NOTES for Ин 5:1-15
The Torah, the commandments given by God, were always perceived as a guide along the path of righteousness. It is not surprising that Jesus turns to the Torah, and more precisely to the Decalogue, interpreting its commandments from the point of view of the Kingdom He brought into the world. And from the point of view of the Kingdom, what comes to the fore is not the action as such, but the intention behind it, the intent a person invests in the action he performs. And if the intention is present, the actual fact of performing or not performing the action changes nothing in principle. If, for example, a person hates his neighbor so much that he is ready to kill him, Jesus, as one can see, equates such hatred with murder.
At first glance such an approach may seem too strict. But it must be kept in mind that the inner Torah, about which many learned rabbis and teachers of the Torah spoke in those days, put precisely intention, intent, in the foreground. Getting rid of evil intentions was considered the most important step on the path to acquiring the inner Torah. But the issue is not only the inner Torah as such. The issue is also that intentions have special significance for the Kingdom. After all, the substance of the Kingdom is God's breath, and its fabric is formed by the relationships that bind a person both with God and with Christ, and with neighbors.
The quality of relationships determines not only the quality of a person's life in the Kingdom, but also the very possibility of remaining in it. That is why Jesus gives so much attention to intention: after all, every intention of ours, if we are inhabitants of the Kingdom, concerns not only us and the people toward whom it is directed, but the entire Kingdom as a whole, in all its fullness.