April 30, 2021 John 5: 23
19 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do
nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the
Father does, the Son does likewise. 20The Father loves the Son and shows him all that
he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you
will be astonished. 21Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also
the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes. 22The Father judges no one but has given all
judgment to the Son, 23so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.
Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my
word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under
judgment, but has passed from death to life. 25“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming,
and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those
who hear will live. 26For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son
also to have life in himself; 27and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the
Son of Man.
So there are a number of
explanations of why Jesus died on the cross.
Perhaps explanations is not the right word. Rather, we as humans have drawn from Jesus’
death and resurrection different ways of understanding what Jesus accomplished
for us. It is not so much the result,
the free gift of salvation and eternal life, but it is understanding the
mechanism. As humans, we are trying
better to understand our God and what our God has done for us.
What is so interesting about this is
not so much the divine insights we have been able to glean, but rather how we
view what Jesus accomplished for us from our own places in life, from our own
points of view. What do I mean by
that? Well, I have just been reading the
Confession of 1967, written by the Northern Presbyterian Church as an
expression of the Reformed faith in their particular time and
circumstances. The theme that runs
through is reconciliation.
Consider the time, the Civil Rights
movement, Vietnam, the Peace Movement, MAD-Mutual Assured Destruction in the
nuclear cold war between the US and the USSR.
What was the focus of that time?
Reconciliation. As Presbyterian
Christians, we drew that lesson to the forefront of the interpretation of Jesus’
death and resurrection, a focus on the reconciliation we have in Him. This is not to deny the other things we can
draw out of Jesus’ Passion, Jesus the final sacrifice, Jesus the Victor over
Satan, Jesus providing our atonement for our sins.
Coming out of verse 22, where we
read how Jesus has taken over as our Judge from the Father, it struck me that
how we address a judge parallels the language of verse 23. We call the judge “Your Honor”. It probably has something to do with this
verse. But that is not what led this
particular train of thought.
It is the notion of the honor of the
Son and the honor of the Father.
Honoring the Father is presumed, and that offering of honor now passes
onto the Son, because of the Judgeship.
Not to honor the Son is not to honor the Father. It is the blending of the roles of Father and
Son, of Son and Father, that will continue to mark Jesus’ testimony in the
gospel of John.
This took me back to another way of
understanding Jesus’ death and resurrection, that in the death of Jesus, God
the Father’s honor was satisfied. This is
an understanding drawn from chivalry and codes of honor from the Middle Ages. To sin was to blot God’s honor. God created us, God is perfect, therefore our
behavior should reflect that. But we did
our own thing, so God’s honor was wronged.
Usually, that leads to some kind of duel or something but in this case,
God’s honor was satisfied in the death of Jesus. It has to do with the language of
kingship.
Why this discourse into theological
trivia? Because there are a lot of strands
of understanding invested into Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Central Event
of God’s plan. To understand Jesus in
this manner is to understand that Jesus stood as our champion before court of
honor of God the Father. Rather than
fight, He submitted to death for us. He
did that out of love for us. The better
we understand that, the more deeply we can invest that knowledge into our
hearts, the more wonderful our relationship is with our Lord.
More later.
Peace,
Pastor Peter
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