John 5:18-24

“This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

1. Opposition to the Truth

“This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

If we back up just a little, we see that the last thing to occur was Jesus healing a man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years. The character of the man and his response his healing is debatable. There’s an angle from which he appears more or less obedient and meek in his reception of the miracle, but from another perspective he completely misses the significance of what he’s given and shows a nature of passing problems, responsibilities and burdens off to others. Regardless of how the man who received the miracle is viewed, the response of the religious leaders is undeniable. Their focus is not on mercy, or on the miracle that has been performed, but on the Law. Not even the actual Law, that the Sabbath was to be a day or rest, but their own added rules that specified what was permissible during the day of rest. The man, crippled for decades, blessed to rise and walk is chastised for taking up his sleeping mat, and walking. When the man explains that he was healed and that the man who performed the miracle told him to take up his bed and walk, they want to know who gave him this instruction. There’s no concern for the miracle that’s taken place, for the gift this man has been given, or the praise that is due to God for healing what was broken beyond comprehensible repair. Their hearts are hard, their eyes are blind their devotion and obsession is not to God, but the moral authority they feel behind their twisting of the Law. When they sought to persecute Jesus for His action, accusing Him of violating the Sabbath, He does not repent (having nothing to repent for), but replies, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” If we look at the synoptic gospels (Matthew 12:1-8, Mark 2:23-28 and Luke 6:1-5), we see another example of the Pharisees nit picking over activity on the Sabbath. As the hungry disciples pluck heads of grain and eat them, they’re accused of breaking the Law, which prohibited work like harvesting on the day of rest. Here Jesus counters them in each account with the example of David and his men eating the bread of the presence (1 Samuel 21:1-6), though this was not legal for them to do. In verses 5-8 of Matthew’s account we see Jesus provide a second example that gives greater clarity to His position and station,

“Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Each account shows Jesus referencing the story from 1 Samuel, but in Matthew, we see him draw comparison between His disciples and the priests and between Himself and the temple of God. Each case ends with His declaration that The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath, claiming supremacy in His mission from God. This sentiment is summed up more succinctly in John 5 with Jesus saying, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” There is a great significance given to claiming someone as your father. Since to be a child, or particularly a son, is to be an heir, a recipient of whatever the father has. In Matthew 3:7-10, we see John the Baptist contend with the religious rulers,

“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,” for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’”

This mirrors the exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees in John 8:31-38,

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free”?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.’”

This again shows the obsession by the religious rulers with legalism, and their blindness to the Spiritual significance of the Law. They take pride and reassurance in calling themselves sons of Abraham, being heirs and recipients of the superiority awarded them as his descendants. In verse 41 they claim, “… We have one Father—even God.” Before Jesus drops the hammer on them that by their aim and conduct, they are the children, not of Abraham or the Father, but of Satan. Their ever-present layering of additional rules upon God’s instruction given through the Law and the prophets seems to be a constant thing for the religious leaders. In their response to John the Baptist’s ministry and then to Jesus’s, we see a persistent rebellion against God and the Truth. Jesus refuses to bend to the authoritarian demands of the religious leaders, or to repent of His alleged breaking of the Sabbath by their invalid standards, which earns Him their judgement. His declaration of being the Son of God however is another matter entirely. There is a principle outlined that darkness can only tolerate so much light, wickedness can only stomach so much of the truth before it is spurned to violence. The world is willing to tolerate some of the teachings of the Bible, but aggressively denies the divine influence of the Word. Jesus can be seen as a friendly guy who said some nice things, but the line is drawn at His deity, at the truth of His position as the Christ. This plays out in the course of Jesus’s ministry, but can also be see in Acts 7 as Stephen makes a speech about the Truth of God that enrages the council of the Sanhedrin. They are filled with fury and grind their teeth, but it is after verse 56, where Stephen says,

“…Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

That the council rushes upon him, throws him from the city and stones him to death. Similarly in Acts 22, Paul makes an appeal to the Jewish people concerning his mission and the truth of Jesus as the risen Christ. They allow him to speak, but only up to the point that he declares that the message of the gospel and salvation is open to the Gentiles. At this his audience raises their voices and moves in violence against him, forcing the Roman authorities to take him into custody to save his life. Since the fall of man there has been a need for the role that Jesus came to fulfill. Some receive Christ, turn from the world and bear fruit in keeping with repentance. In Matthew 6:22-23 Jesus says,

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

The eye represents our aim. Aiming our hearts and minds to the things of God serves to make us into lights of the world, reflections of the Spirit He places within us. But if our aim, if what drives and posses us is of the world, how great is the rejection of the Truth and the light that is in Christ. Jesus doesn’t claim God as His Father in a collective sense, but on an individual basis – the only Son, the sole heir. It is this truth that takes the religious leaders from opposing Jesus, to seeking His death.

2. The Relationship between the Father and the Son

“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.”

John has made it clear from the start of his gospel that Jesus is God, the divine Word, present in the beginning. Here we see Jesus articulate some of what that means, and explain the relationship between Himself and the Father. Though He comes with all the authority of the Father, Jesus as the fulfillment of the Law, lives and teaches in a way that shows us how we are to behave in accordance with God’s word. He shows humility and compassion, and above all, devotion and reverence for the will of the Father. Jesus gives the clarification here that He doesn’t act based around human desires or aims, doing “nothing of His own accord,” but is personifying the Spirit of the Father. His actions, which run against the grain of the muddled and twisted ways the Law is being interpreted, are mirroring the actions of God.

“For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.”

God does not hide His will from His people. He set aside a people as His own and gave them the Law and prophets that they would be a living example of His power and goodness, flourishing in His paths before the world. But they shirked His Law, they turned their worship to idols, and they failed to be a people set apart, vying after the things of the world. Jesus, who though tempted, is unstained by the sin of the world and can see the will of the Father perfectly. No path is hidden from Him and so no work in His mission from the Father is beyond Him. This gives some insight into His divine foresight, as when calling His disciples or knowing the unique situation of so many individuals that He heals. Up to this point He has turned water into wine, and healed the sick and the crippled. But here Jesus says that greater works will be given to Him from the Father, just as with His prior miracles, so that the people might marvel, and in their marveling, believe in and glorify God.  

“For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.”

This again speaks to Jesus’s co-equality with God, as looking to the very beginning of creation, as well as at the rest of the Old Testament, the ability to give life only comes from God. Jesus performs four resurrection examples in the Gospels: In Luke 7:11-17, Seeing the funeral procession of a widow’s only son, He is moved with compassion and raises the man from the dead. In Matthew 9:23-26, Mark 5:35-43 and  Luke 8:49-56 We see a man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, who comes to Jesus, falling at His feet and begging Him to heal his sick daughter and Jesus following him to his home. When the girl passes away before they reach her, Jesus sends the mourners away and restores the girl to life. In John 11:1-44, the sisters Mary and Martha send word to Jesus when their brother Lazarus falls ill. Upon receiving the news Jesus states in verse 4, “… This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Delaying His departure for Judea and expressly telling His disciples that Lazarus has died before they head out, Jesus goes to Bethany where Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days. After speaking with the sisters and before the eyes of many witnesses, Jesus raises Lazarus with a word and he emerges from the tomb, still wrapped as he was for burial. The final resurrection account is Jesus’s own, after His crucifixion and burial. In John 10:17-18 Jesus says,

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

After the beatings, the crucifixion and enduring the wrath of God being poured out on Him, Jesus surrenders His Spirit. On the morning of the third day, He raised Himself from the dead and exited the tomb in victory. His greatest resurrection miracle was His own, an authority given out of love from the Father. In this greatest of all resurrections, we see the opening through which Jesus offers life, not just to those physically restored to life in their flesh, but to all in the Spirit. As Paul wrote in Colossians 2:13-15,

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

Continuing in John 5 from verse 22,

“For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.”

The fact that Jesus has the authority to judge, not just in some select instances or for a time as was this case with Old Testament judges, but that He has been given all judgement, again communicates Jesus’s co-equality with God. Paul wrote in Romans 14:10-12,

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.”

Judgement does not belong to man, so in holding the authority to judge we again see the deity of Christ.

3. The Promise of Salvation in Christ

“Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

The authority to give life, the authority to judge, the authority to work signs and wonders that are there for those with eyes to see, and hidden from the blind and world obsessed. Jesus is not just a child of God, but the Son, the heir, the messenger sent into the world to save and redeem God’s people. The promise here is the same as that of John 3:16, it is what Paul writes about in Romans 6:3-4,

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Despite the obvious distinction in the roles of the Father and the Son, the fact that to properly honor one is to honor the other shows the unity and equality of their position. This is the point that John has been driving home from the first verse of his gospel account. The Son and the Father are one. To accept the Son is to enter into the grace of the Father. There is a point here that I’ve discussed and debated for years, which is that we as Christians don’t receive judgement. I think about this every time I hear a believer comment that another believer is going to be judged for something they’ve done (usually while wagging a finger). I’m certainly willing to be corrected on this, but my understanding has always been that in our salvation, in our confession of sin before God, in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we receive and the conviction that comes when we stumble after being saved, we’re forgiven and are found blameless. To lay out some support for this idea, as I feel that understanding this increases the awe and gratitude for the redemption that Jesus offers us, I’ll start in today’s passage. Jesus says, “… whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” We see in the apostolic era that those who die are often said to have “gone to sleep” as they have already been ransomed from true, spiritual death and raise to life in Christ. Revelation 20:11-15 shows the final judgement,

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Here we see the judgement of the dead – but we are not dead, as Jesus has told us that in accepting Him, we have eternal life. Romans 6:3-4, which I referenced earlier tells us that we have already died to sin and been raised back up into new life. This doesn’t mean that we go in sinning freely without care, as Romans 6:1-2 says,

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”

Through the work of the Spirit in us there is conviction when we sin, and there is forgiveness available from God in our repentance. Yes, there are passages like Romans 14:10-12, which I also referenced earlier that says, “So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” But to give an account does not seem to necessarily mean that we are being judged. In John 3:17 Jesus says,

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

We know that a time will come when Jesus will return to the world in judgement, but in receiving the grace offered through the first coming and being adopted as children of God, it seems reasonable to think that we are spared judgement, having a record washed clean by the blood of Christ. This is the grace that was and is to this day, rejected by those who opposed the truth of the gospel. It’s grace that was made available only because Jesus as the Son is the physical manifestation of God the Father, obedient yet triumphant, as only God could erase the sin debt of man. It is the grace that erases sin, grants wisdom and liberates us from the world so that we might hold fast to eternity in the presence of the Living God, our Father.

Pastor Chris’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqEGt4kHhZQ