Progression from the Father to the Son
The first part of the John 5 is the story of the healing. By our reckoning, this Man was an invalid
since 1977. The second part of the story
is healing on the Sabbath. This is what makes
the local authorities angry.
The implication that Jesus lays out
is as follows: Doing God’s work on God’s Day.
In verse 17 from last week, he says, “The Father is working and I am
working.” Put them together and what
have you got? Bippity boppity boo: Jesus
the Son is God the Father. In our passage today, Jesus develops that
argument, step by step.
Point number one: The Son is
useless on his own. However, whatever he
sees the Father do, that he does also.
In the case of the invalid, Bethesda was a place where miraculous
healings from God took place. Jesus
healed there, taking on the Father’s “miracle powers”
It is not just what the Son sees,
but whatever the Father DOES, the Son can do.
It is like a divine apprenticeship.
The Father is passing on to the Son the full divine skill set. And the Father is doing all of this out of
love for the Son. It is not some divine
sense of fate or inevitability. And, not
only will the Father show the Son all thus far, but the Father will show the
Son even greater works. If the people
think Jesus has blown their minds thus far…just wait!!
We come to the ultimate power: the
Father raises the dead and gives them life.
Now the Son can “life” anyone that he wishes as well. This is the top of
the hill. Now Jesus is raised even
higher.
Point number two: The Son will be
given powers that the Father will no longer exercise. The Father is backing off the power to judge
the living and the dead. That power will
belong to the Son alone. That means
there is NO going around Jesus. You want
to come to the Father, you come through Him.
So, there are some consequences to these rules.
As the Father in heaven was so
honored, now also is the Son honored on the same plain of respect and power. And we can flip it…that , if you dishonor the
Son, you dishonor the Father as well!!
Point number three: Jesus says, “Truly truly I say to you… Verily Verily I saith unto thee… Very truly I tell you… Wake up and smell the coffee people, this is
the punchline! Hear Jesus’ Word and you
believe the one who sent Jesus. You are
not under judgment. You are passing from
death to life. And who would rather pick
death over life?
To sum it all up, the Son was
useless, the Son was empowered by God with life and death and the power of
judgment itself, and here is how you avoid getting judged and getting dead.
So what should we take away from
this discussion? First, there is not a
two-step process here. You do not hear
Jesus words and then believe in the God behind him. Jesus is not the gateway to the power of the
divine. Jesus IS the power of the
divine. He is the dude that walks down
the street with his disciples and he is the almighty creator being that would
fry our brains if we were ever to truly try and wrap our minds around him.
Second, everything you have ever
heard about Old Testament fire and brimstone is re-imagined. Because Jesus is now the judge, no longer is
it the Father in heaven. Another way to
think about this is in the context of our favorite hymns. Norm Petersen’s favorite hymn was “What a
Friend We Have In Jesus”. It was not
“What a Judge We Have in Dad”
And who is Jesus? In this passage, he’s the guy who healed the
man who’d been an invalid for 38 years, again, since 1977 in our reckoning, just
because he could. He did it on the
Sabbath Day to challenge the rules that had been built up around that Holy Day. He took rules and modes of biblical
interpretation and threw them out the window for a bigger rule: that God is
love, not judge. And he did it all for
us.
Jesus, as judge, is a new branding
of the judgment of God. Especially
considering the case history of God the Father as Judge.
Consider the Father’s judgment
history from the Old Testament. Consider
the Flood where God condemned the entire world to destruction because of the
evil of their ways. Or consider the
Exodus. How did God finally pass
judgment on the Egyptians to let His people go?
He killed the first born of every family of that nation, irrespective of
their opinion or treatment of the Jews.
Consider how he judged His own people.
They were complaining about being in the wilderness for so long. God sent a plague among them. Moses had to build the bronze serpent in
order to bring about healing once again.
Consider the conquest of the Promised Land, the Canaanites were judged
by God and condemned to being exterminated by the Jews. It was to be a genocide. Consider how God judged his people for their
ongoing disobedience once they’d received the Promised Land, by invasion, via
the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and, in the time of
Jesus, the Romans.
Now consider the judgment as it
comes through Jesus Christ. Whereas the
Father could be termed the Judge, Jury, and the Executioner, Jesus should be
termed the Judge, the Jury, and the Executed.
What is so critically important to consider that judgment has passed
from Father to Son?
This is because of the judgment
that is presumed by so much of the church today. It is all about the condemnation. Homosexuals are condemned. America is condemned, thus the protests at
the burials of our soldiers. Islam is
condemned. Liberals are condemned. The Poor are condemned. The President has been condemned, for being a
“closet Muslim”, for being foreign born, for the color of his skin. People who do not believe in Jesus correctly
are condemned. You need the right
definitions of “Lord”, of “Savior”. The
theology has to be just so…
Is it any surprise that there is a
movement of wholesale rejection of Jesus as Judge? There is a movement seeking the Historical
Jesus, Stripped of all the condemnatory material attached to biblical concepts
of judgment. Unfortunately, this also
removes most, if not all, of the divine attributions to Jesus.
I can understand the thinking that
has sought to remove the “Old Testament” judgment from any connection to Jesus. But I do not think rejection of “judgment” is
the right alternative.
Jesus is a unique judge in all of
history. He has suffered the ultimate
punishment that can be dealt. He has
received capital punishment, And the uniquely torturous and degrading Roman
form called crucifixion. God has given
Jesus the power of life and death, Jesus has undertaken both life and
death. He is now to pass judgment on us
all. And he did not receive this punishment because he deserved it, but because
we do.
How can anyone be arrogant enough
to assume they know what Jesus would condemn someone for? Perhaps the true task of being a Christian is
to stand up and declare whom Jesus would show mercy for. Perhaps we have spent enough time mixing
Christ-like powers with human political power and we take a step back.
Maybe if we recognized afresh that
Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, that he is the firstborn for all humanity to be adopted as God’s children, That
whenever we dare to condemn somebody else, we are daring to condemn a Child of
God. Is it not our job instead to declare the love
of God for everyone? It is a love so
strong that God gave His only Son that whoever believes should have everlasting
life? And, at the end of the day, can we
not breathe a sigh of relief that Jesus alone will decide what “belief” really
is, not us.
Amen.
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