NOTES for Joh 5:24-30
Speaking about His ministry, Jesus mentions both Judgment and the resurrection of the dead—everything that, in the minds of His listeners, was associated with the end of earthly history, the coming of the Messiah, and the advent of the messianic Kingdom. Yet He still does not call Himself the Messiah. Perhaps this was precisely what gave rise to many misunderstandings: while claiming messianic prerogatives, Jesus nevertheless did not proclaim Himself the Messiah, whereas according to the generally accepted religious ideas of the time, no ordinary person, not even a prophet, was permitted anything of the kind. Why, then, does He not try to resolve the misunderstandings simply by announcing His messiahship? Surely attitudes toward His words would then have been different, and there would accordingly have been fewer accusations, perhaps none at all. After all, Judgment and a special relationship with God were both expected of the Messiah, although of course this did not involve divine-human nature in the Christian sense. The problem, however, was that at the time both the Messiah and His tasks were viewed in the Jewish community through the prism of the tradition of militant messianism. Although this tradition had seemed to die out completely in the Hellenistic period, it received new life in the era of the Maccabean wars, which were regarded as the beginning of the messianic war during or soon after which the Messiah would appear. The Messiah was expected not only to declare Himself, but also to act, and to act in a very definite, expected way. Jesus had no intention whatsoever of acting in that way. His chief task during His short earthly ministry was to bring as many people as possible into the life of the Kingdom. His mission was to go about revealing the Kingdom wherever the Father directed Him and to create a community of those who had entered the Kingdom and were ready to devote themselves to bearing witness to it. For everyone else, including even the apostles, all this was merely a prelude to what they considered the main thing: preparation for the messianic uprising and the messianic war that was to end with the expulsion of the Romans and the establishment of a new “kingdom of the righteous.” Jesus constantly speaks of the same thing—the Kingdom and His true mission—without calling Himself the Messiah precisely so that no one will demand from Him what He could in no circumstances do because it was not part of His Father’s plans. This made matters far more difficult and brought the tragic outcome closer, but it made it possible to avoid misunderstandings that could have led to a serious spiritual temptation, the temptation that in AD 70 led to the destruction of the city and the Temple foretold by the Savior.