John 5
NumBibleSubdivision 2. (John 5:1-47; John 6:1-71; John 7:1-53; John 8:1.)Eternal Life as separating from a World under Death. The second subdivision continues the subject of the first, eternal life as communicated to men, and dependent, a life of faith and communion; but this is now looked at as distinguishing and separating from the world, from its character and portion. As in the last subdivision also, the Spirit of God is seen as giving the life its power and fulness, and even under the same image as before, the living water; but it is now not simply rising up within and refreshing the one in whom it is, but overflowing to others also, “rivers of living water.” This is naturally a third section; the first shows the life as quickening by the voice of the Son of God, who is at the same time the Judge of men; and the quickening is thus an acquittal by the Judge, a sentence of righteousness. The second shows us the life of faith with its sustenance, and communion resulting. The three sections together form evidently once more a complete whole.
John 5:1-47
Section 1. (John 5:1-47.)Quickening by the sovereign grace of Christ; righteousness attaching to it. The first section has been already briefly characterized. We find in it, more clearly than in what has preceded, an incident taken from one of the Lord’s abundant miracles, and made an object lesson from which the teaching following it is drawn. Yet the truth given goes beyond the illustrative object, as is necessarily the case in one way or other with all typical or parabolic teaching: a thing which needs to be at once fully realized, and guarded from the abuse which has been often made of it. We shall have help given as to this in all this part of John.
- The impotent man as healed by Christ is the object lesson of this chapter. The background of this is the story of Bethesda with its own impotence to heal such a case as his, spite of the angelic intervention, which made the pool a “house of mercy,” but with conditions with which the man here before us could not comply. The nature of the disease forbade his availing himself of the proffered remedy. A “feast of the Jews” brings up the Lord again to Jerusalem. We are not even told what feast it was, and the language seems plainly to tell us why, sufficiently striking as it is, even in John’s Gospel, where alone it is found. A “feast of the Jews,” as such, we are outside of here, even though it was the occasion of the Lord’s visit; which, indeed, as all this Jerusalem ministry, only served to expose the hollowness of what was going on there, and along with this the powerlessness of the law itself as a remedy for man’s condition. This last is surely the main point here: it brings us at once to what Bethesda shows us, -a truth which sets aside all help in the old covenant, and shuts one up to the grace of God alone. Bethesda immediately comes into view with its porches filled with the sick, who are waiting for the visitation of that miraculous power which at a certain season troubled the water. Then for the moment there is healing virtue for the one who can first step in: there is the condition, the only one; whatever the virulence of the disease, it may be cured, if only one can get into the pool; but for impotence there is no healing possible. In the midst of this multitude our eyes are fixed upon one man who lies there vainly seeking help. For thirty and eight years the disease that has fastened upon him has rendered him helpless; and there he lies in the presence of a remedy which for him is none. Others may be healed, not he. He is not able to step into the pool; he has none to put him in. The desperateness of this condition engages the heart and hand of Jesus on his behalf; he is not put into the pool; but he hears the omnipotent word which heals him, and in a moment rises up, takes up the bed he lies upon and walks. As all these miracles are types of spiritual healing, we cannot be wrong in interpreting this of such. Moreover, the connection in this case between sin and helplessness is plain from our Lord’s words to this man afterwards (ver. 14). It is a general truth which the Lord affirms that “he that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin” (John 8:34, R.V.); and none can break this bondage but the Redeemer of men. All modes of healing man’s disease, short of the power and grace of Christ Himself, do but by their failure make its obduracy more manifest, and the need of Christ. And for this the law was given -not of God’s choice, but of man’s choice -to demonstrate against his unbelief man’s utter helplessness. For all modes of man’s devising are but law in principle, and men can imagine no other: it must be man’s work or God’s grace. Of the impossibility of its being the former Bethesda speaks to us. The law, indeed, as given the first time, -pure law and nothing else, -had nothing remedial in its nature, and as under it Israel stood not at all, so none could expect to stand. The first tables of the covenant were broken at the foot of the mount by the hand of him who had just brought them down, and nothing remained of it but penalty. But this was not the sufficient trial of man, for the very reason that in it as yet there was nothing remedial. We recognize without much difficulty that we are sinners, and that God must show mercy, while yet we cannot give up the legal principle. We need forgiveness, -need help, -need abatement of the severity of pure law: that is readily owned; but to give up all possibility -all need, therefore -of human work, man’s pride and conscience unite in an earnest struggle against such a complete setting aside of responsibility, as he imagines it, -such an acknowledgement of complete failure in responsibility as it really means. Thus arise the various schemes of amalgamation of law and grace with which the religious systems of men abound; all of which the second giving of the law anticipated and has set aside, while it has shown how alone such a scheme could satisfy the requirements of the divine character. The standard of responsibility never can be lowered, whether actually or virtually. The same tables of the covenant that had been broken are restored. The mercy of God may blot out the past, and allow a new beginning, but never an alteration of the terms (if they are to be legal terms) of final acceptance. Thus with the declaration made this second time, that God is “gracious and merciful, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin,” it is no less positively maintained that He “can by no means clear the guilty.” “When the wicked man turneth from his wickedness, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive”; but it must be “that which is lawful and right,” -nothing less. But that is the very thing which is so hopeless. If God can accept less, how much less? where can one stop? with the best that one can do? A careless soul may treat that carelessly; but who ever has done really the best one could? Will He take less still? These thoughts are only inventions of the enemy, and of which the word of God knows nothing. But then the whole scheme breaks down at that very point. This Bethesda witnesses: at the place of sheep, whether gate or pool (the doubt about what it is may be itself significant), the “house of mercy” rears its five pillars, clinging still to the number of responsibility, with no help for the impotent such as is this man, for thirty-eight years afflicted for his sin, as Israel for theirs wandered in the wilderness an equal time, until “that evil generation” had perished from among them. No thought could there have been of help in the pool at all, if that heavenly influence had not troubled the water. But for him it is still in vain -vain as the troubling of law by grace, which in a legal system is always that, two contradictory principles being at work in it. From the typical point of view, however, the case of the impotent man is no exception; yet how many as with him think of it as such, are “coming,” but always ineffectually, and looking for help, whether from man or God, to get into the pool. How new an experience comes with the voice of Jesus. “Wilt thou be made whole?” Yet he begins to talk about the pool. Why not? Must it not be of God, when the angel comes down into it? And the law: is it not of God? was it not “given by the disposition of angels”? And we would even have Christ but a servant of Moses, a means of enabling us to keep the law; or One giving virtue to sacramental ordinances, always with man’s aid in some way to perfect them. But Jesus passes by the pool altogether, making whole at once by His word. The thirty-eight years of impotence are ended in a moment: the man rises and walks.
- Conflict begins on the part of the fleshly religionists who know neither their own need nor the grace of God. We have seen the image of law in the pool, and the grace and power of Christ manifested in contrast with it. We shall find in what follows how fully in accordance with this is the truth that is now to come before us. The healed man in obedience to the Lord’s word takes up his bed.; and that day was the Sabbath. The Jews naturally object that he is violating the law; and his answer throws the entire responsibility for this upon the One who healed him.
He knows not even who He is, He has got lost from him among the throng: so that the miracle itself seems to have had no right effect upon him; and this is confirmed by what shortly follows, when the Lord, finding him in the temple, warns him not to bring on himself again by sin a judgment which would increase in severity. The result is that he goes and tells the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole.
Thereupon the anger of the Jews flames out against Jesus because He has done these things on the Sabbath. It was for them the sign of that covenant to which they held, and which they did not discern had gone so fatally against them. The Lord in answer takes the highest ground here. True, He works on and knows no rest in His labor of love. He was in communion with His Father, who worked on and knew none. How could He rest -how could they wish God to have His rest, with men in the misery into which sin had brought them? Had they given Him His rest, of whom He had complained that they had made Him to serve with their sins, and wearied Him with their iniquities? (Isaiah 43:24.) But then where were they with reference to this covenant of law of which the Sabbaths were the sign, and which had gone so terribly against them?
It was indeed the highest ground that He could take, Himself not with the people in their sin and failure, universal as it was, nor under its penalty, but working in the pity of His Father towards them in those divine works which manifested Him as all that He claimed to be. What could they give as answer? Nothing but, alas, the vindictive animosity of their pride so humbled, sin so unanswerably charged against them! Yet how had He charged? Nay, it was not He, whose works of mercy besought them rather to take shelter under the wings that brooded over them. They flung from them the appeal. Of Him, the Son of the Father, in their midst, they will not permit themselves to face the possibility, and as the only alternative must persecute Him to the death for claiming it.
3. They are in fact forced to a decision; and He will not leave them, therefore, without the distinct revelation of the glory that is His. This follows consequently immediately, with an overwhelming argument against their unbelief. The effect seems to have been for the time the silencing of His accusers, although their enmity is not removed, and we find it at His next visit to Jerusalem bursting out in a more determined effort to get Him into their hands.
(1) They might have misunderstood Him as to His unique claim to have God for His Father; although no Israelite would have ventured to speak of God after that manner. That God was a Father to Israel meant something very different, as they rightly conceived, though faith might have found in it an encouragement to draw nearer to Him than in fact there was ability for. But the Lord leaves them no room to doubt in what follows now of the high and exclusive way in which He declares himself the Son of God. Even the refusal of the possibility of an independent will with Him in what He did, was itself a claim of the highest kind that could be made, consistent with the unity of the Godhead. It is true, also, that the unity of which he speaks here is a practical, ethical one, and not a unity of essence; but it goes so far as to lead up to this. He does not either for a moment forget the manhood that He has taken. The Father “shows” Him; He “sees what the Father does” and does in like manner; but who beside the Eternal Son could speak of doing “in like manner” to the Father? even to raising up the dead and quickening them?
The threefold “verily, verily,” -the strong form of affirmation which only John records -naturally divides what is here said into three parts; the first of which declares this practical unity. So perfect is it that He can do nothing of Himself; there is a moral impossibility of His doing anything that is not the expression of the Father’s mind. He sees the Father’s doing, and does in like manner whatever the Father does. Omniscience and omnipotence are involved in this, and yet in One who is in the place of dependence, but to whom, in the love He has to Him, the Father shows all things that He does. The One who is able to see all that God sees: who is He?
Thus what had startled the Jews -the recent miracle -was but a small thing in comparison of what would indeed awaken their wonder. The Father, they acknowledged, raised the dead and quickened them*: true, and the Son quickens whom He will. But this involves power in His hands as Judge: for to bring up really from the dead those to whom death, as with men in general, is by divine sentence, means judicial power to reverse that sentence. This leads on to a most important consequence, as we shall see directly. In fact, the Father judges no one, but has committed all (final, definitive) judgment to the Son, giving Him honor such as belongs to the Father Himself; and indeed, necessarily, he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father either: for He has sent Him. Such is the unity of the Son with the Father. It is a unity in Godhead; or else we are taught to give to a creature the honor due to God alone.
(2) Such then is the glory of the One they are challenging He is the divine Judge of all: the Lord of life and death. Hence follows the blessed consequence: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent Me hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but is passed out of death into life.” Thus with the possession of eternal life comes deliverance not merely from condemnation, as the common version renders it, but from judgment itself; the very reception of life is an acquittal: the Judge has spoken, and there is no more judgment needing to be reached.
Eternal life is thus marked by bowing to the word of Christ, which is the accrediting of Him who sent Him; and so He says when speaking to the Father at an after-time: “This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent” (ch. 17: 3). On the other hand, those are dead who “having the understanding darkened, are alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness” -or “hardness” -“of their hearts” (Ephesians 4:18). This, alas, is not the exceptional condition of a few among men, but of the Gentiles, the “nations,” says the apostle; and Israel is no better. “As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.” It is God alone who can break through a barrier of this kind, and bring “out of death into life.”
(3) Life then is the fundamental necessity, the first thing needed by the soul: there is no middle state, as is evident, between life and death. We have to learn, and it may be only very gradually, as the child born into the world learns, what life is as the condition into which we have come; but without the life itself we could not have even the most rudimentary experience. We live the life, because we have the life whereby we live: if we do not distinguish in the spiritual realm, as we have to do in the natural, these two things from one another, all will be in confusion with us.
Life for the dead is resurrection-life; and the Lord now asserts the power of resurrection to be in His hands in a double way, spiritual and physical. He speaks as the Incarnate Word, and does not go back to the time of His pre-existence. He speaks of what shall be, but what is already begun, and of Himself as the Son of God among men, distinguishing between the “hour” of the spiritual and the “hour” of the physical renewal. The one had come already, though in its full blessedness as in Christianity, it had yet to come. The dead were already hearing the voice of the Son of God, and to every one that heard it it was life. Nor was there any distinction between the life as then given, and the life as it would be given: it was in either case an impartation of the life that was in Himself, as Source of it for men. For as the Father had life in Himself, so had He given to the Son to have life in Himself: “given,” according to the divine counsel, to Him who was to be the “Last Adam,” the Head of the new humanity; but thus to have it in Himself as the Father had it in Himself, as the Source from which others might derive it.
Let us clearly understand what is taught us here. The life in Him is of course eternal life: we understand why it is eternal; that which is in the Father and in the Son must be so. It is not simply because it will never end, but because also it never began: it always was and it always will be; that is eternity in the full sense of eternity.
It is not eternal life because it has come through death and is beyond it: in the Father, it never came through death; as divine life it never can be touched by it. It begins in us, and in us is in character a resurrection life; but that is not why it is eternal life, but it is eternal because it is divine.
It is life in us also: that is distinctly declared. Quickening is the impartation of life: except it were life in us, it would not be our being made to live at all. It is not Christ’s having it in Himself that constitutes the difference between Him and those to whom He imparts it, but that He has it as the Father has it, is the perpetual Source and Fountain of it to others. We have it always in dependence -always in Him; were it possible to be cut off from Him, all would be at an end for us, but that does not mean that it is not in us, which it is positively asserted to be. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you”: that on the one side; on the other, “he that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life” (John 6:53-54). Thus it is eternal life or no life, and it is of “life in you” -therefore eternal life in you -that He is speaking throughout. Otherwise it would be still true as to the one who had eaten the flesh of the Son of man, that there was no life in him. And again in His first epistle John says, “Every one that hateth His brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15): words that would have no force except from the fact that the Christian has eternal life abiding in him.
Notice that expression, “abiding in him”: it naturally refers us to what we have in the Gospel afterwards, where the Lord figures under a vine and its branches the relation of His people to Himself. Here the branch abiding in the vine is the condition of the vine in its life, which is its sap, abiding in the branch. This the Lord follows up with His “ye in Me and I in you” as the condition of fruit-bearing. So in the epistle, the life abiding in the professing Christian is tested by the fruit; the abiding of the life being maintained by the constant active inflow of the fulness that is in Christ into the lives of His people.
That our life is in Christ, then, -or as John rather puts it, in the Son, -is in no wise in opposition to its being in us also, as communicated, dependent life. Such it always is, and always will be. Our ability to define or give it rightful expression is feeble enough; even natural life has never been successfully defined; in cleaving closely to the inspired language we shall find a safeguard to our thoughts which will at the same time help them to legitimate expansion.
If the Father has given to the Son to have life in Himself in the same way that the Father has, the natural corollary to this is that “He hath given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is Son of man.” The giving of life we have already seen in fact to imply such authority, inasmuch as it is at the same time a freeing from judgment; that is, from coming personally into it. A giving account of ourselves there will surely be, and a judgment of works, but not a judgment by works or according to works. That is the judgment of the “great white throne” (Revelation 20:12-13), and in it no fallen creature could ever stand. Even the psalmist cries: “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant: for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified” (Psalms 143:2). The confusion that exists among Christians in such a matter as this is as lamentable as it is inexcusable: for Scripture has made it as plain as can be, that, raised or changed into His image in glory, all the saints of the present and the past shall at Christ’s coming be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and to be ever with Him. When He comes to judge even the living, we shall be with Him, and with Him “the saints shall judge the world.” The judgment of the dead before the great white throne is separated from this by an interval of a thousand years: a broad enough division, surely. But the indifference to prophecy, and even to the subject of the Lord’s coming itself, has had its sad recompense in the loss of knowledge of things of fundamental importance to Christianity itself.
Judgment, all final judgment, is in the hands of Christ alone: for the tender and beautiful reason, “because He is Son of man.” By a Man perfect in manhood, who has known even the weakness of it, as that title, “Son of man” indicates, -by One who “gave His flesh for the life of the world” -shall the world be judged. What assurance this gives of the most perfect consideration for creature frailty, of all circumstances that can be pleaded, in the judgment executed!
Lastly, physical resurrection is also in His hand: “The hour is coming in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice and shall come forth” -the hour for each and all, but which does not necessarily imply the same hour for each and all: which we are assured by many another scripture that in fact it will not be. “Every man in his own order,” says the apostle: “Christ the first-fruits; afterwards they that are Christ’s, at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23). There is no confusion. “Each” will be “in his own rank,” as it would be better rendered; and each rank will come forth at its appointed time; only “they that are Christ’s, at His coming.”
Time is not specified in the Lord’s words here; for time does not affect the question of authority, and it is of the authority given to Him that He is speaking. But the “life” and “judgment” which are in His hands to dispense characterize respectively two contrasted resurrections. “They that have done good “come forth” to a resurrection of life; and they that have done evil to a resurrection of judgment.” In either case death is seen in its merely provisional character: for the full carrying out of God’s purpose it must disappear. Man apart from the body is not man as God made him; and therefore not what His dealings contemplate. Life, on the one hand, claims the body of the saint; as judgment, on the other hand, the body of the sinner. It is for the “deeds done in the body” men are to receive; and it is in the body that they are to receive it. And it is noticeable that the saint here, as well as the sinner, is characterized by his “doings.” Although life is a “gift,” and not a reward, yet the fruits of that life, brought forth by the renewed man, are recognized in the resurrection. The holiness of God is seen in result to have been maintained by His grace, as it is manifested in the judgment of evil.
4. Thus the Lord has in the presence of His enemies, soon to be as criminals before His judgment-seat, revealed His personal glory as the Son of the Father, with the authority belonging to Him as Man, come in the purpose of divine love among men. He proceeds to reprove them for their unbelief, in view of the witness that had been given to Him in so many ways. The character of His own testimony; the testimony of His forerunner; the supernatural works which accredited Him on the Father’s part; the Father’s own testimony; the Scriptures accepted by themselves: all united to put His claims beyond the power of all the cavils of unbelief to affect. And He then proceeds to point out the nature of the unbelief itself which they manifested, what it proceeded from, what it would lead to, and leaves them in the hands of Moses, whom they so trusted, yet who was their real accuser before God. It is a crushing reply, which for the present seems to stagger and confound them, so that we hear of nothing from them more, until after another period of labor in Galilee, He returns at the feast of tabernacles to Jerusalem.
(1) He returns to speak of that practical oneness which he had with the Father, which forbade Him doing anything simply of Himself. As a consequence, no independent will of His own perverted His judgment. He judged as He heard: that is, according to the real facts of the case. This perfect simplicity made His word to be indeed the word of God, and to have a character far removed from that of others. Thus it had to be confessed, “Never man spake like this Man.” It was indeed the most signal witness to Him. Yet it stood not alone: it would have been an anomaly had it done so, and the word of the law, “the testimony of two is true,” would have rendered it invalid.
If He bore witness regarding Himself, though perfectly qualified to do so, it would not by itself be valid: which is clearly the meaning of the law. The testimony of one man might be true -absolutely; just as true in itself as that of two. But it would not be true in the same way to others: it would need confirmation. The Lord appeals therefore to another testimony -His Father’s. This confirmed His own in such a way as that there could not be any more testimony needed. And, in fact, all the testimony of which He speaks here resolves itself into these. (2) John’s testimony He refers to: a merciful concession to the need of man, though as a merely human one He could not have need of it. It was a call to rouse men’s attention and awaken the sense of need on their part; and in fact many had been roused: they had sent to him and he had borne witness to the truth. He was as the lamp, burning and shining, not the light of day, but lighting up the darkness of the night. They had been glad of it, and willing to avail themselves of its cheer for a season. Limited like all of man both as to time and place, John’s testimony had of necessity to give way to Him of whom he testified. (3) But now there was greater witness. The glorious works that were being done by Him, and which in their completeness spoke of a work far more glorious, these were gifts from the Father which manifested His Son, while the Father had even directly uttered His voice in attestation. But they, alas, had never at any time heard His voice -to them He had never spoken; nor had they seen one form of His many manifestations. (4) The Lord proceeds to speak of what in one sense was, in another should have been, a matter of their own experience. Scripture was in their bands, they searched it, they thought they found in it eternal life. Well it spoke of Him, the Giver of life: yet they would not come to Him to find it. In fact they had not God’s word abiding in them; for the One whom He had sent they believed not. (5) The truth was, the conditions of faith were lacking in them. They received glory from one another; they did not seek it from God; they had not the love of God. Thus One coming in His Father’s Name they would not receive. But that would put them into the hands of Antichrist. He will come in his own name, doing his own will, and be received. A solemn thing to realize, and yet most sure, that all that would displace Christ in the soul makes room for Antichrist. They could not believe, therefore. Moses had written of Him; and they trusted Moses, without believing His testimony. Moses, not He, was their accuser. If they had believed Moses, they would have believed Him. If they believed not Moses’ writings, how would they believe His words? A serious question for the days in which we are.