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God Loves His Son

John 5:16-30

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the love of God from John 5:16-30.


“So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.’ For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Jesus gave them this answer: ‘I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.

Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.

For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.’“

This is the Word of the Lord.

“I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Christians have been reciting these words from the Apostles’ Creed for two millennia, but although the words trip off our mouths (they’re biblical words), yet just a moment’s reflection shows that they are not transparent, and all the more so to those who are farther removed from Christian heritage. What would they mean, for example, to a friendly local neighborhood Hindu? Well, Jesus may be the Son of God, but then again, so are we all.

What does it mean to your friendly neighborhood Muslim? Well, it depends. If he’s a street Muslim and not aware of much Muslim theology, let alone Christian theology, he will hold the view that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God copulated with Mary to produce Jesus and it is in that sense that Jesus is the son of God. He holds it ugly and blasphemous, and of course he’s right. It’s also not what we believe.

Even within the Scriptures themselves, the expression son of God is not by itself, apart from context, transparent. After all, angels can be called sons of God in the opening verses of Job, for example. Israel can be called the son of God. Jesus says to his followers in Matthew, chapter 5, that those who are peacemakers shall be called sons of God, and a little farther in the same chapter, those who love their enemies are called sons of God.

Paul refers to Christians as sons by adoption. So precisely what is meant? Metaphorical usage begins as early as Exodus, chapter 4, where Moses is told, “Say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son …’ ” Israel is God’s son. “… and I told you, ‘Let my son go, so he may worship me.’ ” That is picked up in Hosea 11: “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” which is then picked up and applied to Jesus in Matthew 2. What is going on?

Then supremely within Israel the king is the son of God, so that in a great enthronement psalm, like Psalm 2, the enthronement as king is also the beginning of the sonship. Now there are many passages we could look at together to think this one through carefully and closely, but none is more embracing than this passage I have just read. Right at the heart of it are these words. Verse 20: “For the Father loves the Son.”

This is the second time in John’s gospel where this has been uttered. The first is at the end of John 3. Then in John 14 we’re told the Son loves the Father. This reciprocal love is then also picked up in John 17, as we shall see in a few moments. Now it is important to remember the context. In the first verses of chapter 5, Jesus has performed a miracle on the Sabbath. Then he has told the man healed to take his mat and go home.

This precipitates a challenge from the religious authorities, who claim this man is violating the Sabbath by carrying a burden. He says it wasn’t his fault; the man who healed him told him to do so. He seems a bit thick. Eventually, this precipitates a confrontation between the authorities and Jesus. In the resulting exchange we are told four things of what it means for Christians to confess that Jesus is the Son of God. At the heart of those four things is this affirmation: the Father loves the Son. Here are those four things.

1. The Son insists he has the right to do what the Father does.

In particular, in verses 16–18, like the Father, the Son works on the Sabbath. Verse 16: “So, because Jesus was doing these things …” That is, the healing, no doubt, but also giving instructions to the healed man to take his mat and go home. “… the Jews persecuted him.”

At this point, Jesus could very well have disputed their interpretation of the law and remained entirely free of trouble. He could have said, “Let us enter into a little halachic discussion here. Let us be quite frank. In the Old Testament, the prohibition of work bound up with Sabbath was bound up with work from which you normally gained income, but I’m not a medical doctor trying to pursue a few extra bucks by healing people on the Sabbath.

Nor am I some sort of burden bearer or am I giving advice to this chap, saying, ‘If only you take your mat I’ll give you two bob for it, and maybe that way you will be able to earn a little extra pocket money.’ It’s not the sort of thing that is envisaged by Exodus or by Deuteronomy or the prophet Jeremiah. You chaps are twisting the Sabbath laws. You’re trying to become more righteous than God.”

He could have responded like that, but he didn’t. What he does instead is ratchet up the entire discussion so it is no longer primarily about Sabbath but becomes primarily about Christ. He moves from Sabbath to Christology. He says, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”

This reflects a long dispute that was going on in Jewish circles at the time. “Does God keep the law?” By and large, Jews were inclined to say, “Yes,” but they had trouble with the Sabbath, because if God ceased all of his work every Sabbath, then presumably the whole universe would fall apart. God must continue his work of providential ordering of things, must he not? So there was a dispute amongst Jews.

The one group said, “Clearly this is a law that God himself cannot possibly obey,” but they were the minority voice. Most went the other way. The Sabbath rules at this point had been broken down into 39 categories of prohibited work. One of them was carrying a burden above your shoulder. If you were in the house on the Sabbath and you moved a pot around, that was all right, but to carry a burden up on your shoulder meant you were seriously engaged in work, so that was prohibited.

To carry something around in the house was all right, but to carry something from house to house was a prohibited category of work. So those who insisted that God was not breaking the Sabbath said, “Don’t you see? God is much bigger than the entire universe, so if he moves stars and constellations around, he’s still lifting nothing higher than his shoulder. Besides, the whole thing is his domicile. It’s not as if he’s taking it somewhere else. So, you see, he is still obeying the Sabbath law.”

Thus, one way or the other, it was common assumption amongst first-century Jews that God, whether he broke the Sabbath law or not (and the majority of opinion said he did not), was nevertheless continuing to do providential work even on the Sabbath. God continues to work on the Sabbath. Jesus picks up on this. Without referring to the details of the debate, he simply says, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”

Clearly, that argument will work only if Jesus has the same prerogatives as God, and the Jews understand it. Hence verse 18: “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” The Jews understood themselves to be collectively the son of God in some sense, but no Jew would have said that he had all of the prerogatives of God.

It’s a reflection from the human side of a distinction we commonly make in systematic theology: the distinction between communicable and incommunicable attributes of God. God says, “Be holy, for I am holy.” He does not say, “Be omnipotent, for I am omnipotent.” He says, “Be perfect, for I am perfect.” He does not say, “Be omnipresent, for I am omnipresent.”

There are some attributes of God that are communicable; that is, they can be shared with God’s image-bearers, and those that can be shared must be shared. On the other hand, there are certain attributes of God that belong exclusively to him. Now look at this from the other side. Jesus is now claiming a function of God that is peculiarly the function of God; that is, the right to exercise the providential ongoing work seven days a week.

Jesus is excusing whatever he has allegedly done or not done precisely by appealing to God as his Father. He is not debating over the rules of the interpretation of the law, the so-called halacha. What he is doing is claiming that he has the rights of God. That means he is claiming a sonship that goes way beyond anything the ordinary Jew would claim, and they understand it. Still, it is important to see that what the Jews mean by “equal with God” is not quite what Jesus means. Not quite.

They think that if he makes himself equal with God, then you have two gods. You have the real God and this fake Jesus God. They hear him to be uttering some claim for ditheism, belief in two gods, but that’s not what Jesus has in mind at all. Jesus is not espousing ditheism, nor is he teaching ditheism. He is not claiming to be another God. First there’s this God, and then he, as the Son, is God number two with equal rights to the Father.

What we find in the next verses is just what is meant by saying Jesus is the Son of God with all the rights of God. That is, what we find is a defense of the peculiarly Christian form of monotheism. That’s why this passage is so important. It deals not only with the love of the Father for the Son, but it gets right to the heart of some fundamental issues in what we mean when we say, “God is one. The Father is one. The Son is one. The Holy Spirit is one. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God, and there is but one God.”

What do we mean? How are we to think about these things? Well, this at least is the first point the Son insists on. The Son insists he has the right to do what the Father does. In particular, like the Father, the Son works on the Sabbath. Now that he has established his equality with God, he now makes his second point.

2. The Son insists he is subordinate to the Father, but it is a uniquely defined subordination.

Verses 19–23: “Jesus gave them this answer …” He is specifically answering what they claim is his insistence on ditheism, on belief in two gods. The way he responds initially is, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing.”

I am sure that in this august crowd we can all cite the many passages in John’s gospel that affirm Jesus’ deity. We might begin with 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then we might remember a text like that found at the end of John 8: “Before Abraham was, I Am.” Not I was; I am. Then in the Farewell Discourse: “Do you not know that he who has seen me has seen the Father?” Or John 20:28, the confession of Thomas. Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!”

Do you know what your friendly neighborhood Arians, otherwise known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, most commonly say that verse means? Are you familiar with their arguments? They have two renditions. Probably the most common one is this. Thomas finally sees the resurrected Christ, complete with the scars in his hands, and he says, “My Lord! My God!” In other words, the first thing Thomas does under this reconstruction is blaspheme, which is intrinsically not very likely, and it doesn’t make sense of that and.

I suppose if you have a very creative imagination you can imagine someone saying in the first century, “My Lord! My God!” but “My Lord and my God” as an oath? Then at the end of it, Jesus responds, “Because you have seen me, you have believed.” What’s Jesus saying that for if all that Thomas has done is sworn? So we know the texts in John’s gospel that affirm Jesus’ deity, and we can cite them, but it’s John’s gospel that also systematically insists on the Son’s functional subordination.

Hence, for example, this text here that we have just read, but also in 5:30: “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” Or again, chapter 8, verse 29. There Jesus says, “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” Never is that cast the other way, that the Father always does what pleases the Son. There are reasons for this, as we’ll see in a moment.

Or in the Farewell Discourse in John, chapter 14, verse 31: “… the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” There is repeated in John’s gospel a deep functional subordinationism. Never are these texts cast the opposite way. John 14:31 records Jesus saying, “The world must learn that I always do what the Father commands me.” Never does the Father say, “The world must learn that I always do what Jesus commands me too.” There is not an equivalence. There is, in fact, a one-way, functional subordinationism.

The rest of this section, verses 19–23, then unpacks what Jesus means by this subordinationism. In the original language it is structured around four fors. The word for in the original is used four times, and each marks a progressive stage in the argumentation. Here’s the first for. Verse 19: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because [for] whatever the Father does the Son also does.” That’s remarkable.

We need to back off here just a bit and remember how sonship language was used in the ancient world before the Industrial Revolution and before the discovery of DNA. In the ancient world, most sons grew up to do what their fathers did. Most daughters grew up to do what their mothers did. If you’re a boy and your father is a farmer, you become a farmer. You grow up and your father is a baker, you become a baker. Your father’s name is Stradivarius, and you’re going to grow up making violins. That’s the way it works.

Within that kind of framework, it’s not simply that you pick up certain skills and trades from the old man, but your entire culture, your entire clan identity, your entire self-identity, your sense of being is bound up with being shaped, formed, taught by your father, or if you’re a young woman, by your mother. Out of this come a variety of metaphors that crop up right through the Bible, Old Testament and New.

Certain people are called sons of Belial, sons of worthlessness. This does not mean your father is called “Worthless.” It means you are displaying such disgustingly worthless behavior the only decent explanation is that you belong to the worthless clan. Do you see? That is exactly what is going on when Jesus says, on the positive side, “Blessed are those who are peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

The point is God is the supreme peacemaker, so if we are engaged in making peace, then at least that far we’re reflecting something of the character of God. We’re displaying something of the family of God, something of the clan of God, the identity of God, so we’re called sons of God. It goes the other way too. Do you remember Jesus’ dispute in John 8 with Jews? He questions who they are.

“Well, Abraham is our father.” “Oh no, he’s not,” Jesus says. “Abraham rejoiced to see my day. Meanwhile, you’re trying to kill me. You can’t be the children of Abraham.” Jesus is not denying the genetics. It’s not that Jesus is saying there’s no such thing as DNA, that they’re not really Jews. He’s saying at the functional level they’re not acting like Abraham. Abraham was a man of faith. They’re acting outside that family tradition. They can’t possibly belong to that family tradition.

Well, they ratchet it up. “Actually, we’re sons of God,” they say. “Oh no, you’re not,” he says. “You’re actually sons of the Devil. The Devil was a liar from the beginning, and you’re not telling the truth about me. He was a murderer from the beginning, and you’re trying to kill me. That shows that you’re sons of the Devil.”

He’s not saying that the Devil somehow slept with their mother and produced a half-breed. It’s a functional category. It’s not an ontological category. It’s not a category of being. It’s a functional category, a category of performance. That’s also why the apostle Paul can distinguish who is truly the child of Abraham and who is not, and it doesn’t turn fundamentally on genetics. It turns on who shares Abraham’s faith.

This sort of thing is endemic throughout the entire Scripture. What is unique here is that Jesus speaks functionally. He does what God does. But he blows it out of the water. He says, “Whatever the Father does the Son also does.” You see, two of you people may conceivably get into a scrap in the next three or four days. It’s not very likely with all the godliness here, but it’s quite possible that two or three of you could get into a scrap and someone else would come along and be a peacemaker.

I might come to that person and say, “Well done. You’re a peacemaker. You thus show yourself to be a son of God.” But just because you or I might serve as peacemaker does not mean we do everything God does. I might be a peacemaker insofar as I make peace in some small way and thus show myself to reflect God’s peacemaking function, but that does not entitle me to say, “And whatever the Father does, I also do.”

For a start, I haven’t made a universe recently, whereas the Jesus here has already been introduced as the Word made flesh in chapter 1, of whom it is written, “Without him was not anything made that was made.” Everything the Father does the Son has also done. There is no functional distinction whatsoever. There is coextensive action with God, and that is unique to Jesus Christ.

Functionally subordinate, doubtless he is, but he is not subordinate in the sense that there are some divine things he either cannot or does not do. He is coextensive with his Father in action. That’s what the text unambiguously says. “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, [for] whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

This brings us to the second for. Now we come to the heart of this issue. Verse 20: “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” Picture Stradivarius Senior, this maker of violins. He chooses the right woods. He chooses the right horse’s hair. He knows all of the tricks of the precise ratios of how long the neck should be compared with the case. He knows exactly how the hole should be cut. He knows how to make things with perfect symmetry.

He knows how the wood should be dried. He makes a perfect violin. Then he knows how to mix the varnish that was used. In those days, they put arsenic in it. That’s why you can’t make a Stradivarius violin anymore. You’re not allowed to use arsenic. So Stradivarius makes these wonderful violins, aged wood, well chosen, supremely measured, magnificently cut, superbly finished, and because he loves Stradivarius Junior, he shows him all he does.

Stradivarius Senior says, “I’m going to make the little tyke find out for himself. I know that I have received all the tradition from my forefathers for the last 300 years, but this little gaffer, tough on him. He needs to grow up on his own.” Is that what Stradivarius Senior says? No. Because he loves Stradivarius Junior, he shows him all he does, and Stradivarius Junior thus, in due course, learns to do all that Stradivarius Senior does in making violins.

Now that’s an imperfect analogy, of course, because it’s based on the ignorance of the son and on sequence in time and so forth, and some of these things, as we’ll see, don’t apply to God, yet there is an element of clarity in that particular illustration. It’s the love of the Father for the Son that guarantees that the Son does all that the Father does. That’s what the text says. That’s the significance of the little word for.

“The Son does all that the Father does, for the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” The guarantee, in fact, that the Son does all that the Father does in this argument is precisely the love of the Father for the Son. Ah, but you say, “Wait a minute. Let’s turn this around. Will the Son then do all the Father gives him to do?” That is also answered by John’s gospel. Do you recall the text I read at the end of John 14?

“The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” In other words, the love of the Father for the Son ensures that all the Father does the Son also does. The love of the Son for the Father ensures that all the Father gives him to do the Son perfectly performs. It is precisely the intra-Trinitarian love relationship in the very Godhead that guarantees the perfection of the revelation of the Son.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is an astonishingly important point. How shall we think of God disclosing himself in a finite human being? Well, finite in certain respects at least. When Jesus is in Jericho, he’s not in Jerusalem. When he’s in Jerusalem, he’s not in Galilee. Well, at one level.… This is not the whole answer, but it is part of the answer, and it is the answer that is being stressed here.

At one level, it turns on the perfection and completeness of what the Father assigns to the Son to do and the perfection and completeness of the Son’s love for the Father that always does everything and always what the Father gives him to do. Thus, the marvelous self-disclosure of the Father in the Son turns, in the first instance, not on God’s love for us but in the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father.

Please do not misunderstand me. I’m not depreciating God’s love for us, but I think we spend so much time thinking about the Father’s love for us or the Father’s love for the elect or the Father’s mercy even on his enemies, or whatever, that we sometimes overlook what stands at the heart of it all: the love of the Father for the Son and the perfect love of the Son for the Father.

What carries Jesus to the cross? What do we hear him praying in Gethsemane? Do we hear him praying, “Oh, all of those terrible sinners.… I so much really do want to go to the cross so I can bear their sin”? Undoubtedly, that theme is taught in Scripture. I don’t mean to pooh-pooh it in any sense. But in the agony of Gethsemane, that’s not what is on Jesus’ lips. It is, “Not my will but yours be done.”

What carries Jesus to the cross in the most hideous torment of the temptation of Gethsemane is what Jesus himself highlights at the end of John 14: the love of the Son for the Father. The world itself must learn that because Jesus so perfectly loves the Father he always does what the Father commands him to do. The Father has commissioned the cross. How could the Son not go?

Moreover, in John’s gospel, this theme is tied to many other doctrines. It’s tied, for example, to the security of the believer in John, chapter 6, verses 37 and following. You recall how John 6:37 is often misinterpreted. It’s often considered a “Calminian” verse. “All that the Father has given to me will come to me …” That’s the Calvinist part, we’re told. “… and he who comes to me I will never cast out.” That’s the Arminian part, we’re told. But it really doesn’t understand the text very well. It certainly doesn’t understand the context.

The idea, rather, is, “All that the Father gives to me will come to me …” That’s the Father’s grant. It’s his gift. “… and now that they’ve come to me, the one who has come to me I’m not going to cast out.” This is a litotes. It’s a figure of speech in which you affirm something positive by denying the negative. “How many people were at the opera last night? How many people went to the football game?” “Oh, not a few.”

What does “not a few” mean? It means quite a lot. You negate something, and then it’s the positive side that is actually being stressed. You negate the negation to stress the positive. “Not a few” in order to say “quite a lot.” “I’m not going to cast out anyone the Father gives me. No, I’m going to keep them in. The Father gives them to me, and I’m going to keep them in.” Why? The next verses tell us.

“For I came down from heaven to do my Father’s will, and this is his will: that of all those he gave me I should lose none of them.” In other words, if Jesus lost anyone the Father gave him it would either mean he was unwilling or unable to do what the Father gave him to do, but John’s gospel insists, in fact, that he always does what the Father commands him to do, precisely because the Son loves the Father.

Do you realize that your eternal security is bound up with the devotion the Son has for his Father? Our salvation is tied to the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father. So although there is a functional subordination, it is a functional subordination within a Trinitarian unity of love.

That brings us to the third for. At the end of chapter 5, verse 20, the Father loves the Son, and then the Son expands on further things that will be shown to him in the days of his flesh that he will then accomplish, such as raising the dead. He will show even greater things than these. “For …” This for introduces an exemplification of how the Son does all that the Father does.

“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.” The point is that any Bible believer knows it is God’s prerogative to give life and God’s alone. Do you recall the account of Naaman? He has heard from the little slave girl there is someone back home in Israel who can actually cure leprosy. Not knowing the details, he goes to the king’s door and says, “All right, heal me.”

The king says, “Who can give life but God alone?” Of course he’s right. When Elisha does give life, he does so self-consciously only as God’s prophet, as God’s agent, as God’s servant. He cannot dispense life to whomever he will. No, no. He is God’s agent, God’s servant. But what does Jesus say? “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.”

That brings us to the final for. The NIV that I’m using uses moreover here, but in fact, it’s for, and there’s a further explanation that is tacked on. Follow the logic with me. Verse 21: “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. [For] the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son …”

Do you see what’s being said here? This understanding of sonship is being pushed one stage farther. Stradivarius Senior now has a son who’s doing everything Stradivarius Senior can do, so now Stradivarius Senior says, in effect, “Son, from now on, you do all the varnish. You do the whole lot. I won’t do it anymore. You do it.”

That’s what the text is saying here, in effect, without using varnish or Stradivarius. “The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son.” This does not mean the Son is now so independent he can thumb his nose, as it were, at the Father’s face, because you read in verse 30, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.”

So even though it is the Son who exercises the judgment, he exercises nothing other than the perfect judgment of God. Stradivarius Junior may be doing the varnish at this point, but he only makes the varnish according to the tried and true formula of Stradivarius Senior. He’s not saying, “I think I’m going to try something new this week. I don’t like the arsenic. We’ll try something else.”

Here is the point of the whole paragraph. It is astonishingly important. The Son insists he is subordinate to the Father, but it is a uniquely defined subordination. He does all that the Father does. He obeys the Father perfectly out of love for the Father, and the Father shows him all that he does out of love for the Son.

All the plan of redemption, all the great purpose in the incarnation, all the road to the cross.… It is all part of the Father’s mission, which the Son lovingly follows. What’s the Father’s aim in all of this? Verse 23: “… that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.” How should that surprise us when we’ve been told the Father loves the Son?

You watch some dads, and when their sons get to the age where they can challenge them, the fathers get all sort of uppity. They are terrible dads. I know a man who was very good with his children when the kids were small, but once the kids got to the age where they could challenge Dad, then the dad always felt threatened and just closed down on them intellectually, physically. Of the three kids he had, one was a remarkable athlete.

They used to go out in the woods when the boy was 8 for their long walks, and they would stop somewhere and pick up some stones and aim at a tree. “How many times can you hit the tree out of 10 stones?” The father would always win. One day, when the boy was 9, the father chose a tree that was pretty far away. The father hit the tree twice. The boy hit the tree nine times. The father never played again.

That’s appalling. If the father loves the son, doesn’t the father rejoice to see the son’s triumphs and victories? Of course, the analogy is not perfect, because it’s not as if the Son is going to outclass his Father here, but if the Father really loves the Son, then he wants all to honor the Son as he himself is honored, and anything less would be a betrayal of love in the very Godhead. That brings us to the third thing on which the Son insists.

3. The Son insists that, like his Father, he has life-in-himself.

Read it with hyphens. Verses 24–26. Follow the logic carefully. Verse 24: “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me …” Notice the difference. “Hears my word and believes him who sent me.” It’s not, “Whoever hears my word and believes me,” because Jesus says only what the Father gives him to say. He does only what the Father gives him to do.

Therefore, if you hear words from Jesus, they are as much God’s words as Jesus’ words. “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” All of Jesus’ words are God’s words. That is the result of the perfection of this love amongst the persons of the Godhead. “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned …” Already eternal life has come upon this person, and future condemnation is unthinkable.

“… he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” At this juncture, I think Jesus is still speaking of the spiritual life that comes by the proclamation of the word of Christ. By the proclamation of the word of Christ, those who are spiritually dead, those who are dead in trespasses and sins, hear and come to life, because the Son has the power to give life as God himself has power to give life.

Then these words. Verse 26: “For …” Notice the explanation again. “… as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.” Isn’t that a strange verse? You can scratch your head on that one for a long time. Let me tell you two ways to make it easier. They’re both heretical, but let me tell you two ways to make it easier.

If you have, “As the Father has life-in-himself, so the Son has life-in-himself,” then you preserve the deity of the Son, but you’re very close to ditheism. You’re very close to two gods, because when we speak of God having life in himself, do we not mean that he is not only self-existent.… That is, in his origins he is uncaused. He is self-existent. He has life in himself. But we mean, to use a word from the Puritan vocabulary, he is the God of aseity. It’s from the Latin a se, from himself.

He is so much from himself he doesn’t need us. That’s what Paul says to the Athenians. It’s not as if God has need of anything. It’s not as if God is up there on Sunday morning saying, “Boy, this is going to be a bad hair day. Look at how badly they’re singing today. It’s going to be really lonely unless they get their act together and worship me properly.” God doesn’t need us. He just doesn’t need us.

This does not mean he does not interact with us personally, but he does not need us. He does not interact with us because of some sort of psychological or other impairment. Pagan religion thinks of God/human being relationships in terms of a tit-for-tat exchange. “I scratch your back; you scratch my back. I offer the right sacrifice; you give me the right blessing.” That’s how pagan religion works.

But what are you going to give the God of the Bible? In eternity past he was already perfectly content. It’s not as if he started feeling lonely after an eon or two and said, “I think I’ll have to make an image bearer so heaven won’t be so empty.” He doesn’t need us. He never has. He never will. He is the God of aseity. He is self-existent. That does not mean he is impersonal, but he is self-existent.

So not only in his origins, but for all of his existence, in fact, he doesn’t need us. He has life in himself. It’s not as if he has gotten it from somewhere or if he’s a determined being. He has life in himself. If that’s what “life in himself” means for God, then you could preserve the deity of the Son by saying, “As the Father has life in himself, so the Son has life in himself,” but then it sounds as if you have two gods. It sounds as if you’re back to ditheism.

Or you could make sense of this text another heretical way. You could say, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted to the Son to have life.” There’s no difficulty in understanding what the sentence means, but then the Son doesn’t have life in himself. In this respect, he becomes a derived being. In this respect, he is unlike the Father. He becomes a secondary God. The Arians are right. Join the local Kingdom Hall.

What the text says instead is something that pulls at us from all directions and makes us uncomfortable because it is not easy to understand. “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted to the Son to have life in himself.” Across the history of the church, the best explanation I have ever seen is a very common one. It has come up again and again. It has been to understand that this grant is an eternal grant. It has always been, is always this way … if I may speak of eternity in terms of “always.” That sounds more like omnitemporal than eternal.

We are right at the very edge of our capacity to understand, but it is an eternal grant. What that does is preserve simultaneously the functional subordination of the Son that Jesus himself has insisted upon and the absolute coextensiveness not only of Jesus’ actions with the Father but even of his attributes, even of his life-in-himself autonomy, but without any hint of ditheism. You are standing right at the very edge of the mystery of the Trinity. That brings me to the last step in Jesus’ argument.

4. The Son of God insists he is also the Son of Man, and as such he is the God-sanctioned judge of all.

Verse 27: “And he [God] has given him [the Son] authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.” We’ve just been told that, to use the analogy, Stradivarius Senior has given Stradivarius Junior certain tasks. The Father has given the task of judgment to the Son. Now we’re told why. He has given the Son authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.

Now there is something hidden in the original here that is not likely to appear in any of our translations. The title Son of Man shows up scores of times in our Gospels and elsewhere, without exception, with the article: the Son of Man. It is a title, and it calls to mind first and foremost the great “son of man” figure in Daniel, chapter 7. One like a son of man approaches the Ancient of Days to receive a kingdom from him.

That’s the background of the title that is on Jesus’ lips again and again and again as he refers to himself, but here, and only here in all of the Gospels, there is no article. In the original language you can’t, therefore, render this, “Because he is a son of man.” That’s not quite right either. But you’ve moved from title and specificity of title to an emphasis on the nature of being. I think you could rightly translate verse 27, “He has given him authority to judge because he is human being.” He is son of man in exactly the way Ezekiel is son of man. He’s human being.

After all, that has also been stressed by this book. The prologue that begins, “The Word was with God” also insists, “The Word became flesh.” Thus, although God’s justice would be perfect just because God’s knowledge is perfect and his justice is impeccable.… He is utterly impartial. Although God’s justice would inevitably be perfect, he has assigned judgment to the Son precisely because the Son is human being.

He knows not only with the knowledge of omniscience but with the knowledge of personal experience what human being is, and to use the language of Hebrews, he was tempted on all points as we are, yet without sin. This does not mean his judgment is somehow softer than the Father’s, because after all, we read in verse 30 that the Son judges nothing by himself. He judges only in perfect line with what the Father would have done in any case.

Nevertheless, in the Father’s great wisdom, in the perfection of the unity of the salvific plan and the mind of the triune God, it is the Son, himself God, himself a human being, who exercises all of the divine function of judging on the last day. How shall we gainsay him who will not only judge with the perfection of deity but can look at us, as it were, eyeball to eyeball and say, “I am one of you; I have been tempted on all points as you are”?

“Do not be amazed at this,” the text says (verse 28). Don’t be amazed at this authority. “… for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out …” Now you look beyond the time when the spiritually dead come to spiritual life and cross over and begin the reign with God. No, now we are looking at the very end, when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. “… those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”

Here, too, Jesus is not acting independently. “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” On the last day, as it were, a voice will be heard saying, “Elizabeth Margaret Maybury Carson, step forth!” and my mother will rise from the dead. “Adolf Hitler, step forth!” and Adolf Hitler will rise from the dead. “Pol Pot, step forth!” and Pol Pot will rise from the dead.

Every eye will see him, and not only will justice be done but justice will be seen to be done by him who has perfect authority, all the authority of the Godhead, all the authority of human experience. The Son insists he is not only Son of God but Son of Man, and as such he is the God-sanctioned judge of all.

Now this is a dense passage. I know that. Yet with your permission, I would like to take just a few more moments to unpack what this means for our living and thinking. It is not enough only to understand it. Now let me tease out just for a few moments what bearing this should have in our life and walk and ministry. There are several implications.

1. There are implications for putting your Bible together.

Now here I dearly wish I could spend a couple of hours, but I won’t spend more than a couple of minutes. It is important to remember how John’s gospel insists that Jesus is the true temple. He’s the true vine. He’s the true lamb. He’s the true Passover feast. He’s the true serpent in the wilderness. He’s the true manna from heaven. He’s the true Davidic king. He’s the true sacrifice.

In the light of the New Testament as a whole, Christians learn how to read their Old Testament Scriptures to show how those same Scriptures had embedded announcements within the text that had announced their own principled obsolescence. They were pointing forward to something greater, and in this regard Jesus is the true son. Israel was the son. The king was the son, but Jesus is the Son of God par excellence.

Just as in all of these other typological arrangements there is a ratcheting up, so that the Old Testament temple.… Well, it was masonry, no matter how glamorous. The new temple is Jesus Christ himself, the great meeting place between God and human beings. That old sacrifice was the blood of bulls and goats. This is the blood of the eternal Son.

The old vine was just a vine, or, applied metaphorically to Israel, it was Israel, but now Jesus himself is the Vine, and through him pulsates all the life that gives life and fruitfulness to all of the branches. There is a ratcheting up. So also there is this supreme ratcheting up in the very Son. He is the Son of God par excellence. He is the King par excellence. Understanding how these things work helps us to put our Bibles together, to preach from the Old Testament with integrity and thoroughness.

2. There are implications for how to teach the sonship of Christ.

More broadly, how to teach the Trinity. You see, increasingly, we do not live in an age where people know their Bibles anymore. Even in our churches, the level of Bible learning has broadly declined, although there are some wonderful exceptions. Nevertheless, in our churches generally the knowledge of the Bible has declined. In the culture at large, the declension has been catastrophic.

When I do university missions (I still do two or three a year; my next one is at Yale this autumn), I presuppose that the unbelievers who are present don’t know the Bible has two Testaments. I explain the big numbers and the little numbers. They don’t know chapters and verses. They don’t know anything. They’re bone ignorant.

One of my students a year or two ago was in downtown Chicago with his fiancÈe, and she was wearing a chain around her neck with a little wooden cross dangling from it. A teenager stopped them in the street and said, “What are you wearing a plus sign around your neck for?” This is standard fare. Now it is less so in the South. I acknowledge that. But cheer up. It’s coming here too … fast.

You may be in a small rural community somewhere where there’s still a great deal of biblical knowledge presupposed. That’s changing. It’s changing really fast, and unless you only want to evangelize people who are over the age of 45, rising every year, you have to think through how to evangelize biblical illiterates … they don’t know anything. Also, in our metropolitan areas, you have to think through how to evangelize Muslims and Hindus and explain what “Son of God” means in that context.

This is a great passage for working through with Muslims who are willing to engage you in serious conversation, because it takes away so many of the misunderstandings about what is involved in this sonship. It begins to form a framework for understanding the triune God. This is not something we can afford to duck. These were the sorts of things that an earlier generation simply presupposed. We are having to recapture them and rearticulate them again and reteach them and relay the foundations all over again.

3. There are implications for evangelistic decisiveness.

There are very strong affirmations here made about who Jesus Christ is, how he discloses God, how all of his words and deeds are the words and deeds of God. This leads to the immense appeal of verse 24, which we all learned as children in our Sunday schools.

There is a decisiveness demanded by this text that forces us one way or the other, and I want to argue that there are several major doctrinal areas in the Western world now where we must understand that the decisive turning points are so sharply presented before us that if we hedge on them, if we duck on them, if we get them wrong, we will corrupt the gospel. Unwittingly, but that is what we’ll do.

Let me take an example far removed from this text so that you see what I mean. One of the things that is very common with the under-40 crowd, influenced by postmodernism and the like, is an inability to deal with the notion of sin in any biblical way. Sin is a social construct. There’s no odium connected with it. There’s no sense of massive offense before a creator God. Guilt is merely subjective.

But I tell you the truth; unless we can recapture what sin and evil are in God’s eyes, we will always, always, always end up domesticating the gospel, because unless you can agree what the problem is, you cannot agree on what the solution is. If you do not see what the nature of the problem is that Christ addresses, you will have him addressing something slightly adjacent and, thus, unwittingly transmute the gospel into something else.

So also with the exclusive claims as to the very nature of the Godhead, as to the nature of who Jesus is. You cannot fudge. You cannot present a kind of automobile-club theology. “Jesus is a nice man. He’s a very nice man. He’s a very, very, very nice man, and when you break down, he comes by and fixes you.” That’s not the gospel. It may be true, but it’s not the gospel. Here, then, is one of those decided turning points, where in the midst of gospel appeal, like verse 24, a christological issue is laid out for us with remarkable clarity. Don’t duck it.

4. There are implications for our worship.

Not only for our corporate worship but for how we think about God and love him and obey him individually, in our homes, in our churches, in our roles in society. For if we are to worship God aright, we must see him as he is. We grow in our capacity, in our willingness, to worship in spirit and truth as we grow in our vision of God.

We do not grow primarily by deciding to change instruments, whether from guitars to organs or vice versa. That’s not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is.… Are we growing in our understanding of and conformity to the living God as he has disclosed himself in Christ Jesus? That is the issue. That is why Paul can write to Timothy and say, “Watch your life and doctrine. Let all see your progress.”

Five years from now, the people in your church ought to see progress in your life and doctrine and, out of this increasing clarity, worship God the better, all by God’s grace, worshiping him in spirit and in truth, in reverence and in obedience, because this is the God who is there, to use the old Schaefferism. This is the God who has disclosed himself in Christ Jesus. There is no other. The Father loves the Son and has determined that all will honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. Do you want to do the Father’s will? Honor the Son. Let us pray.

Father God, I know so few of these brothers and sisters in Christ, but you know us, every one. Before a thought is in our head you know it. You know when we stand up and when we sit down. You know which ones have come tired and frustrated, under great pressure in what they perceive to be a day of small things, and which ones have come full of the joy of the Lord, grateful that things are going so well.

You know which ones are facing serious illness, maybe recent bereavement, which ones are pressured by awkward teenagers at difficult times in their lives, which ones are serving in churches that are full of joy and gratitude, and which ones are serving in churches full of dissension and malice, and who is sufficient for these things.

O Lord God, with renewed grasp of who you are, the heavenly Father who has disclosed himself supremely in Christ Jesus, draw our attention away from ourselves and on you our Maker, our Redeemer, so that the passing difficulties of this troubled sinful world, of our own corrupt lives, will be seen in an eternal perspective. You are our Father. You are our Maker. You are our Sovereign, and you have insisted, you have willed it, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father.

The matchless love you have shown for him, the love that he has shown for you in perfect obedience we hear spilling out into our lives when we read the words, “He who did not spare his own Son, this Son, but freely gave him up for us all, how shall he not also with him graciously give us all things?” O Lord, enlarge our vision. Increase our faith and thus our comfort as we contemplate you who inhabits eternity. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

 

 

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.