NOTES for Joh 5:17-24

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.