John 5

John 5:1-47

The Gospel According to John John 5:1-47 John 5:1-47. The chapter begins with an indefinite time note, “After these things.” John who, in the beginning of his narrative seemed to be almost meticulous in noting the succession of days, now refers indefinitely to time, so that we do not know exactly how long elapsed before the thing now recorded, took place. But we do observe that He, Who had practically broken with Judæa, went up to Jerusalem. John says, ‘‘There was a feast of the Jews." There has been a good deal of interesting discussion as to what feast was referred to. I believe it was the Passover, but it is not of vital importance that we should know.

The story contained in this chapter is one, and in chronological sequence, it is the last incident recorded in the first year of our Lord’s ministry. Almost immediately after this, Christ began His definitely and intentionally public propaganda. This then is the account of the fourth sign in John’s selection of signs. The chapter tells the story briefly of the sign, and of the controversy which it raised. On the human level, what Jesus did that day, and what He said that day, cost Him His life. They never forgave Him.

The chapter breaks quite naturally into two movements; first the story of the sign in itself, verses one to nine; and then the account of the controversy which resulted from the sign, from the tenth verse to the end.

The details of the sign in itself are most familiar to all of us. I touch upon them lightly, in order that we may consider the significance of the sign, as revealed in the controversy which resulted.

This sign was spontaneous on the part of Jesus. The first sign He wrought in response to a request, His mother’s. The second was spontaneous, when He cleansed the Temple. The third He wrought in response to a request, that of the king’s man who came to Him about his boy. Here again is a sign that Jesus wrought without being asked. There was no cry from that man for help. This makes it the more remarkable in revealing His mission, and the purpose of His heart, that for which He was in the world.

Passing through the porches round Bethesda He saw, He knew, He acted. “He saw a man.” He “knew that he had been now a long time in that case”; and He acted. The story, merely as a story, is full of dramatic suggestiveness. Jesus only spoke to this man three times, and every time in what may be described as short, sharp, incisive sentences. Looking at him as he lay, He said, Do you want to be made whole? Not “Wilt thou”? as if “wilt” were part of the verb to will; or “Wouldest thou” in the same sense. Our Lord was not asking him if he had decided, resolved, willed to be made whole. It was a question, not of volition, but of desire. Do you want to be made whole?

The man’s answer was a protest, as though he had said. Why ask me a question like that? He said, “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool”; which simply meant, What do you mean asking me that ? Of course I want to be made whole, but what chance have I? He had lost hope.

Then came the quick and sharp threefold command: “Arise, take up thy bed, and walk.” First, Rise, do the thing you cannot do, because I tell you to do it. Then, Take up thy bed, which Dr. Marcus Dods said meant, Make no provision for a relapse! Finally, “And walk,” which I may say means, Do not expect to be carried.

Then Jesus “conveyed Himself away,” and the man did not know Who He was. In the same day, later, in the Temple, Jesus fouad him. The man had not been to the Temple for thirty-eight years at least. Now he had evidently gone straight there, and Christ spoke to him once more, “Behold, thou art made whole; no longer continue in sin, lest a worse thing befall thee.”

Thus we discover that this sign had invaded a new realm. The first was a sign in the realm of creation and joy at Cana. The second was a sign in the realm of worship in the Temple. The third was a sign in the realm of suffering and disease, again at Cana. Now our Lord invaded, in this last incident in the first year of His public ministry, the moral realm. This last word of Jesus to the man shows what was the matter with him radically,-palsy resultantly, but palsy resulting from his own sin.

We know this because of what Jesus said to him. “No longer continue in sin; lest a worse thing befall thee.” The physical was the result, and the evidence, of moral malady. Our Lord invaded that realm, and invaded that realm in the case of a man absolutely derelict. For eight and thirty years he had been in that case. The continuity of the suffering was the result of the continuity of the sinning. To that man Jesus came, and wrought this great sign.

The full significance of the sign is revealed in the controversy. This controversy moved in two realms; first on the question of the Sabbath; and then, as the result of what Christ had said in the presence of His critics about His action on the Sabbath, the controversy became bitter, and was concerned with the claim that He had made. The question of the Sabbath. The rulers saw this man carrying his mattress through the streets of Jerusalem; and they at once charged him with breaking Sabbath. Technically, the law was on their side. Such a thing was certainly forbidden. That which arrests us as we ponder this is that these rulers surely knew this man. It is almost incredible that a man who had been living on charity, a derelict for thirty and eight years, would not be known.

But they do not appear to have recognized the fact that the man upon whom they had looked, derelict and undone and in misery, to whom perchance ever and anon they had flung a charitable shekel, was now walking in the full vigour of his manhood. He was carrying a mattress on the Sabbath, and that was all they saw. They ignored the man, and charged him with breaking Sabbath.

His answer to the charge was revealing and conclusive. He said, He that healed me told me to do it. He tried to draw their attention to his new condition. They took no notice of the fact. He was breaking Sabbath; his healing was nothing. These men have their successors to-day. There is always a tragedy in being blind to some great spiritual and moral victory, while we strain at a gnat, swallowing a camel. That is what they were doing.

How did our Lord answer them? He had a double answer. He answered first to the man. He gave him, if incidentally, none the less definitely, a revelation of the moral significance of the thing He had done for him. He was in the Temple. Jesus found him, and said, “Behold, thou art made whole; continue no longer in sin.” This certainly meant; What I have done for you to-day in giving you back your physical health, and enabling you to carry that mattress, and leave it somewhere, and come to the Temple, has a moral intention.

I am not concerned, as though Jesus had said to him, first with your body. I am concerned with the moral dereliction which has blasted you. I have delivered you. That is the meaning of the thing that is done to-day. You are made whole. Why?

That you may “no longer continue in sin.” That was Christ’s answer to the charge, made to the man, an indication of the moral significance of what He had done.

Then He made answer to the Jews who were criticizing. “My Father worketh even until now, and I work.” That revealed the religious significance of what He had done. The moral intention was revealed to the man who was healed. The religious significance was revealed to the men who were supposedly the exponents of religion. In that declaration He interpreted God. To the man He showed that the healing was in order to right living. To the religious rulers He declared in effect: The reason why you see that man carrying his mattress on the Sabbath day, a healed man, is to be found in the restlessness of God in the presence of all human agony, even though it result from sin. “My Father worketh.” These rulers said that the rest of the Sabbath was being violated; and Jesus said, God has no rest while a man like this lies where that man was lying?

Humanity broke in upon the rest of God, when it sinned against Him, and so against itself, bringing all the blasting and the blighting and the misery of the years; and because of that, God is restless. Said Jesus, My Father works, and I work; and the work of God, and My work, is revealed in what that man has now received. The carrying of a mattress on a Sabbath day is very trivial a thing when we get a vision of God, and of His action. That man had continued in sin, had known the misery of the continuity; but God was after him. There can be no rest for God while humanity is suffering.

Then began the second phase of controversy. These men were intelligent. They saw the significance of what Jesus had said. They recognized that He claimed equality with God as He called God His Father. They were perfectly right in their understanding. That is precisely what Jesus had done.

On another occasion He said, “I and My Father are one.” From verses nineteen to forty-seven (John 5:19-47) we have His answer to their objection and criticism. That answer has three movements. First of all, in verses nineteen to twenty-nine (John 5:19-29), He enforced the very claim to which they had objected. Then, in verses thirty to thirty-seven, He spoke of witnesses to the truth of the claim, naming two whom He declined; and two whom He claimed as giving final demonstration. Then, from verses thirty-eight to forty-seven (John 5:38-47), our Lord in the most searching and withering way, turned upon those critics of His, those religious rulers, and condemned them.

In His enforcement of His claims He thrice used the arresting formula, “Verily, verily,” verses nineteen, twenty-four and twenty-six.

The first “Verily, verily” introduced a statement yet more emphatic of the thing He had said, when He had declared, “My Father worketh . . . and I work”; cooperation between Himself and God. “The Son can do nothing of Himself, . . . but the Father loveth the Son . . . the Father . . . hath given all judgment unto the Son . . . that all may honour the Son even as they honour the Father.” These are the revealing phrases. He was repeating His claim of co-operation with God, and God’s co-operation with Him. He was insisting upon it.

The second “Verily, verily” introduced His declaration concerning His own activity, in which He had claimed that His activity resulted from the fact that He was sent; thus still enforcing the idea of fellowship and co-operation with God. It is indeed a stupendous claim. According to it, if a man believe His word, he does not only believe Him, he believes the One that sent Him ; and he that does that, has the age-abiding life, “and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.”

The last “Verily, verily” introduced a statement in which He went back to what had already been said; and said it in a new form, again insisting upon the co-operation of the Father and the Son. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man.”

All this He said to account for what He had done for the man, and for the fact that He had ignored the triviality of a supposed desecration of the Sabbath, when a man was healed, and enabled not to sin.

Then He referred to the witnesses to the truth of what He had been saying, and that in a most remarkable way. First of all, He said, “If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true.” He might have borne witness of Himself, but He declined to do it. He said, “It is another that beareth witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesseth is true.” To whom was He referring? John? No. He referred to John briefly and beautifully; “Ye have sent unto John, and he hath borne witness unto the truth.” He told you the truth.

John said, I am not the Christ, I am not the prophet, I am the voice in the wilderness. You sent to John. John bare witness unto the truth; “But the witness which I receive is not from man.” John’s witness was true; he bare witness to the truth; but that was not the witness that proved the accuracy of what He was saying. Said Christ, I receive not witness from John. And then, in an aside of tender and beautiful recognition of the greatness of John, He said, “He was the lamp that burneth and shineth . . . but the witness that I have is greater than that of John.”

What witness then did He depend upon? The witness of the works. “The works which the Father hath given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness of Me.” His works demonstrated the fact that He was sent from the Father, and therefore He had the witness of the Father through the works. That derelict man was such a work. Christ thus claimed that the healed man, restored not only to physical strength, but to the possibility of worship within the Temple courts, by moral cleansing, demonstrated the activity of God.

Then as He closed, He turned upon those men. I do not think it is possible to read this, without feeling the stirring of His anger in the presence of the men who put more value on the technicality of a ritual observance, than the restoration of a man to life and righteousness. He began by saying, “Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.” He thus charged them with ignorance of God. “Ye have not His word abiding in you; for Whom He sent, Him ye believe not.” Mark the magnificence of that claim. When One comes, sent from God, you do not know Him, and you do not receive Him. “My Father worketh even until now, and I work.” You say I am a blasphemer, claiming equality with God. But you never knew God; you never heard His voice, or saw His form. Consequently you do not know Me!

Then with fine satire, He uttered the words so constantly misquoted. He did not say, “Search the Scriptures.” It was not a command. It was a statement. “Ye search the Scriptures.” They were doing it, but in a wrong way, and from a wrong view-point, because they had got a wrong idea of their own Scriptures. “Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life.” That is where they were wrong. It is possible to search these writings, and never come into the realm of eternal life.

He had not done. “And these are they which testify of Me.” Yes, that is the truth. There is no life in the Scriptures themselves, but if we will follow where they lead, they will bring us to Him, and so we find life, not in the Scriptures, but in Him through them.

Then mark the biting satire of the next words. He said, “I” and the “I” is emphatic, “I receive not glory from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in yourselves.” What was the proof? The proof was that they were more concerned with a Sabbatarian ritual, than with a derelict man restored to manhood and purity. He said, You lack God’s love. It is God’s love that makes Him restless and makes Him work. If they had known Him, they would not have raised this objection.

And still the satire. “I am come in My Father’s name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” And so the final word, “How can ye believe, which receive glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not.”

And so He ended. “Think not that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. If ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” The emphasis there is on “his” and “My.” If you believe not his writings, how will you believe My words? That is to say, our Lord in those final words to those rulers, claimed the authority of Moses. He revealed the fact that the ultimate in the authority of Moses could only be discovered in Him. He wrote of Me, said Jesus.

So far we have had four signs; the first in the realm of creation and joy in answer to the request of His mother; the second in the realm of religion and worship, a stupendous action of His own volition; the third in the realm of disease, in response to the agonized cry of a father ; and now as the first year was closing, and He was about entering upon that wider ministry of propaganda and declaration, in the realm of the moral, here was a sign, spontaneously wrought. He went to the lowest deeps, and entered the moral realm, and touched sin in its effects upon man; and then interpreted His action by the declaration that He was working together with God.