19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. 20 “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.
When I wrote a sermon on the first eighteen verses of John 5, about the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda, my assertion was that Jesus, while acting with the divine mercy and compassion that characterize our Lord, was nevertheless deliberately instigating one more confrontation with the religious elite.
The work the Father gave Him to do, ultimately, was to go to the cross of Calvary and shed His blood and die as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus said of Himself that the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.
This was His anointed ministry to the world, and Jesus choreographed the whole thing. From the day angels declared to astonished shepherds that in Bethlehem had been born for them a Savior which was Christ the Lord, Jesus was on the road that would end at the crest of Golgotha and a Roman cross.
And from the day He came down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, He was in control of every meeting, every circumstance, every conversation.
Nothing surprised Jesus, nothing frustrated Him, nothing caught Him unprepared, and while evil men met in dark corners to plot His murder, it was Jesus Himself who had the authority to lay His life down of His own accord, and the authority to take it up again,
Therefore, if anyone would balk at my saying Jesus deliberately instigated this new confrontation with the hypocritical Pharisees, you only need go on and read the rest of this chapter and the words of Jesus’ discourse to them and you will see that in response to their accusation that Jesus broke the Sabbath and spoke blasphemy by calling God His Father, making Himself equal with God, Jesus answers them with a ‘confession’, so to speak; not that He was wrong in making this claim, but that what He has said and what they are accusing Him of claiming falsely, is absolute truth. He is Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus is the Son of God, equal with the Father, and this is what He will openly establish for them in these verses we study today.
They wanted to kill Him. Now, if Jesus was just a teacher, a Rabbi, and a good and honest man but nothing more, His proper response to them would have been to quickly say, ‘No, no! Please don’t misunderstand. I am not the Messiah, I’m just a teacher like John the Baptist and I make no claims to deity!’
Instead, He picks up on what from them constitutes an accusation, and says ‘What you say about Me is true, and here is the complete truth about Me and My relationship with the Father and what this means for those who believe and for those who reject.
TRULY, TRULY
In the recent past I have explained Jesus’ use of the word that gets translated, ‘truly’ and the significance of the repetition of it. If you have been a student of the Bible for any length of time you should have heard this at least once or twice. So I don’t want to rehash it all for you here in detail. Just be reminded that it translates to the word we use frequently at the end of our prayers, ‘amen’, and as used by Jesus and other teachers of that culture it was a very strong word, given added strength by its repetition.
So when He began a sentence with ‘Truly, truly, I say to you’, it was tantamount to saying ‘listen closely and understand because this is of great and unchanging significance for you’.
John Wayne would have said, “Listen, and listen tight, Pilgrim”. That might be helpful to you who are fans of the Duke; but Bible commentator Roger Fredrikson made a statement that should drive home the import of this term, when he paraphrases it ‘most assuredly’, and says, “These are life and death words, for the destiny of those who listen hangs on how they hear and respond.” THE COMMUNICATOR’S COMMENTARY, John, R.L. Fredrikson, Word Inc, 1985 pg 117
And could I just toss in a brief word of application here? When we pray I think across the board as modern day Christians we use the word ‘amen’ more as a punctuation than a word with meaning. We end with “in Jesus’ name, amen”, and I doubt that very many of us realize what a solemn oath we utter every time we say it.
When we say that phrase at the end of a prayer we are saying that insofar as we have prayed according to the divine character and the divine will, so may it be. If we truly grasped that concept, fellow Christ-followers, how much more carefully thought out would our praying be?
The importance of bringing this word to your attention today lies in the context. Let’s look once more at verses 17 and 18 before we move on.
17 But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” 18 For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
Now get this. They want to kill Jesus for two stated reasons. He was, in their estimation, breaking the Sabbath law, and He was calling God His Father.
In the first case, Jesus wasn’t breaking the Sabbath law at all, but He was ignoring their Sabbath traditions built up around the law, upon which they had laid the gravity of law.
In the second case, they would have been correct in accusing Jesus, if God was not His Father. It would have been a blasphemous claim from the lips of any sinful man to say that God was his Father in the sense that Jesus was saying it.
But, (are you with me now?) as we have been seeing in the previous seven sermons or so, and as any reader can see if he or she carefully reads the first four chapters of this Gospel, Jesus has both claimed and demonstrated His relationship with the Father very publicly since coming on the scene for ministry all over Judea, Samaria and Galilee.
So in calling Him a blasphemer now, here at the Jerusalem Temple, on the heels of making a man whole who has been an invalid for 38 years, because He calls God His Father, the Jews are deliberately ignoring all that they have seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears, and therefore their accusations are not stemming from ignorance but from their own falsehood, which makes them in turn the blasphemers, not Jesus.
So, when Jesus begins with “Truly, truly, I say to you”, our ears should perk up and be ready, because what He is about to say to them in these verses that constitute the rest of this chapter, very fundamentally is, ‘What you are accusing Me of claiming falsely, I hereby claim to you as true, and if you continue in unbelief you cannot be saved’.
THE LOVE OF GOD
Now there is plenty to say about verse 19 and we will, but jump right to verse 20 for a minute because Jesus says something here that is easy for us to glide over in getting to more frequently addressed points in this dialogue, and it is so amazing I want to go here first so we don’t miss it.
“For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.”
Did you catch it? Jesus is going to explain to them in great detail the working relationship He and His Father have, and this relationship is based on love.
Now here is a point I have developed in the past and I think it bears repeating here, because what Jesus will establish in this discourse is the absolute power of the Triune God to do the works of Deity, and the absolute sovereignty of the Triune God to do those works out of and according to His own character and His own will. God does not need man, God does not need man’s help, God does not need man’s approval.
So I think that it is imperative that we pause once more and meditate on this love that the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father.
Now let me interject here, that just because the Holy Spirit isn’t mentioned, His presence and His equality with the Father and the Son is intrinsic in all that is said in this discourse.
I could easily get swept away in a teaching of the Holy Spirit here because there is so much to be taught about this third Person of the Trinity. Let it suffice, if you will, and for the sake of time, for me to simply point out that Jesus does not specifically speak of the Holy Spirit in His discourse, but the presence and the activity and the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son are all implied and understood.
It is by His Holy Spirit that the Father does the things He does, and the Son does the things He does and says the things He says, and frankly, I am afraid that the more detailed and pointed I try to get in illustrating or explaining that relationship, the farther I will drift from the truth. So let this suffice for now and let me make my statements about the love of the Godhead, and understand that I am talking about the Trinity; the three in One; God, Father Son and Holy Spirit.
When we think of the love that exists in the Triune Godhead, if we go back in our imagination to the eternal past when there was only God – and there was indeed a time (and I use the word ‘time’ for lack of a better one) – when there was only God and the present creation did not exist, all there was for God to love was Himself. (Remember here that I am talking about the three-Person Godhead)
That statement said about any created being would be a negative statement. No created being could love only himself and remain good or lay claim to any goodness. All created beings were created to love and to worship their Creator; to serve and glorify Him.
With that in mind, listen to these words of the Apostle in his first letter to the church. These are taken from 1 Jn 4, verses 7 and 8 and then 16:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Now did you hear that? God is love. God does not simply show love as we do for each other; God is love by definition. Now verse 16…
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
And in Acts chapter 17 we hear Paul teaching the Athenian philosophers, “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands as though He needed anything. For He Himself gives to all, life and breath and all things.”
Now spiritual truth is just that; it is spiritual and it does not change and has not changed. So if God is love, then God was love before there was anyone to love besides Himself.
Therefore when there was only God, in three Persons, there was perfect and divine love in the eternal Triune Godhead, who needed nothing in addition to Himself. He was perfectly self-sustained. So when Jesus talked to these Pharisees who were confronting Him in Jerusalem, and He said, ‘For the Father loves the Son’ He wasn’t speaking of a relationship that had begun at some point and developed over time until a mutual trust and affection had grown and begun to produce fruit.
Let me toss something else in right here for you to chew on. In John 5:20 when Jesus said the Father loves the Son, He didn’t use the Greek word, ‘agape’. He used the word ‘phileo’ which speaks of the love and affection that exists between friends. It is a love that is mutually demonstrated from one to the other.
I wanted to go here today, and I wanted you to understand this, because all through this discourse the things Jesus says about His relationship with the Father is based on and stems out of that kind of phileo love.
What the Father does, the Son does. The honor the Father bestows upon the Son, the Son bestows upon the Father.
They wanted to stone Him to death for claiming equality with God; but in dishonoring Him they were dishonoring the Father. In accusing Him of wrong they were accusing the Father. In calling Jesus a blasphemer, they were calling God the Father a blasphemer, thereby making themselves the worst kind of blasphemers.
Try, if you can – and I don’t really believe any of us can, but try – to imagine this kind of love, this phileo love, being expressed perfectly in and among the Triune God, as the Persons of the Godhead discuss and agree upon the plan of redemption.
Believer, your salvation and mine, your eternal glorification and mine, are the direct result of the expression of brotherly love expressed perfectly between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, when all God had to love was Himself and the future you.
THE FATHER AND THE SON DOING
Ok, now we can back up and take in verse 19. Remember that this is the opening line of Jesus’ response to their saying that He is wrongfully making Himself equal with God.
Jesus says that the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does these things the Son does in like manner.
Now in saying this, Jesus is not telling them that He as the Son lacks the attributes of deity. His response is two-fold. First He is telling them that He has set aside the independent exercise of His divine attributes and gets His authority to act from the Father, in order to accomplish the Father’s will.
In other words, if they are accusing Him of violating the Sabbath because of the Godly works He does on the Sabbath, they are in essence saying that the Sabbath is more important than God – carries a greater weight of authority than God. If the Son is doing the works of God and they say it is wrong to do those works on the Sabbath, then God is wrong.
The other point Jesus is making in this is that the Son and the Father are one, and the Pharisees can stand around until their ankles itch but at the end of the day they will not find the Son acting contrary to the Father or doing things differently than the Father does them.
Then He gives them sort of a ‘hide and watch’ challenge when He says, “…and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel”
What was to come that was greater works than they had previously seen? Well, if giving virtually a new body to a man paralyzed for 38 years wasn’t enough, later they would see Jesus give sight to a man born blind. Then if they hung around long enough they would witness Him calling His friend Lazarus back from four days dead.
Ultimately, they would watch Him die a horrible, messy death and be buried in a tomb, but He would rise from the dead and a short time later ascend unaided into the sky and back to His rightful place with the Father.
Now I don’t believe any of them – unless they became believers in the interim – actually saw the risen Christ or saw His ascension; but they definitely heard about those things and were unable to refute them. The worst they could do was try to shut the mouths of those who did see and did testify. But do you think they marveled? I’m sure they did.
Just remember that this discourse is taking place at the latest around the midpoint of Jesus’ ministry on earth. So if you read the rest of this Gospel and the things recorded for us by the other Gospel writers, you will see that when Jesus claimed the Father would give Him greater works to do, He was true to His word.
He even told them in advance what to look for as He spoke to them in this setting.
And right here I’m going to skip down again before we come back, and ask you to notice verse 28. Jesus told them in verse 20 that they would see things at which they would marvel, or wonder; but in verse 28 He says, “Do not marvel (or wonder) at this. When He says to not marvel [or be amazed] He is referring back to the statement in verse 27 that the Son will be given authority to execute judgment.
So at this point in the narrative Jesus is simply saying that if they witness all the things the Father will give Him to do that will be amazing, they shouldn’t wonder or be amazed that to Him will be given authority to judge.
If you see me doing the things that only God can do, don’t be shocked when you see me acting like God!
And folks, here is another point of application for anyone who claims to be a believer in Jesus Christ. We can’t decide to believe certain things about Jesus and about the nature of God and not believe others; or blend some of the things the Bible says with beliefs that come from outside the Bible for the sake of molding our theology into what fits more comfortably for us.
The Pharisees saw the miracles of Jesus and they listened to the things He said, and they knew what their Scriptures said, so they couldn’t have missed the fact that He was fulfilling in His life all the things the prophets said the Messiah would be and do. But they had molded their theology to their own thinking, not God’s, and their own ways, not God’s. This is what Jesus was telling them in verse 39 of John 5 when He said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life”
And Christians, when people in the church on the one hand accept and believe in the miracles of Jesus and in His death and resurrection and say that His Word is true, but on the other hand are willing to toy with the idea that there are other roads to God, or want to believe in some concocted mixture of the Creation account and the theory of evolution, or add or subtract anything else the Bible says for the sake of their comfort and peace of mind, they are playing a very dangerous game indeed. God isn’t who you want Him to be; Jesus isn’t your personal fire extinguisher – your life raft to heaven. God is God who has given us the revelation of Himself in His Word. He has spoken and let Him be true and every man a liar!
The Pharisees searched the Scriptures but rejected the Word of God. Yes, it is possible to do that. Don’t tell me how many times you’ve read the Bible through; I want to hear you say that you’ve come to Jesus for Life!
Jesus said those words of life and death again at verse 24. “Truly, truly” ‘Most assuredly’. Amen, amen.. “..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.”
Hear it? He who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me.
Then again, immediately, “Amen, amen, I say to you, 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.”
Have your searched the Scriptures? Good. Good. Now, have you heard the voice?
LIFE AND JUDGMENT
Before we close I want to focus on something we’ve touched on already, but needs further attention.
First, let me remind you of the theme running through this discourse; that of the equality of the Son with the Father. Jesus throughout makes these statements that He does only what He sees the Father doing – that He does nothing of His own initiative but does the will of the One who sent Him – that He does not testify of Himself but that the Father testifies of Him and so forth.
We could go into a sermon of its own on this topic alone. I’ll just reiterate that Jesus was expounding on His oneness with the Father; a unity that could not be broken or violated.
Secondly, and a lesser point but one that would have resonated with these ultra-legalistic Pharisees, Deuteronomy 17:6 commands that no one can be put to death on the word of one witness, but that at least two or three witnesses are required. Therefore in the Jew’s legal system no one was allowed or required to testify of himself alone.
Now, that is a law they found very convenient to break during the mock trials of Jesus on the night of His arrest, but at this point they would have understood Him to be telling them that His Father was His witness, and that John the Baptist was His witness, and that more importantly, the very works that they saw Jesus doing testified about Him. So He had plenty of witnesses for the defense; the Pharisees just weren’t willing to believe the witnesses.
Ok, with all of that freshly in mind, let’s look at verses 26 through 29 of our text, remembering that Jesus has already said that He does the Father’s works and He always does the Father’s will.
26 “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; 27 and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. 28 “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, 29 and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.
The wording of verse 26 is reminiscent of John’s first chapter where he said about Jesus, ‘In Him was life”. Remember the very familiar passage in the 14th chapter of this Gospel where Jesus tells Philip, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life”? He is the life. In Him is life.
It is He who in the beginning called into being all of creation. Nothing exists apart from Him. And this Creator, this One who said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, this One of whom the writer to the Hebrews says He holds all things together by the word of His power, was there talking to these religious men, and in Him was the power to give them life if they would only believe.
But there is death in these words also. “…and He gave Him authority to execute judgement because He is the Son of Man”
What is Jesus talking about? He is talking about the thing that should drive every man, woman and child to their knees begging for divine mercy if only they understood what it meant for them.
Because His next words are for everyone who has ever been born or ever will be born into this world from the Creation until the end.
“…an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.”
Who is the judge? Jesus is the Judge. “As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just”
My friends, there will be a resurrection for every one who has ever lived or who ever will live, and for those who are Christ’s it will be a resurrection to glory and eternal life, and for those who die without Christ it will be a resurrection of judgment and eternal separation from God and eternal torment.
JESUS, SAID SO!
Now don’t miss this! He said that the Father gave Him authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. He didn’t say Son of God this time; or Son of the Father… He said Son of Man.
Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was not part God and part man; there was not a struggle between two natures going on in Him. He was God who took on flesh, born of a woman, born under the law, who grew and learned and felt and thought and experienced and had emotions and hunger and weariness and all the things common to men apart from sin.
As Man Jesus identified Himself with men. In His flesh He suffered the wrath of God against sin and took it in His own body to the cross of shame. These men put him there but all men were guilty.
Do you remember the words of Wesley’s song? “And can it be, that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood? Died He for me who caused His pain? For me who Him to death pursued?”
Is it not fitting then, that He who suffered at the hands of men as a man, for men should be granted the privilege of sitting in judgment of men as Man?
Aptly said by one commentator:
“The appointment of a Judge in our own nature is one of the most beautiful arrangements of divine wisdom in redemption”
People in their sinful blasphemies will declare that God has no right to judge them. “How can He judge?” they will ask. “He who sits on His lofty throne looking down; how can He know what pain has hounded me – what memories have haunted me – what fears have assailed me?”
But they will be judged by a Man – a Man whom God has appointed as Judge, having furnished proof to everyone by raising Him from the dead; the death He died for you!
Would you object, saying that you didn’t put Him there? But your sin put Him there. Own it! Confess it!
For 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. Those who do not will stand in judgment. For the Father has given to the Son to have life in Himself, and He has given Him authority also to execute judgment.
The words of life and death are out there for you. Have you heard? Listen.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent me, has eternal life”. Hear the words of life? “…and does not come into judgment…” Hear the words of death? “…but has passed out of death into life. Truly, Truly, I say to you, 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.”
These words were true for those Pharisees that called Jesus a blasphemer, and so far as we know not one of them truly heard; not one of them was helped that day.
Just because you hear the Bible, just because you read the Bible, doesn’t mean you have come to the Son of God for life. Will you? Or will you one day be brought to the Son of Man for judgment?
Hear Him. Hear the confessions of the Christ today. They accused Him and He said, ‘You’re right! The Sabbath is Mine to do with as I will, and I rightly call God My Father.” Who could say that, but the Son of God? Hear Him. Choose life.
