John 5:30-47--Witnesses to Jesus

 John 5:30-47
English Standard Version

Witnesses to Jesus
30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. 31 If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. 33 You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34 Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. 35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. 43 I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

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Apologies to everyone for getting this one up late.  We are wrapping up another section here as we are about to enter the passage about the fourth of the seven signs next time.  To recap so far, we have seen three signs--turning the water into wine at Cana, Healing of the Official's Son Who Was Near Death, and The Healing of the Invalid at the Bool of Bethesda.  Next time we'll be talking about The Feeding of the 5,000.  We are also about to get to the first of the seven "I AM" statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John when He will say "I AM The Bread of Life."

Let's come back though to where we are at currently.  Jesus is still having a debate with the Jews after the healing at the Pool of Bethesda about why He is allowed to heal on the Sabbath and why He is allowed to call God "My Father," making Himself to be equal with God.  Jesus is now going to tell them why they should believe the words that He is saying about who He is.  It would be one thing if Jesus made these claims and there were no other witnesses to corroborate His testimony about Himself, but Jesus' words are corroborated by the witness of John the Baptist, the Father (at the time of His baptism) and the Scriptures (the Old Testament).  Jesus specifically brings Moses up as a witness against the Jews saying that if they would have truly believed Moses, they would have believed Jesus, because Moses wrote of Jesus.

More specifically here, Jesus talks about His authority to judge these Jews (the Pharisees and other religious leaders there) for their unbelief.  Their not believing Jesus is to not believe the One who sent Jesus and is to not believe the Word of God that was written about the person and ministry of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament.  God even sent John the Baptist as a harbinger to prepare the way, but they refused to listen to him when he told them to "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."  John and Jesus said these things so that they might be saved, but their hardness of their hearts and willful blindness to the truth will not be forgotten when Jesus judges them and He will be the prosecutor against them and will accuse them to the Father--the devil won't even need to play that role because Jesus will have everything written down in the books and will be able to give eyewitness testimony against them about how He told them who He was and how to be saved through Him, and they not only would not believe themselves, but would try to turn others away from believing.  Moreover, these same religious leaders would be the ones who we have seen plotting to kill Jesus in much the same way that the people of the Old Testament desired to kill the prophets for their hearts were full of darkness and they did not want their deeds exposed by the Light.  They did not want people to see who they truly were, and they also did not want to lose their position of authority of their political power and Jesus was putting all of that in jeopardy as His gospel that He was preaching turned their meritocracy upside-down and inside-out. The made it as if they were the ones to teach others how to be righteous because they were somehow more righteous than everyone else, but Jesus came in and said that eternal life is a gift that must be given and received and cannot be earned and that "sinners" and "tax collectors" were beating the Pharisees to the kingdom of God because the kingdom of God was about a Person, not a place, and the "sinners" were coming to Jesus in repentance while the Pharisees continued to look down their noses at "those people" and at Jesus for associating with them.

Jesus corrects them in thinking that they would find eternal life in the Scriptures when it is Jesus alone who is the one who gives eternal life to those who believe in Him.  All they needed to do was to come to Him in faith and ask to receive it, but they could not humble themselves to the point of admitting that they needed to repent and needed eternal life to be given to them.  Jesus identifies their problem as not believing Jesus because He did not seek after His own glory like they do.  Jesus said if another came in his own name and sought his own glory, they would believe that man (probably referring to the antichrist to come as that man will be full of the devil and will be proud and arrogant and will seek for people to worship him as God).  Jesus knows the hearts of these men and knows that is exactly the kind of "Christ" they are looking for--someone who is like them.  It exactly because Jesus was not like them, because He was of the nature and image of God, that they neither knew Him nor listened to Him.