Session 10: August 13, 2022
Scripture Reading: John 4:43 - John 5:47
43 After the two days he departed from there to Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen all the things he had done in Jerusalem at the feast (for they themselves had gone to the feast).
46 Now he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water wine. In Capernaum there was a certain royal official whose son was sick. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come back from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, who was about to die. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders you will never believe!” 49 “Sir,” the official said to him, “come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus told him, “Go home; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and set off for home.
51 While he was on his way down, his slaves met him and told him that his son was going to live. 52 So he asked them the time when his condition began to improve, and they told him, “Yesterday at one o’clock in the afternoon the fever left him.” 53 Then the father realized that it was the very time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he himself believed along with his entire household. 54 Jesus did this as his second miraculous sign when he returned from Judea to Galilee.
1 After this there was a Jewish feast, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool called Bethzatha in Aramaic, which has five covered walkways. 3 A great number of sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people were lying in these walkways. 5 Now a man was there who had been disabled for 38 years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and when he realized that the man had been disabled a long time already, he said to him, “Do you want to become well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get into the water, someone else goes down there before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 Immediately the man was healed, and he picked up his mat and started walking. (Now that day was a Sabbath.)
10 So the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and you are not permitted to carry your mat.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” 13 But the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped out, since there was a crowd in that place.
14 After this Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, lest anything worse happen to you.” 15 The man went away and informed the Jewish leaders that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
16 Now because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began persecuting him. 17 So he told them, “My Father is working until now, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason the Jewish leaders were trying even harder to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was also calling God his own Father, thus making himself equal with God.
19 So Jesus answered them, “I tell you the solemn truth, the Son can do nothing on his own initiative, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he does, and will show him greater deeds than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. 22 Furthermore, the Father does not judge anyone, but has assigned all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all people will honor the Son just as they honor the Father. The one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
24 “I tell you the solemn truth, the one who hears my message and believes the one who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned, but has crossed over from death to life. 25 I tell you the solemn truth, a time is coming—and is now here—when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For just as the Father has life in himself, thus he has granted the Son to have life in himself, 27 and he has granted the Son authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.
28 “Do not be amazed at this, because a time is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and will come out—the ones who have done what is good to the resurrection resulting in life, and the ones who have done what is evil to the resurrection resulting in condemnation. 30 I can do nothing on my own initiative. Just as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the one who sent me.
31 “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who testifies about me, and I know the testimony he testifies about me is true. 33 You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. 34 (I do not accept human testimony, but I say this so that you may be saved.) 35 He was a lamp that was burning and shining, and you wanted to rejoice greatly for a short time in his light.
36 “But I have a testimony greater than that from John. For the deeds that the Father has assigned me to complete—the deeds I am now doing—testify about me that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified about me. You people have never heard his voice nor seen his form at any time, 38 nor do you have his word residing in you because you do not believe the one whom he sent. 39 You study the scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, and it is these same scriptures that testify about me, 40 but you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.
41 “I do not accept praise from people, 42 but I know you, that you do not have the love of God within you. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me. If someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44 How can you believe, if you accept praise from one another and don’t seek the praise that comes from the only God?
45 “Do not suppose that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me because he wrote about me. 47 But if you do not believe what Moses wrote, how will you believe my words?”
Chapter 4
His Reputation Precedes Him. The Galileans welcomed Jesus because they had seen what Jesus had done in Jerusalem at the feast. Remember John 2:23 (which is right after Jesus cleanses the temple): “Now while Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover, many people believed in his name because they saw the miraculous signs he was doing.”
No Honor in His Own Country. Jesus testifies that a prophet has no honor in his own country, obviously referring to Jesus himself. The saying, however, is grounded in many Old Testament stories of Israel rejecting its own prophets. Consider Hosea 9:7:
The time of judgment is about to arrive!
The time of retribution is imminent!
Israel will be humbled!
The prophet is considered a fool—
the inspired man is viewed as a madman—
because of the multitude of your sins
and your intense animosity.
The question is, which country is that? This verse comes immediately after Jesus leaves Samaria and returns to Galilee, Jesus’ own “hometown” (more like home region). Consequently, Jesus could be highlighting the fact that he was better received in Samaria (the place with racially impure, religiously deviant people) than Galilee. The other possibility is that Jesus is talking about Israel in general (or Judea). A key theme in John’s gospel is the Jews’ rejection of the Messiah, which is more consistent with this second interpretation.
From the Samaritan Woman to the Royal Official. Last week we discussed the scandal of Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman. This week the scandal continues. Galileans would have been every bit as suspicious of this royal official as they were of the Samaritan woman.
The royal official could have been a Roman official, probably connected to the military. (Remember, the Jews had been conquered and occupied by the Romans. The Jews hated the Romans.) Alternatively, he could have been a Herodian Jew. Many relatives of the Herodian family and other aristocrats lived in Tiberias. Tiberias was the wealthiest city in Galilee and the Galilean capital for many years. However, the place is almost never mentioned in the gospels. Why? Herod Antipas built Tiberias. Antipas was quite flippant to the religious and cultural sensitivities of the Jews. Some examples of his disregard for religion include his location choice for Tiberias (a graveyard, which made the city unclean), his marriage to his half-brother’s wife, and his beheading of John the Baptist.
Either way the result would have been the same: disdain from a Galilean Jew towards the royal official. The Romans were the enemy. The Herodian Jews were enemy sympathizers (or outright traitors) and religiously sinful and unclean. And in either case as well, the official would have been an oppressor (militarily, politically, commercially, or a combination of those).
Signs-Faith. In the gospels, signs (miracles) do not always lead to faith. In this case, the official and his entire household believe. This puts the royal official in the worst company: the Samaritan woman and many Samaritans in her town. I am being a bit sarcastic. The point stands though: who is believing in Jesus? Those the Jews would have least expected. Who is not believing? The Jewish religious leaders.
Chapter 5
The Pool of Bethesda. External evidence confirms the existence of a pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. To the best of our knowledge the pool was actually two pools as large as a football field and about twenty feet deep. The biblical text implies a tradition that the pool had healing properties. Such beliefs were common in the ancient world, so even John’s audience that was unfamiliar with the pool of Bethesda would recognize the idea.
That Day Was a Sabbath. The story takes place during a Jewish feast. Feasts had great religious importance and many of Jesus’ actions, including his crucifixion, occurred during Jewish feasts. In this case, however, the feast is not specified. What is specified is that the day was the Sabbath.
What is the Sabbath? Consider the following verses:
Genesis 2:2-3: By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation.
Exodus 20:8: Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. For six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.
Exodus 31:12-14: The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘Surely you must keep my Sabbaths, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. So you must keep the Sabbath, for it is holy for you. Everyone who defiles it must surely be put to death; indeed, if anyone does any work on it, then that person will be cut off from among his people.
Mark 2:23-27: Jesus was going through the grain fields on a Sabbath, and his disciples began to pick some heads of wheat as they made their way. So the Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is against the law on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry—how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the sacred bread, which is against the law for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. For this reason the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
It was against the law to carry burdens on the Sabbath if it was interpreted as work. The Pharisees held different views on the Sabbath, but generally they would have agreed that any activity that could be done before the Sabbath should not be done during the Sabbath. So, a matter of life and death would be an exception to Sabbath prohibitions but a minor healing would not have been.
Disabled Due to Sin
In this story, Jesus tells the man, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, lest anything worse happen to you.” Compare this with John 9:1-3,
Now as Jesus was passing by, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man or his parents?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind so that the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him.
In John 9, the man was not blind due to anyone’s sin. In John 5, it seems that it was sin that caused the man to be disabled. This could have a supernatural or a natural explanation. Maybe the man became disabled because he consumed a certain substance or as the result of being punished for a crime. The point is, we should not infer a general principle that disease is divine punishment for sin.
For This They Were Trying to Kill Him
Because Jesus dishonored the Sabbath (by Pharisees’ standards) and he claimed to be “equal with God,” the Jewish leaders sought to kill him (even more).
Let’s consider the charges. First there’s the charge that Jesus dishonored the Sabbath. Jesus denies the accusation. What Jesus does on the Sabbath is what he sees the Father doing (v. 19). According to Jewish theology, God was still active on the Sabbath. God sustains all life and all the world and that function does not cease on the Sabbath. Jesus is claiming to do the same work the Father does on the Sabbath, no more and no less.
Additionally, since the Father is the lord of the Sabbath and the Son does as the Father says, the Son cannot violate the Sabbath.
Regarding the second claim—equality with the Father—Jesus denies the accusation too. Notice that this equality is one of authority and not one of identity. Jesus says the Son can do nothing on his own initiative (v. 19), the Father shows the Son what to do (v. 20), and the Father assigns roles to the Son (v. 22). Jesus, in other words, submits to the Father. They are not equal in authority. This probably made more sense to the Pharisees than it does to the modern listener. The modern listener is probably thinking, but aren’t the Father and the Son one? Yes, but not the same. They are one in the ontological Trinity—that is, they are one being and share the same divine substance. They are distinct in the economic Trinity, which focuses on what God does. Jesus submits to the Father in the work of the Trinity. (The ontological Trinity and economic Trinity are not different Trinities. It is simply a way to describe the co-equal nature of the persons of the Trinity and yet their distinct roles.)
Jesus as Giver of Life and Judge
God was widely viewed as the giver of life. Not only that, but in the eschaton (the end times) God would give life again by raising the dead. Consider the following Old Testament scriptures:
Daniel 12:2. Many of those who sleep
in the dusty ground will awake—
some to everlasting life,
and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence.
Isaiah 26:19. Your dead will come back to life;
your corpses will rise up.
Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live in the ground!
For you will grow like plants drenched with the morning dew,
and the earth will bring forth its dead spirits.
But wait, there’s more! (Feel free to read that in infomercial voice.) God also gives eternal life. Remember:
John 3:14-15. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
John 3:35-36. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things under his authority. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life.
So, in John 5, is Jesus talking about life, resurrection, or eternal life? By this point we have seen that John uses double entendres to add depth of meaning. I think that this is a clear case. The healing that occurs immediately before this discourse points us to a more literal understanding of life. However, as the discourse goes on, Jesus clearly speaks of eternal life (v. 24).
Jesus describes those who believe in him as passing from death to life (v. 25). This is the same image used in John 3. For example, let’s revisit John:35-36 but let’s add just one more verse:
The Father loves the Son and has placed all things under his authority. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. The one who rejects the Son will not see life, but God’s wrath remains on him.
Also consider John 3:16:
For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Notice that John uses “will perish,” “raises the dead,” and “crossed over from death to life” interchangeably. There is a future reality (“will perish”) but it begins in the present (“crossed over from death to life”).
Jesus’ claims to give life and be the judge would have unsettled his listeners. These are claims of divine authority. More importantly, he who complains about the Son complains about the Father.
Why does the Son have the authority to execute judgment? Because he is Son of Man. In the Greek, the expression Son of Man is anarthrous (used without the article) just like that expression appears in the LXX (the Septuagint) translation of Daniel.
Daniel 7:13-14. I was watching in the night visions,
And with the clouds of the sky,
one like a son of man was approaching.
He went up to the Ancient of Days
and was escorted before him.
To him was given ruling authority, honor, and sovereignty.
All peoples, nations, and language groups were serving him.
His authority is eternal and will not pass away.
His kingdom will not be destroyed.
Testimony About Jesus
Jesus is being accused of blasphemy, a capital offense. Jesus employs a legal defense.
Deuteronomy 17:6. At the testimony of two or three witnesses the person must be executed. They cannot be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.
To be clear, Jesus is defending himself not accusing someone. He is adapting the legal principle that the testimony of two or three people is credible in a capital offense case.
The first witness? John the Baptist. He points to the Baptist’s testimony and to the fact that the Pharisees believed him (“you wanted to rejoice greatly for a short time”).
The second witness? God. This is a key point in any of the Gospels. Why is Jesus doing miracles? Because they prove who he is. The time has not yet come to make everything right. That is not the main reason Jesus is healing the sick and turning water into wine. “The deeds [he is] now doing” are a testimony to who he is and the truth of his message. This message would have resonated with his audience. Early Judaism understood that the invisible God attested to himself through his works. Moreover, Jews should make God known by sharing his works and miracles.
The third witness? The Torah. This one hurts. The Pharisees were incredibly proud that God’s word—Torah—was in them. But the Torah testifies of Jesus. To reject Jesus is to reject Torah. The word was not in them.
Jesus Is Judge not Accuser
Who accuses the Pharisees? Moses. That is to say, the Torah. In Palestinian Judaism accusers were witnesses against the defendant, not prosecutors. The irony that the very hope of the Pharisees would be their accuser would not be lost on them. The argument is simple. Moses wrote about Jesus. The Pharisees received Moses’ words. The Pharisees rejected Moses’ words by rejecting Jesus. Hence their guilt.