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About Jesus - Steve Sweetman Previous Section - Chapter 5:16 - 30
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Section - Chapter 6:1 - 15
Testimonies
About Jesus (ch. 5:31-47) In
verse 31 Jesus states that if His testimony to who He claimed to be was
based on what He said about Himself, His testimony would not be valid.
Anyone can claim anything about himself that is not true.
This happens all the time, even in Christian circles.
Others must confirm what they see in you.
Others must see in your life what you claim.
You might even say that this is a legal matter.
As in a court of law, one can testify on his own behalf, but,
before a verdict can be reached, others must testify as well, either to
confirm or deny the one on trial.
In
verse 32 Jesus said that there was someone else who has testified on His
behalf and His testimony is true. Of course, that other one is God
Himself.
This would have driven the Jewish religious establishment crazy.
Any time Jesus associated Himself with God was considered
blasphemy, especially when Jesus called God His Father or He God's Son.
You
might ask, "How did God the Father testify on behalf of
Jesus?"
I think His testimony could be seen in the miracles Jesus
performed.
Remember, Jesus said that the disciples would see the angels of
God ascending and descending upon Him.
They would have been sent by the Father.
Also, the voice of God spoke concerning Jesus being His Son when
Jesus was water baptized by John the Baptist.
That was a verbal confirmation given by God to the Jews who saw
Jesus being baptized. In
verse 33 Jesus mentions John the Baptist as another possible one to
testify on His behalf.
For those who were accepting John's testimony and message of
repentance, they should have accepted his testimony that Jesus was the
Lamb of God, the Saviour of the world.
In
verse 34 Jesus says that He doesn’t need man’s testimony to verify
who He is.
He has God’s testimony.
Who can outdo God?
He only mentions John the Baptist to help bring salvation to
those listening to Him because many of them had believed John’s
teaching.
How
would the mention of John the Baptist help these people to come to
salvation?
In verse 35 Jesus states that for a time they enjoyed the light
of understanding John the Baptist offered them.
This implies that they did believe John, but now may have lost
interest in John and his message.
Jesus is saying that if you believed John and the light of
understanding that he shed forth, then you’d believe in me and you
would be saved.
This is how John’s testimony comes into play concerning the
validity of Jesus. Jesus
says that John was a lamp, showing forth light.
One might understand this in a number of ways.
He gave forth the light of understanding as I noted above.
His message was all about repentance, so, when he spoke about
sin, he was shining the heavenly light on the sin of the Jews.
His message was in fact the light that shown in dark places,
exposing the sin of the people.
In
verse 36 Jesus says that He has someone greater than John the Baptist
that they should also accept.
He says the work the Father has sent Him to do and finish is also
a testimony in itself. Part
of the work Jesus was doing is the miracles He performed.
They were meant to help point the way to God and salvation.
Part was His preaching.
Part was yet to come in His death, resurrection, and ascension.
The
same can be, or at least should be said of us.
If we claim to be doing God’s work, and if we claim to have a
certain ministry, then it should be evident in our lives.
The work is the fruit of God’s calling on our lives, and, all
Christians are called to some kind of ministry. In
verse 37 Jesus continues by saying, "You have never heard His (the
Father’s) voice nor seen His form, nor does His word dwell in you, for
you have not believed the one He sent."
People without Jesus in their lives cannot hear God’s voice.
Those who have given their lives to Jesus can hear the voice of the Holy
Spirit and thus hear God.
Matthew
3:16 tells us that when Jesus came up out of the waters of baptism a
voice from Heaven was heard saying, "This is my Son whom I
love."
This sounds like it was the voice of God.
That being the case, how and why does Jesus say that these people
have never heard the voice of God?
I can only guess.
Maybe, because He was speaking to a different crowd of people
that weren't at His water baptism, they never heard that voice.
Maybe Jesus was talking about more than hearing a literal voice.
Maybe He was implying that in their hearts, they have never heard
the voice of God.
Who actually heard the voice of God and seen the
Spirit fall on Jesus at His water baptism has been a controversy even
since the second century. There
is no text that clearly states that the crowd of people at the river
heard the voice or saw the Spirit fall on Jesus.
I believe according to Matthew 3:16 that at least John the
Baptist and Jesus heard the voice and saw the Spirit fall like a dove.
If the crowd of people, assuming there was a large crowd when Jesus was
baptized heard the voice, then we need to incorporate that motion into
our understanding of our present verse here in John 5. Jesus
also said that these people had never seen the form of God.
Does this imply that God has a form, even though He is Spirit, as
we learned in chapter 4?
Maybe God does have some kind of spirit form that humans cannot
see. Maybe
it resembles pure light.
Maybe only angels or spirits or redeemed saints in Heaven see
this form. Or, maybe Jesus is speaking anthropomorphically.
That is to say, He is speaking of God in human terms to help make
a point. In
verse 38 Jesus also tells these people that the Word of God does not
dwell in them.
The Word of God here implies all that God has said to In
verses 39 and 40 Jesus says something very interesting.
He says; "You diligently study the Scriptures because you
think by them you possess eternal life."
The Pharisees and Saducess constantly studied the Old Testament
Scriptures.
They thought, as Jesus states here, that the Scriptures
themselves brought eternal life, but that was not true back then and it
is not true today.
One can study the Bible and not find eternal life.
The Scriptures, as Jesus says here, testify about Him.
If you study the Bible and reject Jesus, you’ve missed the
intent of the Scriptures and fail in your attempt to find eternal life.
This does not negate the importance of studying the Bible.
Studying can lead you to Jesus.
If you give your life to Him, you’d learn about Him and find
Him in Scripture, yet if you reject Him, all the study in the world will
do you no good. Studying
the Bible should lead to Jesus, but that's not always the case, as is
clearly seen in the so-called liberal church.
If you bring unscriptural presuppositions of liberal thought to
the table of study, you will not understand what the Bible is really
saying, and, you will not find Jesus. Let's
not impose our thinking on God's word.
Let His Word speak for itself. In
verse 41 Jesus says that He does not accept the praise of men.
Why would He say this?
Jesus knew man’s heart as He has said earlier. He
knew the fickleness of man – one day he believes – the next day he
doesn’t believe.
He knew only to well how sinful man is, so why would He want to
receive praise from men?
Men might well have wrong motives for giving praise to Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t need praise to make Him feel good as we do.
We could learn a lesson here.
As Jesus was secure in Himself and His relationship to His
Father, so we should be secure in ourselves and our relationship with
Jesus.
Jesus didn’t need the praise of man to make Him feel good about
Himself.
We don’t need the praise of man to make us feel good about
ourselves.
We should feel good about ourselves based on the fact that Jesus
feels good about us, and that should suffice. In
verse 42 Jesus comes right out and tells those listening to Him that
they don’t have the love of God in their hearts.
I’m sure this irritated those hearing these words.
The Jewish religious leaders gave themselves to their brand of
Judaism.
They felt they had the love of God in their hearts, but, it was
their brand of Judaism, not God's brand.
Jesus
was not afraid to irritate people by speaking the truth. Truth
mattered to Jesus and it should matter to us.
Another thought here is that people shouldn't necessarily be
irritated by the way we speak the truth, but by the truth itself.
Sometimes Christians cause undue irritation by their own unkind
mannerisms.
Let the truth offend, not the way we present the truth.
In
verse 43 Jesus goes on to say that they accept others who testify about
themselves, but they won’t accept Him who doesn’t testify about
himself.
To Jesus that makes no sense.
Anyone can say anything about themselves to be true when in fact
what they say could be false.
The generation listening to Jesus preferred to take the chance
and believe those men who said all sorts of good things about
themselves, but refused to believe in Jesus who performed the miracles
of God that were a testimony on His behalf.
We
need to understand that not all people rejected Jesus.
Many in the crowd did accept Him, but the Jewish leadership who
represented the people for the most part rejected Him as a mad man. In
verse 44 Jesus points out one fault of the Jewish leadership and those
in the crowd who believed as they did.
Jesus says that they accept praise from one another, and this
praise is supposed to validate them, make them officially what they
claim to be.
Jesus says that praise from man means nothing if you don’t have
praise from God. It
is so important for us to understand our place with God and with Jesus.
If we are truly His then we know that we have God’s approval.
It is God’s approval that we need.
Yes, it is nice to have man’s approval, and it certainly makes
us feel good, but man’s approval comes and goes, and may not even be
accurate in the first place.
We should understand that we have God’s approval if we have
given our lives to the One He has sent, namely Jesus.
It's only our insecurities that make us look for praise of men. In
verse 45 Jesus tells those in opposition not to worry about Him accusing
them before God.
He doesn’t have to do that anyway.
They accuse themselves.
They do this by claiming that they are followers of Moses and the
Law. The
fact that Moses and the Law spoke about Jesus and they refuse to see
that is what accuses them. They
are students of the Law, but they’ve missed the intent of the Law, and
that is Jesus.
This tells us something about the Law of Moses.
Yes, it was a number of rules to live by but the main importance
of the Law was to show people their need of a Messiah, and that Messiah
is Jesus.
Paul clearly teaches this in his letter to the Romans. So
Jesus doesn’t have to accuse these people.
Their actions, their misunderstanding of the true nature of the
Law accuses them before God.
Because they claim to obey the Law of Moses when in fact they
don't, that will accuse them before God.
The Biblical fact is this.
If you refuse God's grace and thus be free from accusation, then
you will be judged by your works.
No one can stand before God and not be accused apart from God's
grace.
The choice is ours.
Be judged by our works or receive the grace of God. Verse
46 confirms what I've said above.
Jesus said that if the Jews really believed Moses, then they
would believe Him.
Why?
Because Moses spoke and taught about the Messiah who would come.
In
verse 47 Jesus simply concludes that because they didn't believe Moses,
they won't believe Him.
Of course, they thought they were believing Moses, but they
weren't.
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Section - Chapter 6:1 - 15
Previous Section - Chapter 5:16 - 30
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