03/21/2023 – Gospel of John Fellowship. – Chapter Five
As a reference tool for your questions over our reading, here is the link to Matthew Henry’s concise and full versions of his chapter five commentary:
https://www.christianity.com/bible/commentary/matthew-henry-concise/john/5
https://www.christianity.com/bible/commentary/matthew-henry-complete/john/5
I have been a recent run with Barclay’s commentary, but I actually resonate more with Matthew Henry’s commentary as a whole. I am still going to stick with excerpt notes from Barclay’s commentary, unless I specify otherwise in the footnote at the end of an excerpt quote.
Man’s Helplessness and Christ’s Power – John 5: 1-9
“… Jesus went on to tell the man to get up. It is as if he said to him: ‘Man, bend your will to it and you and I will do this thing together!’ The power of God never dispenses with the effort of man. Nothing is truer than that we must realize our own helplessness; but in a very real sense it is true that miracles happen when our will and God’s power co-operate to make them possible…”
“… There are always deeper truths below the surface and even the simple stories are meant to leave us face to face with eternal things.” (pg. 177 – pg. 181
Note – In this passage, it is pointed out that certain scholars think this passage is an allegory, and then it precedes to connect the story details to the allegory. I would submit should that the default position should be both , not to be precluding that the events did not actually occur as written.
The beauty of reading the Bible cover to cover, multiple times over a lifetime is that meanings and significance to our lives can expand, perhaps reflecting different life experiences each time that we read it. A weak analogy: It is like un-peeling an onion.
The Tremendous Claims – John 5: 19-29
“This passage is so important that we must first study it as a whole and then take it in shorter sections.
First then, let us look at it as a whole. We must try to think not only how it sounds to us, but also how it sounded to the Jew who heard it for the very first time…
Many of these claims we do not now readily see, but they would be crystal clear to the Jews and would leave them aghast.
(i). The clearest claim is the statement that Jesus is the Son of Man. We know how common that title is in the gospels. It has a long history. It was born in Daniel 7: 1-14. The Authorized Version mistranslates the Son of Man for a son of man (Daniel 7:13)…
(ii). But not only is this claim to be God’s Messiah made in so many words; in phrase after phrase it is implicit. The very miracles which had hapened to the paralyzed man was a sign that Jesus was Messiah. It was Isaiah’s picture of the new age of God that ‘then shall the lame man leap like a hart’ (Isaiah 35:6). It was Jeremiah’s vision that the blind and the lame would be gathered in (Jeremiah 31: 8,9).
(ii). There is Jesus’s repeated claim to raise the dead and to be their judge when they are raised. In the Old Testament God alone can raise the dead and alone has the right to judge. ‘I, even I, am he and there is no god beside me: I kill and I make alive’ (Deuteronomy 32:39). ‘The Lord kills and brings to life’ (12 Samuel 2:6)… ‘The judgment is God’s’ (Deuteronomy 1:17).
For Jesus to speak like this was an act of the most extraordinary and unique courage. He must have known well that to make claims like this would sound the sheerest blasphemy to the orthodox Jewish leaders and was to court death. The man who listened to words like this had only two alternatives — he must either accept Jesus as the Son of God or hate him as a blasphemer.”
Question #4 – bigger picture question: How is it that we hear so often : Jesus was a prophet and/or Jesus was a good person and example for us? Doesn’t logic preclude this premise? (the law of contradiction) Shouldn’t I immediately point out in urgent witness that they can’t get into heaven without accepting Jesus as their Savior and God. Does that not take precedence over my fear that they walk away from me in anger and never speak to me again?
Acceptance Means Life – John 5:24:
The verse: “This is the truth I tell you — he who listens to my word and believes on him who sent me has eternal life, and is not on the way to judgment, but he has crossed from death to life.”
Question: 5 – Yes, this verse jumped out at me like never before. But in this case, I expect that will be the case going forward as well.
Here is Barclay’s commentary that I found pithy and sublime:
“When we do that we enter into three new relationships.
- We enter in a new relationship with God. The judge becomes the father; the distant becomes the near; strangeness becomes intimacy and fear becomes love.
- We enter into a new relationship with our fellow men. Hatred becomes love; selfishness becomes service; and bitterness becomes forgiveness.
- We enter into a new relationship with ourselves. Weakness becomes strength; frustration becomes achievement; and tension becomes peace.
The Only True Judgment – John 5:30:
“… On the other hand the judgment of God is perfect.
God alone is holy and therefore he alone knows the standards by which all men must be judged. God alone is perfectly loving and his judgment alone is delivered in the charity in which all true judgment alone is delivered in the charity in which all true judgment must be given. God alone has full knowledge and judgment can be perfect only when it takes into account all the circumstances. The claim of Jesus to judge is based on the claim that in him is the perfect mind of God. He does not judge with the inevitable mixture of human motives; he judges with the perfect holiness, the perfect love and perfect sympathy of God.”
The Witness of God – John 5: 37-43
“They (Jewish religious leaders) made a still bigger mistake — they regarded God as having given men a written revelation. The revelation of God is a revelation of history. It is not God speaking, but God acting. the Bible itself is not His revelation; it is the record of his revelation. But they worshipped the Bible’s words.
There is only one proper way to read the Bible – to read it as all pointing to Jesus Christ. Then many of the things which puzzle us, and sometimes distress us, are clearly seen as stages on the way, a pointing forward to Jesus Christ, who is the supreme revelation and by whose light all other revelation is to be tested. The Jews worshipped a God who wrote rather than a God who acted and therefore when Christ came they did not recognize him. The function of the scriptures is not to give life, but to point to Him who can.“
The Ultimate Condemnation – John 44-4:
“… Here is the great and threatening truth. What had been a great privilege of the Jews had become their greatest condemnation. No one could condemn a man who had never had a chance. But knowledge had been given to the Jews; and the knowledge they had failed to use had become their condemnation. Responsibility is always the other side of privilege.”
Soli Deo Gloria!