NOTES for Joh 5:17-18

For the Jews who listened to Christ, the most astonishing and impossible thing was that He called God His Father. To a certain degree they were right: who among human beings would really dare to call God his Father? Only in the Lord Jesus Christ is the possibility of such adoption revealed to us, while within the framework of the Old Testament relationship with God this is absolutely impossible. And here we see that rare case when the Lord does not reproach the Jews for unbelief, but gives proof that He has the right to call the Father in this way: the works of Christ, in which the glory of God is unambiguously revealed. On the basis of these very works the Lord calls people to honor the Son as they honor the Father.

But then, in today's passage, the Lord says another astonishing and very important thing. The point is that a person's life outside the New Covenant concluded by Christ passes in one way or another in expectation of judgment and in preparation for it. From deep antiquity people understood this, which is why almost all ancient religions pictured the rulers of the underworld with scales in their hands, and why even the ancient Egyptians carved assurances to the gods on the walls of tombs in the name of the dead: "I did not kill, I did not steal, I did no evil..."

The Old Covenant also does not free us from this experience of all our actions, deeds, and thoughts being subject to judgment. That is what the law is for: to be judged by it... For the Gentiles, the Lord Jesus Himself also speaks of the Last Judgment, as the evangelist Matthew tells us in chapter 25. This judgment is a kind of checkpoint beyond which you either enter eternal life or do not enter it.

So the exceptional newness of Christ's covenant consists, according to His words, in the fact that the one who believes in Him is not judged and does not come into judgment, but has already passed from death into life. It goes without saying that the word "believes" does not mean someone who only "confesses with his lips," but someone who lovingly fulfills the will of Christ. For such a person the Kingdom of Heaven begins already now. When the Lord says, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near," He offers all of us entry into it.

Speaking about His ministry, Jesus mentions both judgment and the resurrection of the dead - everything that His listeners associated with the end of earthly history, the coming of the Messiah, and the arrival of the messianic Kingdom. Yet He still does not call Himself the Messiah. Perhaps this very thing gave rise to many misunderstandings: while claiming messianic prerogatives, Jesus nevertheless does not proclaim Himself the Messiah, and an ordinary person, even a prophet, was not allowed anything of the kind according to the generally accepted religious ideas of that time. Why, then, does He not try to resolve the misunderstandings simply by announcing that He is the Messiah? Then the response to His words would surely have been different, and the accusations would have been fewer, or perhaps there would have been none at all. After all, people expected both judgment and a special relationship with God from the Messiah, though of course this was not a matter of God-manhood in the Christian sense.

The problem, however, was that in the Jewish world of that time both the Messiah and His tasks were viewed through the lens of the tradition of militant messianism. This tradition had seemed to fade almost completely in the Hellenistic period, but it gained new life in the era of the Maccabean wars, which were regarded as the beginning of the messianic war, during which or shortly after which the Messiah would appear. The Messiah had not only to declare Himself; He had to act, and to act in a very specific, expected way. Jesus had no intention of acting that way. His main task during His short earthly ministry was to bring as many people as possible into the life of the Kingdom. His mission came down to going and revealing the Kingdom wherever the Father indicated, and to creating a community of those who had shared in the Kingdom and were ready to devote themselves to bearing witness to it. For everyone else, including even the apostles, all of this was only a prelude to what they considered most important: preparation for a messianic uprising and a messianic war that was supposed to end with the expulsion of the Romans and the founding of a new "kingdom of the righteous."

Jesus, however, constantly speaks about one and the same thing: the Kingdom and His true mission. He does not call Himself the Messiah precisely so that no one will demand from Him what He could not do in any case, because it was not part of His Father's plans. This made everything much more difficult and brought the tragic outcome nearer, but it made it possible to avoid misunderstandings that could have led to a serious spiritual temptation. That temptation, in 70 C.E., led to the destruction of the city and the Temple, as the Savior had foretold.

It is striking how differently we can perceive what we read, how differently we “hear.” Perception would seem to depend on the time of day, the reader’s physical condition (quite simply, whether or not one has had enough sleep), and the desire to receive information. Yet there is One in this world who can turn everything, including hindrances, to good (see Rom 8:28). In verse 24 Jesus speaks astonishing words. But even these words can be heard in different ways. Sometimes, by God’s grace, something flares up within us in response to what we have read. He grants this either when we ask for such hearing or when He Himself very much needs us to hear. This is probably the attentive listening and response to His word of which Jesus speaks—not something achieved by our human strength alone. It is no accident that He repeatedly said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” (Matt 11:15). Who, then, does not have these ears? Yet only the Lord can open them. So let us ask God for the gift of hearing, so that the words “whoever hears My word” may apply to us.

Gradually the Lord begins to reveal to the disciples, and not only to them, the mystery of His ministry. He came to earth to "do" what His Father "does." As the Father gives life to people on the Sabbath, so Jesus gives life to people with the life of the Father. He has the right to do this because He Himself is the presence of the Father, the executor of His work: to judge and to give life.

And the evangelist calls us to that breakthrough which he calls faith: to see the unobvious, to see behind what is happening in our life, whether healing or the sense of divine peace in the heart, the face of Jesus, who carries out the Father's will and leads us to the knowledge of the One whom we cannot see by ourselves, but whom we await and honor. And whoever honors the Father must treat the One whom He sent with equal reverence and love.