Life In God Becomes Life in the Son, Is The Life Given to Humanity at Creation

May 5, 2021                            John 5: 26

 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. ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. ³⁰“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

            So first, verse 26 comes in expansion of what has been offered in verse 25.  What 25 offers is that those dead who hear the voice of the Son of God will live.  That was the discussion from yesterday.  One thing that did not come up was the mechanism of living once more from the condition of death.  Because death is pretty permanent (Jesus has not raised anyone from the dead yet).  Just as the Father has life in himself…Jesus tells us.  It feels like a throwaway comment, made off the cuff.

            But we are returning here to Genesis, to the Creator God.  But it is not ‘just’ the days of creation, but a special moment in the creation story that rings in my mind.  God created Adam out of the ground and then breathed life into him.  This was an order of life above that which God had already created in the plants and the animals.  There was the capacity of intelligence, of being able to be in relationship with God at a cognitive and heartfelt level.  All creation reflected the goodness of God, but that is in a passive manner.  Humanity was created with the chief end, as the Westminster divines tell us, to Glorify God.  The life that God breathed into us allow us to express the goodness of God in an active manner. 

            When death was pronounced on humanity for the sins of Adam and Eve, the capacity to actively express glory to God was cut short.  Okay, so from the Father having life in Godself, we have jumped to the ultimate purpose of humanity.  Am I trying to clear the Grand Canyon on a pogo stick?

            I am actually working out a basic tenet of the Christian faith.  Our purpose is to glorify God, great.  But does that mean more than singing to God loudly in church and wearing the proper t-shirt?  That is a rather dark-humored approach to considering that we isolate glorifying God to a service of worship and/or a Christian fellowship gathering.  But there are no such limits placed on this.  It is life-wide. 

            Connect it to something else from the creation story, we are created in God’s image.  In that, we are the glory of God as the Bible makes reference to the child being the glory of the parent.  But how does that grow from our verse?

            It may help to abuse a theater metaphor.  Life is the stage on which we can glorify God.  Death closes the show.  There is no more stage on which we can glorify God.  But the life that is in the Father, the life that is the stage to which we were created, that life has been granted to the Son, that the Son may have life in himself.  It is from that life in Godself that the life of humanity was given, when God breathed life into us.  Go back to John 1, and the first verses speak of the Word being God.  What that means is developed here.

            Jesus is given the creative power of life-provision that came at creation.  Thus, when the dead hear His voice, when they return to life, it is because the Son has received that creative power of life-provision passed down from the Father.  The Father provided us with the stage, with life, and now Jesus provides us with the stage, with life.

            To use another metaphor, in Jesus, we are restored to factory settings-and then some.

            More later,

Peace, Pastor Peter