature; both are eternal, infinite, and equally divine, but there is a distinction in role. The roles are not interchangeable or reversible, for if the Father subordinates Himself to the Son, then He ceases to be the Father, and if the Son usurps the Father, then He ceases to be the Son.

Because the Father and the Son have existed in unity for eternity, the Son is a witness and a participant in all that the Father has done. Therefore, Jesus can say, “I do what I see Him doing, and I do those things in like manner as He does.” In old days, this is how a person learned a trade. They apprenticed under the supervision of their father, and they watched and learned, and then they began to do the work in like manner. It is true of many of us that we do certain things because we have seen how our parents did them.

In John 6:38, Jesus says, “I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” He acts in perfect obedience, perfect submission, and perfect dependence on the will of His Father. He does what the Father shows Him and what the Father sends and commands Him to do. But notice, He is not merely a servant or agent of the Father. Rather, when Jesus does the work that He sees His Father doing, He acts as God Himself, because He is equal in His divine nature with the Father, even if subordinate in His role as the Son. Notice he doesn’t say, “I do some of the things that My Father does.” He says, “Whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does.” And He doesn’t say, “My Father is a little better at it because He’s been at it longer.” He says, “I do whatever He does in like manner.” So, when the Father is acting, the Son is acting. What the Father is doing, the Son is doing. And the Son is doing those things because He glories in His submission and dependence to the Father. So the first thing we notice is that He is equal with God – He is fully divine; but He does not act independently of God the Father. He is submitted and dependent upon the Father.

II. The Son is Loved by the Father (v20)

If you were technologically savvy, you could create a machine – a robot, perhaps – that would do everything you program it to do. It would obey you perfectly. But you did not program that machine because you loved it. Similarly, you can hire a person to do what you instruct them to do. But you do not instruct them because you love them. Love probably doesn’t enter into the picture at all. But that is not the case with the Father and the Son. He is not a robot or an employee. The Father is pleased to show the Son all that He is doing because He loves Him; and because the Son loves the Father and knows the Father’s love for Him, He rejoices to submit Himself to the will of the Father. Their relationship is one of perfect love, and the love that exists between the persons of the Trinity is eternal and infinite.

Some may ask, “What was God doing before He made heaven and earth?” Augustine said that some people asked that in his day, and that the answer had often been given that He was preparing hell for those who pry into mysteries.[2] But that is certainly not the answer! What was God doing before He created humanity? Was he pacing about in loneliness, maybe singing to Himself the words of that Three Dog Night song, “One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know”? No, God did not create man because He was lonely and needed someone to love. What was He doing before He created the world? He was glorying in the perfect harmony of the love that eternally existed within Himself between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John 17:24, “You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

We often talk about how God does certain things because He loves us. This is true, and it is both comforting and assuring. He really does love us! But we do not often stop to think of the love of the Father for the Son as a basis for how God acts in the world. Calvin says that the “complete love of God” lives in the Son, and this love flows “like an overflowing fountain from him to us.”[3] The love that the Father has demonstrated to us in so many ways, and especially through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, begins first in the love of the Father for the Son. It is the nature of God’s love to give. He so loved the world, John 3:16 says, that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. But, John 3:35 goes on to say, “the Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” Out of the infinite love of the Father for the Son, He has given Him all things, and Jesus says here that He has shown Him all things that He Himself is doing. And because the Father loves the Son, Jesus says, “the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.” Now, don’t you think they are already marveling? Among many other things, Jesus just commanded a lifelong paralytic to get up and walk! That’s pretty impressive! But Jesus says that the Father loves Him and will show Him greater works than these, and He will do those greater things, and that will make people marvel! What are these greater things? We see them in the next two verses, as we consider …

III. The Son is Entrusted by the Father (vv21-22)

I remember when I first got a chance to mow the yard. I thought that was awesome! After years of watching my dad mow the lawn, I was finally able to do it myself! Now, I look back on that, and I think, “What was my problem?” I hate mowing the yard! Why did I think it was so great back then? Well, the more I think about it, I really don’t think it was the chore of mowing the yard; it was the sense that my father trusted me, and willing to empower me to do the task, and that was a reflection of his love for me! Now, our human analogies cannot do justice to the infinite and eternal love of God the Father for God the Son, but perhaps in some small way we can see here how the Father’s love for the Son led to an entrusting of responsibility to Him. He was entrusting a task to the Son that was supremely the task of the Father. Namely, this two-fold task that the Son is entrusted with is the power to give life, and the authority to exercise judgment over the world.

In verse 21 Jesus says, “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.” Now, the Jews understood that the giving of life and the raising of the dead was a power that belonged to God and God alone. In Deuteronomy 32:39, God proclaims, “See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal.” First Samuel 2:6 says, “The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to Sheol and raises up.” In 2 Kings 5:7, Naaman was sent to the King of Israel with a plea that the king might cure him of his leprosy. The king of Israel “tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to kill and make alive?’” Well, if you were to ask Jesus, “Are you God? Can you give life?”, He would say, “Indeed. The Father has entrusted Me with that power.” His power to do this is unlimited and sovereign. The Father has entrusted Him to give life “to whom He wishes.” Just as Jesus sovereignly chose one man of all those gathered by the pool to heal, so the Father has given Him the authority to choose those to whom He will give life and raise up from the dead.[4] Now, it is one thing to claim to be able to give life and raise the dead. Anyone could claim that. But Jesus alone has the power to prove it. He can restore those whose lives have been afflicted by suffering, such as the man whom He healed by the pool just a few verses before this. He will demonstrate on more than one occasion that He even has the power to raise the dead. But these miracles, marvelous and amazing as they are, are merely foreshadowing an even more marvelous thing – a greater work that He will do. On the last day, it is the Son who will call the dead to rise out of their tombs in the resurrection. He has been entrusted with that power and authority by the Father, and that should make us marvel!

But notice also that Jesus says in verse 22, “Not even the Father judges anyone.” Now, have you ever heard someone trying to explain a situation, and they just keep digging a hole, making it worse? I guess some might say that Jesus is doing that here. He’s already claimed to be God, claimed that God is His Father, and claimed to have the power to raise the dead. Now He says that the Father does not judge anyone. One thing that His audience knew for sure was that God most certainly is the final and ultimate judge. In Genesis 18:25, Abraham called upon God as the “Judge of all the earth.” Well, Jesus is not saying that God will not judge anyone. He says that the Father doesn’t judge anyone, because “He has given all judgment to the Son.” God will indeed judge everyone, but it is God the Son who has been entrusted by God the Father with that supreme authority. When every human being who has ever lived stands before the bar of judgment on the last day, they will stand face to face with Jesus Christ.

Now, there is a tension here between this statement and that found in John 3:17, where we read that “God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” But there is no contradiction here. What Jesus was saying in John 3 was that judgment was not the purpose of His coming into the world. All the world was already under the condemnation of judgment because of sin. Jesus came to save the world by becoming our sin-bearer, dying for us and bearing the judgment we deserve on our behalf on the cross, and conquering sin and death through His resurrection from the dead. No, judgment was not the purpose of His coming, but in the final day, all will face Him as their judge, and on that day some will be saved because they have received the everlasting life that He alone can give; while others will be justly condemned because they have rejected Him. The Apostle Paul says that God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). That Man is the God-Man, God the Son, the Lord Jesus, who Has been entrusted with this authority by the Father, and this should cause us to marvel!

IV. The Son is Honored with the Father (v23)

All that the Father has entrusted to the Son brings us to marvel at His supreme power and authority. It should amaze us! I watch a lot of British television, and I hear a word used a lot on there that we don’t use much here: Gobsmacked. That is what this word marvel means. We should be gobsmacked by the power and authority of Jesus! But, it is not enough to be gobsmacked. Jesus says that all of this should lead us to honor Him with the same honor that is offered to the Father! God declares, “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another” (Isaiah 42:8). That was part of the problem here. The Jews understood and believed that God’s glory could not be shared with any other. If the Babylonian Captivity had accomplished anything, it had thoroughly purged Israel of their tendency toward idolatry. They would never give the honor that belonged to God alone to another. But Jesus was not saying that they should not honor God. He was saying that the honor that is due God rightly belongs to God the Father and God the Son in equal measure. They refused to honor Jesus because they thought that they were honoring the Father. In their mind, to honor Jesus would be to dishonor God—to take away or diminish the honor that was due to the Father. But Jesus says here, “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.” Glorifying the Son is not idolatry. It does not diminish the glory of the Father. Jesus Himself prayed in John 17:5, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” It cannot be wrong for you to glorify the Son, because even the Father glorifies the Son, and always has from eternity past.

All around the world, all across this nation, throughout this city, and maybe even among those of us who are gathered here today, there are multitudes who believe that they honor God, but they have no regard for the person of Jesus. Every Muslim, every Jew, every Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, every person practicing folk religion, or any other form of religion sincerely thinks that they are honoring God. But notice what the Lord Jesus is saying here: If you do not honor Me, you do not honor God, because I am Him! The Father is worthy of honor, and the Son is worthy of equal honor! And if we do not honor the Son, then no matter how sincere we are, we are not honoring the Father. That, my friends is a very bold claim: one that can only be made by a psychopath, unless of course it is true. If it is true, then He must be none other than the Lord of Glory in the flesh, and ultimately worthy of our worship, faith, and total surrender. So which is it? Is He a lunatic, or is He the Lord? There really is no middle ground. If you write Him off as a lunatic, you realize that you are playing a horrible game of chance, knowing that if you are wrong, you will stand before Him as the final judge on the final day. But if He is Lord, then what can we do but honor Him? What can we do but fall on our faces before Him and worship Him and call out to Him for mercy and grace to save us?

Look at verse 24 here. Jesus says, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” If you want to honor the Son and the Father, you have to hear the word of God the Son, and believe in Him who sent Him – God the Father. He has the authority to give live to whomever He chooses, and He chooses to give it to those who trust in Him as Lord and Savior, believing that He has borne your sins on His cross. He offers you life, and that life is everlasting. Those who believe in Him do not have to wait until the final day to receive that life. Notice the present tense. If you believe in Him, you have it already! And notice that you do not have to wait to be delivered from death and judgment. You will not come into judgment because you have already passed over from death into life! So, you see that the relationship that eternally exists between the Father and the Son is not the subject of dry academic theology. This is the most practical and relevant truth you can know. Because the Father loves the Son, He has given Him a work to do. He has entrusted Him to give life and to judge the living and the dead. And He has exalted Him to receive honor and glory from every living being in all creation, including you and me. Philippians 2:10-11 tells us that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Every knee bowing and every tongue confessing to glorify the Son brings glory to the Father. And this is a promise. Every knee will bow! Every tongue will confess that He is Lord. The question is, will you bow the knee and confess Him as Lord now, or later? Honor Him with your faith and worship now, and receive eternal life. But there is a fixed day in which this offer will expire; it will be too late. Depart this life without Him and you will not escape Him; you will stand face to face before Him in judgment. You will bow the knee before Him, and you will acknowledge Him as Lord, and honor Him, but it will be in an acceptance of your just condemnation because you have not trusted Him to bear your sins in His death, and you have not received the life that He is entrusted to give. So, which will it be for you?

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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 141.

[2] Augustine, Confessions (trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin; New York: Penguin, 1961), 262.

[3] John Calvin, John (Crossway Classic Commentaries; Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1994), 127-128.

[4] Carson, 253.

Do You Wish to Get Well? (John 5:1-16)

Audio

Have you ever done something, and later looked back with regret to say, “If I had known how that was going to turn out, I would have done it differently”? Sure, we all have! That’s why we say things like, “Hindsight is 20/20.” But, has it ever occurred to you that Jesus never had this experience? By the time we get to the end of this section of Scripture, we will be tempted to think that Jesus blew it here. From our perspective, it looks like He picked the wrong guy, the wrong day of the week, and got the wrong outcome. But we have to begin from a foundation of faith in Christ as sovereign, all-knowing, all-powerful, and in ultimate authority over all things. He never makes a mistake, never second-guesses His words and actions, never gets taken by surprise, and never fails to accomplish His purpose in what He does.

After journeying through Samaria and Galilee, Jesus has returned to Jerusalem for the observance of a Jewish holy day. Though John records Jesus’ attendance at several festivals in Jerusalem, this is the only one that is not identified by name. We don’t know what the occasion was, and it seems unimportant to the meaning of the text. While in Jerusalem, Jesus came to an area known as Bethesda, located near the Sheep Gate, where there is a pool surrounded by five porticoes. Once upon a time, critics of the Bible questioned the authenticity of the Gospel of John because no one had ever been able to locate this pool. However, in the 1890s, archaeologists discovered two large pools in the northern portion of the city, surrounded by four porticoes, with a fifth one spanning between them. Its location and features match the description of the pool here in John 5 perfectly. So, today, there is no doubt about the authenticity of this place.

But what’s important for our purposes today is not the architecture or archaeology of the pool complex at Bethesda, but rather the confrontation that took place there between the Lord Jesus and a man who had been an invalid for most of his life. Unlike so many of the healing miracles we read about in the Gospels, in this one the man does not call out to Jesus for help. Rather, of all of the people surrounding the pool, Jesus chose this man, and He confronted him about his condition. This man had never given a thought to Jesus before that day; he seems to have even been unaware of who He was. But, as is always the case, the Lord Jesus makes the first move in mercy and grace to reach out to this man and He asks him, “Do you wish to get well?”

All across this room, there are people who have had this confrontational encounter with the Lord Jesus. Perhaps we were like this man, having lived a good many years ravaged by the sufferings of sin, with no knowledge and no interest in Him, when suddenly we were confronted with His gracious offer, “Do you want to get well?” Others grew up surrounded by the trappings of empty and impersonal religion, marking off the checklist and going through the motions of church attendance, prayers, Bible reading, and rule-keeping. But there came a day when a gentle Galilean whisper came rushing into our hearts graciously asking, “Do you want to get well?” Or maybe you have never had this experience at all. You have come here today in whatever condition, ravaged or religious, thinking that you have successfully avoided the uncomfortable confrontation of a personal encounter with Jesus. But perhaps the confrontation has already begun in you, though you do not recognize it. Perhaps it is what brought you here today. My prayer is that before this service ends today, you will recognize the One who stands before you with outstretched hands and an overwhelming offer: “Do you want to get well?” If we would be made well, then the confrontation must happen. As we look at just such a confrontation at the pool of Bethesda, let’s notice how Jesus addresses us at our point of deepest need with the gracious offer to make us well and whole in Him.

I. Jesus confronts our hopeless suffering.

Jesus made His followers a promise in John 16:33: “In the world you have tribulation.” You don’t need to waste any time trying to prove Him wrong. You just need to be alive to prove Him right. There is no individual and no realm of existence which is immune to suffering, not even Christians. Psalm 34:19 says that “many are the afflictions of the righteous.” And at the root of all suffering is sin. Romans 5:12 says, “through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” That death that sin has brought into the world is at work within us, decaying and corrupting us physically from the moment of conception until our final breath. That is why we get sick, why we hurt, and ultimately why we die – sin is at work within every human being. This is not to say that every instance of suffering in our lives can be traced back to a specific sin we committed. But human suffering is a product of sin’s presence in the world and its power at work within us. This realization can make us pessimistic about our suffering and lead us to hopelessness. But we must remember the promises of God’s Word. Though Jesus says that we will have tribulation in this world, He says that He offers us peace, and that He has overcome the world. Though many are the afflictions of the righteous, it is the Lord who delivers us from them all. It is He alone who can truly make us well in the midst of the otherwise hopeless suffering of the world.

As we meet the man by the pool, we notice several things about him. He is there with many others who are sick, blind, lame, and withered (perhaps, paralyzed). His illness seems to be one that prevented him from being able to walk, as he was apparently lying on a straw mat or pallet. He had suffered from this illness for 38 years! This was longer than many people lived in that day, as the average life expectancy barely exceeded 40 years.[1] The Bible tells us that Jesus saw him lying there, and He knew that he had been a long time in that condition. How did He know? Did He ask him? Did He ask someone else? Well, you never have to wonder how Jesus knows anything. He knows everything about everyone. He doesn’t need information. He knows everything about you and me! He sees us, and He knows us, better than we know ourselves.

We observe here in the text how this man’s suffering seems to have made him very bitter. When Jesus asked him, “Do you wish to get well?” his response is, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming another steps down before me!” This is not a mere explanation of his circumstances. As D. A. Carson writes, his response sounds like “the crotchety grumblings of an old and not very perceptive man who thinks he is answering a stupid question.”[2] He’s allowed his sufferings to define him, and he’s just a bitter, cranky man. He hadn’t found help from any doctor; he hadn’t found help from any bystander. Even in the crowd, he was alone, bitter, and hopeless. But all of that was about to change, because on this day, he was confronted by Jesus. The question is a simple one: “Do you wish to get well?” The man seems put off by the question, and he never gives a straight answer. A simple yes or no would do, but the man is so embittered and hopeless that he seems to lash out at Jesus as if to say, “Well, why on earth do you think I am sitting here by this pool?” But the question is not a stupid one. The fact is that there were many who were in similar conditions who did not really wish to get well. Unable to work, the man had likely resorted to begging, and as J. A. Findlay reminds us, “an eastern beggar often loses a good living by being cured of his disease.”[3] We don’t know if that was the case with this man, but it is possible. Does he want to get well? He never answers. He only makes bitter excuses about his condition. But this does not stop Jesus from intervening in his life. Though the man has offered no faith to Jesus beforehand, and seemingly none afterward, Jesus nonetheless speaks a word of power into his otherwise hopeless suffering and says, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” And v9 tells us that immediately, the man did just that. He became well, picked up his pallet and began to walk.

John 1:3 tells us that Jesus, the divine and living Word of God created all that exists. And the creation accounts tell us that all that exists was brought into being by the creative and powerful Word of God. He spoke, and it happened. He upholds all things by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). And His Word has the ability to give, preserve, and restore life. He speaks, and it is done! Jesus told this hopeless man to rise and walk, and immediately he rose and walked. And apparently he walked right away from the Lord Jesus who had healed him. He didn’t even catch His name. In his ignorance, he had no interest in Jesus before he was healed. In his bitterness, he had no interest in him after the fact either. Take note of this, because there are those who will come along side of you when you are suffering and they will say idiotic things like, “If you only had enough faith, you wouldn’t be suffering,” or “if your faith was strong enough, God would heal you.” Don’t believe that for a moment. Here’s a guy who didn’t have an ounce of faith, and Jesus healed him of his physical sufferings, yet many faithful people suffer severely and ultimately die in their pain. His lack of personal faith did not prevent Jesus from making Him physically well.

But Jesus wasn’t finished with him. Later on, in verse 14, Jesus confronts him again, this time at the Temple. He says to him, “Behold you have become well.” He’s probably heard that a lot from everyone he’s encountered. But then Jesus says something to him that no one else could. He says, “Do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” What Jesus is saying is that one’s physical health is not the ultimate need or concern in anyone’s life. Though in His divine and sovereign grace, He had chosen to heal this man, Jesus never promised to heal everyone’s physical ailments in this life. But He did promise to deliver all who come to Him by faith from the bondage of sin. What a tragedy it would be for this man to experience a physical healing after a lifetime of suffering, only to find at the end of his life that there was a greater suffering yet to endure! Therefore Jesus confronts him here at the temple and calls him to repentance from his sins and escape the horrors of eternal torment in hell. This serves as a stark warning to us all. Physical suffering in this life is not the worst thing that can happen to us. The suffering of hell is far more severe than this! Our physical suffering may be healed, or it may endure until life ends; it may even bring our life to an end. But there is a life beyond this one that will never end. For those who know Christ, there will be no more suffering as we spend eternity with Jesus in heaven. But for those who do not know Him as Lord and Savior, there will be no end to the suffering that is endured in hell. He came, not to deliver us from the hardships and inconveniences that we face, but from the horrors of sin and hell by becoming our sin-bearer in His death and resurrection. He conquered sin and death and hell for us. If we allow Him to be our sin-bearer, then no matter what suffering we experience in this life, we have the confident hope of a life beyond in which there will be no suffering. The believer in Jesus can say, with the Apostle Paul, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18), for this life’s “momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:17). On the other hand, if we refuse to allow Him to bear our sins, we will bear them ourselves before His throne of judgment, and no matter how well we had it here in this life, the life to come will be one of unending suffering and torment.

Of all the hopeless suffering that a person can endure, none is so hopeless as the enslavement to sin. There is no doctor, no medicine, no therapy that can bring healing to this terminal sickness of our souls. Apart from Jesus, all is hopeless! But He confronts us in our misery and offers us, not the temporal joy of a life lived without aches and pains and illness, but the eternal joy of a life delivered from the presence, the power and the penalty of sin. Though we may or may not ever experience a relief of physical suffering in this life, if we have Jesus, we can endure whatever we have to face, knowing that something better awaits us on the other side of this life. In order to know the fullness of this, there is more to this confrontation that must be experienced.

II. Jesus confronts our hollow religion.

In a sense, we all are religious people. There are no exceptions. Religion, rightly defined, refers to a person’s beliefs and opinions about the existence, nature and worship of a divine being or beings, and that being or beings’ involvement in the universe and in human life. And there is no one who has ever lived who has not had beliefs and opinions about those things. There has never been a civilization or culture discovered or unearthed that did not have religious opinions or beliefs. A survey of the world’s religious systems reveals many similarities and overlaps, and also many great differences. But Christianity stands alone in a unique category of belief systems in that it alone promises a personal relationship with the one true God, along with salvation from sin, eternal life, and supernatural empowerment to its adherents based solely on the sovereign grace of God, received and experienced not by works or rituals, but entirely by faith alone. Apart from the Christian faith revealed in the Bible, every belief system in the history of the world could be classified in terms of its regulations (the rules concerning what must be done and what must be avoided in order to appease God or some multitude of gods) and its superstitions (those beliefs or rituals by which humans seek to manipulate forces of nature and circumstances of human experience). There are, even within the broad circle of those who claim to be Christians, unbiblical expressions of the faith that are more accurately categorized as a “folk religion” that blends bits and pieces of Christianity with superstition and legalistic rule-keeping. That is not Christianity; that is not good news. These are two totally different belief systems! But there is good news in knowing that the Lord Jesus confronts us all in our hollow religion with the greatest news of His saving power and grace.

He confronts our superstitions with the truth of His power. We see that taking place with the man beside of the pool in the early verses of this text. Depending on which English version of the Bible you are using, you may notice heavy square brackets around the text from the middle of verse 3 to the end of verse 4, where we read that the infirm people around the pool were “waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.” In some versions, you may notice that half of verse 3 and all of verse 4 are missing entirely from your Bible. It is found in the footnotes of those versions. What is going on here? From the best examination we can make of the ancient New Testament manuscripts, it seems that these words were added later by a scribe who was attempting to explain the words spoken by the man in verse 7. There was apparently some kind of folk belief or superstition among people of that day that led them to believe that when they saw those waters stirring, only the first one would be healed. Maybe they believed it was a healing angel stirring the water. So, likely with misguided good intentions, some copyist of the ancient manuscripts decided to help us out by supplying the information found in the latter part of verse 3 and verse 4. For all we know, it could be an accurate explanation of the superstition surrounding the pool. But, as best we can tell from examining the oldest and most reliable manuscripts of John, it really doesn’t belong there. In addition to the manuscript evidence, there are some doctrinal concerns with the words as well. Nowhere else in the Bible do we God endorsing this kind of superstitious idolatry that affixes special powers to certain places or things. It really flies in the face of what the Bible teaches us about how God operates in the world. It was just a superstition, but still people really believed that when that pool bubbled or rippled, that the healing angel was there, ready to heal the first person to enter the water. It had no basis in the will and word of God whatsoever.

In a sense, this superstition is similar to things that well-meaning Christians of our day often say, like “God helps those who help themselves.” Let’s consider that statement for a moment. Is it in the Bible? No. Are there occasions in the Bible when God helps those who help themselves? Yes. Are there other occasions in the Bible when God helps those who cannot or will not help themselves? Yes, we are studying one of those texts today! So what shall we say? In the final analysis, the only sure thing we can say is that God helps those whom He chooses to help, whether or not they can, will, or do help themselves. The idea of Him helping those who help themselves is nothing more than a superstition that is only true in some, but not all, instances. And when it comes to being saved from our sin, it is never true because there is nothing that a person can do to help themselves whatsoever in that regard. Well, this is just one of many that people have absorbed into their beliefs. Before we incorporate something into our belief system, we have to test it with the plain teachings of Scripture, lest we fall into a hollow religion filled with baseless superstitions.

Now, this man certainly believed that the superstition about the moving of the water and the race to the pool was true. But Jesus confronts that baseless superstition with His ultimate power. When He asks the man if he wants to be well, all the man can think of is this pool as his only hope. His superstition has made an idol out of this pool in his heart and mind. But notice that Jesus doesn’t help the man into the pool; He merely speaks the Word of His power and the man is healed, immediately and completely! The healing is not found in the pool, it is found in the power of Jesus! No longer will this man believe that the pool is necessary for healing; His superstition has been confronted by the power of Jesus! One of the prophecies about the Messiah had promised that when He comes, “the lame will leap like a deer” (Isa 35:6). This miracle adds further testimony to the identity of Jesus Christ. He confronted meaningless superstition with His power.

But notice also how He confronts our regulations with His grace. No sooner does this lame man arise and walk that the religious officials begin to castigate him for breaking the Sabbath by carrying his mat. The Sabbath was prescribed in the Law of God’s Word as a day of rest when work shall cease. But what is “work”? The Jewish people had difficulty knowing what really was and was not acceptable to do on the Sabbath, so the scribes had determined 39 categories of work which were forbidden. For instance, it was agreed that one could not plow on the Sabbath. But, what if a person were to spit, and those droplets of spit made an impression in the dirt? Well, that was forbidden, because the person was making a furrow in the ground, thus they were plowing. But if one spit and it landed on a rock, and made no impression in the dirt, then that was permissible because no work was done. I visited a Jewish hospital in Baltimore one Saturday afternoon, and got on the elevator alone, and pushed the button for the fifth floor. But the elevator proceeded to stop on every floor, even though I hadn’t pushed the buttons. I learned that the elevator was set up to operate this way on the Sabbath; it automatically stops on every floor, so that no one violates the Sabbath by operating machinery. Well, one of the scribal regulations regarding the Sabbath prohibited the carrying of a load. This man had violated that regulation. Ironically, it was permissible to carry a pallet like this, as long as someone who was invalid was lying on it, but it was not permissible for a man who had been lying on that mat for 38 years and who had just been miraculously healed to carry the empty mat! The ridiculous nature of these regulations is obvious! All of those rules had nothing to do with God’s Word. They were man-made embellishments of the Law of God. The intention of the Sabbath was not to regulate every little thing that people could or could not do. It was intended to be a blessing to humanity, not a burden. It was established so that people could reserve one day of every week to focus their attention on the Lord in worship, and rest themselves from their regular labors. This man was not a professional mat-carrier, violating the Sabbath by continuing with business as usual! Here was a man made well by the power of God, who should be going on his way rejoicing! But, the religious officials could not rejoice at the power of God just revealed; they were too busy obsessing about the technicalities of their regulations!

Now, we might wonder if Jesus should have waited a day, or come a day earlier to heal this man. But, Jesus does not make mistakes! This man, this miracle, and this moment had been sovereignly determined by the Lord Jesus for this confrontation. He chose to heal this man on the Sabbath to demonstrate that rule keeping does not bring us into relationship with God. He chose this day, this man, and this miracle to demonstrate that it is not by the doing and not doing of things, but by the sheer grace of Jesus that we are made right with God. Consider the words of Ephesians 2:8-9: “By grace you have been saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Get that, “so that no one may boast!” No one will stand before God and boast of what they have done and not done. Our salvation rests completely on what Christ, in His grace, has DONE for us; not what we, in our flesh, claim to DO for Him! But oh, how we love our rules! They give us grounds for boasting among others. Do this, don’t do that! We are blinded to the power and grace of God by our focus on regulations! I am not saying that Christians do not have moral obligations. We do! We are called to live in holiness, and that holiness is empowered by the Holy Spirit who indwells us! If we are not progressing in holiness, then we are right to wonder if we’ve truly been saved! But, that moral transformation that God produces within His people is a result of, not a requirement for, salvation! Gospel imperatives (what we are commanded to do as Christians), flow out of Gospel indicatives (what God has declared us to be in Jesus, by grace through faith). He does not command us to be good in order for Him to love us. He calls us to rest in His love and grace by faith, as we trust in Him, He transforms us into the image of Jesus. But the problem with legalistic regulations that have no basis in Scripture is that the Holy Spirit will neither convict or empower us to overcome those things that are not sin! God does not lead us into a life of keeping man-made regulations, but a life that is being transformed to reflect His holiness demonstrated in the glory of Jesus!

There are many who are committed to their lists of “dos and don’ts,” and they cannot know the blessing of life in Christ because they are pressed down under the burden of rule keeping! They are good moral people, just like the scribes and Pharisees of old; but they are lost! They are not saved because they have never been set free by the grace of Christ. All of their doings are just human efforts to impress God with their own deeds. Know this for certain: no one is able to impress God with their own efforts. God is impressed with Jesus; and we are saved as we are found in Him by grace through faith!

As we draw to a close, I want to focus on what is transpiring here between the religious leaders and the healed man. They have indicted him on breaking their man-made regulations, and the penalty for Sabbath violations was death. But rather than reasoning with them about what had happened, rather than following Christ in faith even unto death, what does he do? Remember, that he is a bitter little man, who has allowed his suffering to harden his heart over the years. And notice that he throws Jesus right under the bus! Just like he was accustomed to doing, he resorts to the blame game. “It’s not my fault, it is that man who healed me! He’s the bad guy. He’s the one you want.” But he didn’t even know His name, and Jesus had disappeared from the scene. So the death penalty is hanging over this guy’s head unless he can find the scapegoat. But after the second confrontation, when he found out who Jesus was, rather than repenting of his sin as Jesus had warned him to do, he voluntarily went back to the religious leaders, and turned state’s evidence against the Lord to save his own neck! He disclosed Jesus to the very crowd that would then set their focus on putting Jesus to death. The human plot to kill Jesus begins right here. The innocent Jesus will be pursued to death, and eventually He would die in the place of this stubborn, hard-hearted, bitter little man, who never paid more than a passing notice to Jesus. That seems at first glance like a horrible tragedy, but in fact, it plays right into the eternal purpose of God. This was the very reason that God took human flesh upon Himself in the person of Jesus – so that He might die, the just for the unjust. He became the scapegoat, the substitute, to bear the sin of bitter, hard-hearted unbelievers just like this man. In unbelief, he lets Jesus die for him, but he will never experience the benefits of that glorious exchange. If he would only believe, Jesus would die for him anyway, and he would be made well, not only physically but spiritually; not only temporarily, but eternally. And the same is true for all of us. Christ is our sin-bearing substitute who embraces the suffering and shame of the cross out of His grace and love for you and for me. He bears our sin for us in His death, that He may grant righteousness and life to us by His grace.

The offer stands, for this man, for you, and for me. Jesus asks, “Do you wish to be made well?” Each man has to answer that question for Himself. We don’t know what happened to this man after this day. For all we know, he died in his bitterness and unbelief. Ultimately, it is not really important for us to know what happened to Him. What matters most is what you and I will do in response to that offer. Will we turn to the one who offers to heal us from the sickness of sin and set us free from its bondage, fall on our faces before Him in repentance and faith as we call out to Him as Lord and Savior? Or will we despise His gracious kindness and His glorious power and turn our hard and bitter hearts away from Him in unbelief? He confronts us, in our hopeless suffering and in our hollow religion, and He asks us, “Do you wish to get well?” What is your answer?

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[1] Kostenberger, 179.

[2] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 243.

[3] Quoted in Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 303 fn.19.