Trying to Understand Jesus as God and Jesus as Empowered by God

May 6, 2021                            John 5: 27

 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.

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³²There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true.

            So we run into the pronoun fun.  He gave him authority…because he is the Son of Man…  Was the Son of Man given authority because he is the Son of Man, or did the Son of Man give authority because he is the Son of Man?  Confused?  Translating can be.  In this case, we are following from the previous verse.  The Father has life in himself, which leads us to two causations.  As the Father has life in himself, so the Son is granted life in the Son’s self and the Father has given him (the Son) authority to execute judgement, because he is the Son of Man.

            Jesus has already stated that judgement has been passed from the Father to the Son.  Now we get insight into how/why that has happened.  Here, it is because Jesus, the Son, is the Son of Man.  Now we return to an earlier question, what does it mean to be the Son of Man versus being the Son of God, as John the Gospel writer uses both titles for Jesus. 

            To get our heads around this is to try and get our heads around the unique individual who is Jesus.  John the Gospel writer has set the bar high for the divine authority of Jesus from the very beginning.  The Word-Jesus-was God in the first verse of the gospel.  But now we get all kinds of derivative language.  Jesus is the judge because God has granted Him this authority.  The Son has life in Himself because the Father has life in Himself (see where pronouns become confuzzled?) 

            On a side note, life is not something created but something inherent to God.  In creation, for humans especially, this passage of life ‘breathed’ into Adam is specifically noted.

            Today, we have a fully developed theological system of the Trinity, laying out God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  What the theology of “Trinity” does is that it gathers from the bible all the various strains of thought and commentary that God has inspired through the authors and sought to systematize them in a way to make sense of things. 

            To focus on the Son, on Jesus, systematic theology speaks of the two natures of Christ, fully human and fully divine.  It is a further attempt to understand the various and diverse statements in the Bible about Jesus and what He has done for us.  It is a way of unraveling the distinctions of Son of Man versus Son of God. 

            It lends itself to trying to understand verse 27.  On the one hand, the judge of humanity is God, God the Father now passed along to God the Son.  On the other hand, there is a derivative function here, God has passed along this judgeship.  Does not necessarily make Jesus ‘fully human’ but somehow ‘next in line’ to God the Father. 

            If we were in heaven, discussing this with God, it would all be clear.  But we are not.  We are limited to human understanding of the divine.  We are trying to understand the Plan of God in the best way we can as a sinful, created humanity.  God is seeking to explain things in a way that we can wrap our minds around.  It is not for our salvation, that comes through faith, not right thoughts, any more than it comes from doing the right thing. 

            But humans are curious.  We want to understand.  God does not leave us on the outside.  Some people want to explain away God, which will not happen.  But for others, the deeper our knowledge of our God, the deeper our appreciation, the deeper our faith, the deeper our maturity as people of faith.  More later.

            Peace, Pastor Peter