The Spirituality of the Gospel of John: Part 3

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

It may seem at first as if what I am going to try to do this afternoon is a bit divorced from the larger subject, but I hope if you’ll bear with me you’ll see the significance in due course. In fact, in some ways, for those of you who are going to the banquet this evening, you’ll see the significance spelled out a bit more there. Although that’s an independent talk and doesn’t really strictly belong to this series, you’ll see a connection there that I’m not going to spend a lot of time spelling out this afternoon. Let me begin with prayer, and we’ll plunge into John 5.

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Help us, Lord God, to understand your most Holy Word, and not only to understand, but where it mandates things also to obey. Grant that our knowledge of you may not merely be propositional knowledge of doctrinal correctness, but by the Word to know you, whom to know is life eternal. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

I want to direct your attention to John 5:16–30. We are really now picking up on another element of revelation as foundational to spirituality. I’m going to take the time to read verses 16–30, and then in a few minutes we will also spend a little bit of time on select paraclete passages in John 14 and 15. So that’s where we’re heading in this section.

The setting, I remind you, is the healing of the paralyzed man at the pool called Bethesda in John 5:1–15. Then we read (verse 16), “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.’ ”

Some of us belong to churches where occasionally we will recite one form or another of the creed, perhaps the Apostles’ Creed or the like, and we say, “I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Of course, because we read our Bibles, we’re familiar with the expression Son of God, but we ought to pause now and then and remember just how extraordinarily strange that expression is. Does God have a son?

In many religions there are many sons of God, and sonship language is used in very diverse ways even with the Bible itself. Israel is God’s son, as early as Exodus 4. “Israel is my firstborn son, and I say, ‘Let my son go, that he may worship me.’ ” The king of Israel is God’s son. He enters into sonship upon appointment to royalty. If you’re a peacemaker you’re a son of God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” It’s a functional category.

If you talk to your friendly neighborhood Muslim (not to some educated mullah but just to some street Muslim), they think Christians think that God copulated with Mary to produce a son; thus the Holy Trinity is Father, Mary, and Jesus. They think it grotesque, and they are right. It is grotesque, and it is also not what we mean by the Trinity.

The notion of the Son of God is not transparent; it is extraordinarily difficult and has produced debates in the history of the church, for example, as to whether or not Jesus is the Son of God only by virtue of his incarnation or if “Son of God” language should reach back into eternity. Is it appropriate to speak of the Eternal Word as the Eternal Son or is he the Eternal Word who thus becomes the Son by virtue of the incarnation?

This passage, in my judgment, is one of the most illuminating of all of the New Testament chapters on the sonship of Christ. Although it may not appear immediately why I am introducing this chapter here in a series on Christian spirituality, bear with me as I say, and you will see some relevant implications in a few minutes. It might be useful to break up the chapter into several points.

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

Verses 16–18. In particular, like the Father, the Son works on the Sabbath. “So, because Jesus was doing these things …” These things include both the healing that has just been done and the instruction to this healed man to carry his mat home. That’s what this man was first picked up on.

Because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews went after him, and Jesus’ response is remarkable. In other words, he could have responded in terms of halakha; that is, in terms of legal definitions of rules of conduct on the basis of a reinterpretation of the sacred text. He could have responded that way.

He could have said, “No, no, no. You misunderstand the Scriptures. After all, I am not a doctor earning a little extra money on the side by healing people on the Sabbath day. I’ve done a good deed, like pulling a sheep out of a pit. How can you criticize that? This man … yes, he’s carrying something, but it’s not as if he earns his bread by carrying his bed roll.”

You see, eventually, in order not to break the Sabbath, the Jews began to define what work was. They said, for example, that if you carried something within the house on the Lord’s Day, on Sabbath, that was acceptable. If you carried it from domicile to domicile, however, that was breaking the prohibition against work.

If you just carried something within your house and not above shoulder height, that was acceptable, but above shoulder height, then it was carrying something heavy. It was hoisting it up on your shoulder and carrying it, so therefore that was work and that was prohibited. Probably this man had rolled up his mat and shoved it on his shoulder and was carrying it home. On the other hand, it’s not as if, for goodness’ sake, he was a professional bed carrier earning a little extra money on the side. Why should he be condemned for that?

If Jesus had responded along these terms, in terms of a reinterpretation of halakha, the rules of conduct, then nobody would have criticized him, but what he does instead is elevate it to a level of christological dispute. He says (verse 17), “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” Now this reflects a discussion that was going on in Judaism at the time. The question is.… Does God keep the law? Here the Jews were of mixed minds. There is a whole record of the debates at the time.

Some Jews said, “Well, of course God keeps the law,” to which the response was, “Yes, but if he keeps the Sabbath law and does no work, then the universe would fall apart every seventh day. He has to keep moving things around. He has to keep exercising his providential labor on the Sabbath or else the universe would fall apart every Sabbath day.” Others insisted instead that God is above the law. He gave the law, so he doesn’t have to keep all of the law. The disputes went back and forth.

Probably by the time of Jesus the majority position was, “Yes, God does keep the law, even the Sabbath law, because although he moves everything around, he does so, as it were, within his own domicile. It’s not as if he’s moving things from domicile to domicile, and it’s not as if he’s hoisting anything above his shoulder, because he’s bigger than the whole. So even if he moves entire constellations around, clearly he’s not actually breaking any of the legal prescriptions against work. In that light, therefore, God does not break the law.”

Now along comes Jesus and says, “My Father works, and I also work.” How is this going to be heard? The way these folks are saying God keeps the law on the Sabbath is unique to God himself. This sort of excuse for God, this apologia for God, only works because God is God. Thus, for Jesus to come along and say, “Look, God works on the Sabbath. You say so. Yet you also say he’s keeping the law. God works on the Sabbath doing all of these things. Well, if God can do it, I can too.”

You see, the argument only works if you’re God. Thus, the opponents see something of the implication. “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.” Now there was a sense in which the Jews of the day called God “Father.” This was not unique to Jesus. Some commentators say it is, but it’s simply not the truth.

Jews sometimes did refer to God as “Father,” almost always, so far as our sources go, in the plural: “Our Father.” It was very rare (in fact, there’s no unambiguous source) to find, “My Father.” Jesus speaks of God as, “My Father,” but he does so in such a way not simply that he’s using the term Father, but that he is claiming the rights and prerogatives of God with respect to the Sabbath. That’s what makes this charge so pointed.

Jesus claims he has the right to do what the Father does. In particular, in this instance, like the Father, the Son works on the Sabbath. You see, the Jews saw themselves as sons of God in some sense. It’s what the Old Testament says. Thus, God was their Father in some sense. It’s not just the label that is the issue here; it’s the rights Jesus is claiming as the Son of God, the rights to do whatever God does.

Yet it is also important to understand that when the Jews insist that Jesus is making himself equal with God, what they mean by “equal with God” is not quite what we mean by “equal with God.” What they mean by “equal with God” is that he is giving himself the rights of God so that he becomes parallel to God, another god. So there’s God the Father and then there’s this Jesus God. That’s pluralism. It’s polytheism. It’s idolatry. It’s the end of monotheism. It’s two gods.

Now that’s not what Christians want to understand about the sonship of Christ. Obviously, we are going to get into what we now call Trinitarianism, but there there was not a case of Trinitarianism or binitarianism. It was a case, from their point of view, of confounding monotheism.… Jesus making himself God and, thus, making a blasphemous claim and questioning the uniqueness and oneness of the Deity.

Clearly, that’s not what Jesus has in mind either. He doesn’t want to espouse ditheism, belief in two gods. So what we find in the next verses is just what is meant by saying that Jesus is the Son of God. That is, what we find is a defense of the peculiarly Christian form of monotheism, which brings me now to my second point.

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

Verses 19–23. Verse 19a is offered in answer to the charge of verse 18. The charge of verse 18 is, “He’s making 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.” Thus, in one sense, he’s not making himself equal with God. He’s subordinate to the Father. He can do nothing by himself. He can do only what he sees his Father doing. That’s what the text says.

Now before we become too embarrassed by this confession of subordination, we need to see that it is frequently and repeatedly taught. This is not an exceptional passage. You’re aware, of course, that John’s gospel insists that Jesus is God, explicitly and implicitly, in many passages. So already we’ve seen in John 1:1: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Then at the end of the book, there’s this great confession of Thomas: “My Lord and my God.” In between you find a passage like John 8: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Then you find what Jesus says in the Farewell Discourse: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” These things are well known amongst us as we have defended the deity of Christ against classic liberalism.

Yet you also find texts like John 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.” The Father never says, “I can do nothing by myself; I judge only as I learn it from my Son, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but the one whom I sent.” In other words, there is a distinction in roles and a definitive subordination of the Son to the Father.

It’s not just in this chapter. If you turn over to chapter 8, verse 29: “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” The Father does not say of the Son, “I always do what pleases him.” The Son says that of the Father. Or again at the end of John, chapter 14. Verse 31, the last verse: “The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” Never do you read that the Father does exactly what the Son has commanded him.

There is a subordination involved in the sonship of Christ. Nor is this a subordination that is bound up only with his time of incarnation, with the days of his flesh before the cross. After all, the Father sent the Son into the world (read John 3:17), and the Son obeyed and went. Yet at the same time, as soon as this subordination is introduced, then immediately it is qualified in a number of ways.

In the following verses, down to verse 23, the argument is structured in the Greek with four fors; that is, four uses of gar, the word for. It’s sometimes rendered because or something else through here, but in the original it’s four fors that explain this unique subordination. Here is the explanation. Verse 19b: “For …” There’s the first one. Because in the NIV. “For whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

Now that is strange language, but it’s helpful, I think, to try and put it within a certain historical context. Let me risk a show of hands here, a small experiment. How many of you men are doing vocationally what your father did, and how many of you women are doing vocationally what your mother did? Six or seven out of 120 or 130. Not a high percentage. We accept this today. This side of the Industrial Revolution, this side of capitalism, this side of relative wealth, there is much more societal mobility.

Before the age of the Industrial Revolution, almost all sons ended up doing what their fathers did. Almost all daughters ended up doing what their mothers did. If your father was a baker, you became a baker. If your father was a farmer, you became a farmer. If your father’s name was Stradivarius, you made violins. That’s the way it was. It was simply part of the inherited culture. Not only so, but your self-identity is bound up with the family, and part of your formation (education, shaping you, and all of that) is tied up with the training you get in the family.

Thus, Stradivarius Senior shows to Stradivarius Junior all of the techniques and the choosing of wood and the drying of wood and how you make your organic glues and what kind of horse hair you choose, and on and on and on, to make a decent violin, complete with the arsenic that’s in the special varnish, which we’re not allowed to use today, which is why we can’t make Stradivarius violins.

Now all of this is part of what’s presupposed. Your sonship is bound up today with genetics. Sonship is what’s involved in a paternity suit. Who’s your real dad? But in the first century, sonship was bound up much more with your work, with your vocation, with what you were called to do. “He’s the baker’s son. He’s the farmer’s son. He’s the preacher’s son. He’s the violin maker’s son. He’s the carpenter’s son.” That’s why Jesus is known as the carpenter’s son. Then apparently when his father dies he becomes known also in the Gospels as “the carpenter.” He’s doing what his father did.

That kind of functional use is exactly what is at stake in a passage like the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” This doesn’t tell you how to become a Christian. It’s saying that God is the supreme peacemaker, so if you make peace you’re acting like God. In that degree, then, you are God’s son. Who’s the real son of Abraham? Those who were Jews? Not according to Paul. You’re really Abraham’s son if you exercise Abraham’s faith. After all, that sort of thing was taught by Jesus himself in this book, John, chapter 8.

“We’re Abraham’s sons.”

“Oh, no, you’re not. Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and you don’t like me. You can’t be Abraham’s sons.”

“Well, we’re actually the sons of God.”

“No, you’re not. I come from God. God knows me; I know him. You don’t know me, so you don’t know God. I’ll tell you whose sons you are. You’re sons of the Devil himself.”

“The Devil himself?”

“Yes, he was a murderer from the beginning. You’re trying to kill me. He was a liar from the beginning, and you’re saying a whole lot of untruths. You’re the children of the Devil himself.” It’s a functional category. This is not presupposing that the Devil copulated with a whole lot of women to produce the Jews. That’s not the idea at all. It’s a purely functional category.

In a sense, here, too, for Jesus it is a functional category. Jesus acts the way God acts. The big difference is with this for. “For whatever the Father does the Son also does.” That’s remarkable. I can’t say that. The texts say, “Be holy, for I am holy,” because holiness is one of the communicable attributes of God. “Be perfect, for I am perfect,” for perfection is one of the communicable attributes of God.

Nowhere do the texts say, “Be omniscient, for I am omniscient.” Omniscience is not a communicable attribute of God. I have never made a universe, and neither have you. In that sense, you and I are not sons of God at all. But Jesus is. “Without him was not anything made that was made.” The very first verses say that in this gospel. “Whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

In other words, although he is, in some sense, functionally subordinate, he does whatever the Father does. Later on in this chapter, does the Father raise the dead? So does the Son. Does the Father exercise judgment upon all flesh? So does the Son. Whatever the Father does the Son also does. That implies some kind of equality with God, some kind of oneness with God that still has to be defined, but now you’re on the very edge of claiming that he is truly God. Who can do what God can do except God?

Thus, behind the functional categories, there is a presupposed ontology, a presupposed mystery of being, that is not immediately unpacked. This claim is remarkable. Even while Jesus is insisting on his subordination, to be able to say, “Whatever the Father does this Son also does” is sweeping. In other words, Jesus grounds his functional subordination in his claim to coextensive action with God. That makes his sonship unique. No other son can legitimately claim that.

Then verse 20a, the second for. “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” If you have any sort of decent human father who’s trying to show his son the secrets of the farm, he’s not going to say, “I’ll show him when to put the seed in, but I won’t tell him when to harvest it. Let him find out for himself.” The father loves the son and wants the son to know everything the father knows. Stradivarius Senior shows Stradivarius Junior all of his secrets. It’s part of the family heritage in history.

But God the Father does not tell me all that he knows, partly because even if he wanted to, I’m not capable of receiving it. Omniscience is not one of the communicable attributes of God. But the Father loves this Son and shows him all he does. This because the Father loves the Son. It’s still a functional category. The Son does what the Father shows him. The Father shows him everything. The Son does everything the Father shows him, and all that the Father does the Son also does.

Thus, this circle of love explains verse 19, and, thus, right at the heart of what is going on in the revelation of Jesus is the love of the Father for the Son. Now you and I often reflect on, meditate upon, the love of God for us, and we should. It’s why Paul can burst out in the midst of his treatment of justification.… He talks about, “Christ who loved me and gave himself for me.” We’ve already seen in John 3, “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” It’s right for us to think about this.

But both logically and chronologically, as it were, in terms of manifestation in history, the love of the Father for the Son comes first. That’s extraordinarily important. In other words, the Son by his obedience is acting in such a way that he is revealing his Father. For why does the Son always obey the Father? Well, that too is out of love. What did we read in John, chapter 8? “I always do what pleases him.” And in John 14:31: “The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.”

In other words, the Father so loves the Son that he shows him everything. The Son so loves the Father that he obeys everything the Father gives him to do. In other words, the functional category that guarantees the perfection of the revelation to the Son and the perfection of the Son’s obedience is love, intra-Trinitarian love. In other words, the marvelous self-disclosure of the Father in the Son to us turns in the first place not on God’s love for us, but on God’s love for his Son.

Even the plan of redemption and, thus, our capacity to know this God turns in the first instance on the intra-Trinitarian love of God; that is, the love of the persons of the Godhead for each other. Now there is a lot that could be teased out of this. Some of it I want to tease out along another track tonight at the banquet. I’ll just mention it here, because I know some of you are not going to that.

This truth in John 5 is one of the things that is picked up in the so-called high-priestly prayer of John 17. Whatever is meant by Christians being one by a genuine ecumenicity, by a genuine oneness of the people of God, is tied explicitly by the Lord Jesus to the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father. “That they may all be one, that they may love me even as you have loved me.” It’s all tied up with this love of the Father for the Son and love of the Son for the Father.

That becomes not only the empowering force for the revelation, but ultimately it becomes the very model of what Christian unity turns on. Christian unity, in some sense, is a reflection of intra-Trinitarian love. Doesn’t that blow you away? Thus, if we’re going to talk about our experience of God and, thus, Christian spirituality, sooner or later we have to start talking about the intra-Trinitarian love of God, and then about the relationship between that intra-Trinitarian love of God and Christian love. That, too, is bound up with Christian spirituality.

One of the high points, it seems to me, of the uniquely Christian doctrine of the Trinity is precisely that even before there was anything else.… One cannot even speak of anything else in the universe. Before there was a universe, before there was anything except God, always the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father. Always. The very revelation that has been disclosed to us in Christ is a function of that love. There is a sense in which the entire Christian revelation is a function of the intra-Trinitarian love of God. The Father so loved the Son he determined that all would honor the Son.

Then the next step in the argument is taken. Verse 20: “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and in the disclosure of Christ on the earth, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.” And, thus, the Son will do more than he has done before your eyes. “For …” There’s a third for. “… just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.”

Life giving is one of the unique functions of God. Remember the story of Naaman, when the king of Israel asks, “Am I God? Can I kill and make alive?” Only God can do that. Only he has the right. Elisha serves as God’s agent in such matters, but it’s still God doing it. But when Jesus raises the dead, he does not claim merely to be God’s agent; he claims to be doing it with the authority of God himself. That’s the truth of the matter. If the Father does it, the Son also does it.

The final for is in verse 22. It’s a kind of explanation of verse 21. “For …” Not “moreover” in the NIV. Literally, “For the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to his Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” This is using human categories. I know this. But it’s right on the edge of what John is doing, what Jesus is doing himself.

When Stradivarius Senior explains to Stradivarius Junior all of the things that go into making a violin, eventually Stradivarius Senior says, “All right, from now on you do all the glue. You make all the organic glue and you glue all of the parts. From now on that’s your baby. You just do the glue.” So Stradivarius Senior no longer does the glue. It’s the son who does the glue.

On the other hand, because the son is following the wishes of Stradivarius Senior, all that the son does is perfectly in line with what Stradivarius Senior wants too. It’s still Stradivarius Senior, as it were, doing it through his son. It’s not as if the son in this kind of family operation says, “You know, I think I’ll try experimenting with a non-organic glue.” That’s not what happens. He’s maintaining the family heritage, the family tradition.

So now what this text says is, “The Father judges no one.” Not because God has relinquished his capacity to judge. Rather, he is assigning this particular duty to the Son. He has entrusted all judgment to the Son. Meanwhile, we’re going to be told a little farther down in verse 30 Jesus says, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear.” Just as Stradivarius Junior will make glue only as he has heard.

So even when the Son does the judging, he does the judging only entirely in line with the Father’s will. Yet there is a kind of distinction now, so that the Son does certain things the Father does not do. The Father entrusts this to the Son. One of these functions is judgment. To what end? This, too, is a function of the Father’s love. “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.”

Thus, our knowledge of God, our experience of him, our delight in him, our sense of him, our appreciation of his presence, our walk in the consciousness of his beauty and of his holiness turns absolutely, from God’s own perspective, on whether or not we honor the Son. To speak of a deep spirituality of people who have no place for the Son, from Jesus’ perspective, is saying that we have a deep knowledge of God but we don’t like what God has said or we don’t believe what God has said or we want something other than what God has said or it’s a different god.

What are the options? This God has declared that he so loves the Son he wants all to honor the Son, even as he himself is honored. Thus, on the last day, God does not ask, as it were, “What kind of ascetic practices did you exercise in order to know me better?” He asks instead, “What did you do with my Son?”

Thus, in any deep sense, to talk about spirituality in terms of human connection with God that is divorced from this self-disclosure of God out of love in his Son and the perfection of the Son’s obedience that takes him through the agony of Gethsemane (“Not my will but yours be done”), not simply because he loves us but because he loves his Father, and then to ignore the Son not only denies the Son; it denies the Father who sent him, because he himself has declared, “You must honor my Son.” That brings us to the third point.

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

It seems to me that is the only way to account for the remarkably strange wording of verses 24–26. We often quote verse 24 in evangelistic efforts. It’s a great text. “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me …” Pause there for a moment. “Who hears my word and believes him who sent me.”

In other words, because the Father shows everything to the Son and the Son says and does only what the Father gives him to say and do, every word Jesus utters is, in fact, the word of the Father. So if you believe Jesus, then you are believing the word of him who sent Jesus. If you hear the word of Jesus, you are hearing the word of him who sent him. That’s why Jesus can run back and forth between the two.

In my case, sometimes I really do utter the words of God, but at other times I really don’t. You can’t trust my word just because it’s Don Carson’s word as always being the word of God. You can trust Jesus’ word as always being the word of God, because he says only what the Father gives him to say and does only what the Father gives him to do. His obedience is perfect because his love is perfect, and the revelation to him is perfect because the love of the Father for him is perfect. That is what guarantees the perfection of the revelation of God in the Son.

So now Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” Here, then, is the fundamental connection between human beings and God, and it is bound up with trusting the God who has disclosed himself in Christ, including all of Christ’s words, all of his teaching, his word, his message, all that leads in this gospel finally to the cross itself.

“He will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” That has happened already. There is an eschatological coming, of course. “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.” The fact that this is saying not only that a time is coming but has already come suggests that this crossing over from death to life is what takes place now in this world.

This is part of what is often called inaugurated eschatology, realized eschatology. We pass already from death to life. That does not mean there is not a final judgment at the end and a resurrection life. The remaining bits, verses 28–30, talk about that kind of experience as well. Meanwhile, Jesus once again wants us to understand how this can work out as the function of the voice of the Son of God. So he explains in verse 26, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.”

Now that is one very odd verse. It has always been judged odd through the entire history of the church. It stood at some of the debates in connection with Athanasius in the fourth century. It is a very difficult verse. You see, if we speak of God having life in himself, we know pretty well what we mean. If God has life in himself, it means he is independent of any other. He is not a creature. He has life in himself. He is self-existing, we say in our theology books.

In fact, in one sense, aseity, which I mentioned before (that is, the independence of God so that he does not need anything or anyone else), is really a kind of extrapolation of self-existence. Self-existence has to do with origins. God’s existence does not depend on anyone or anything. He has life in himself. As this continues throughout all of his relationships throughout every notion of time and space, so God is the God of aseity. He has life in himself. He doesn’t need us.

Now you could understand with that notion of life in himself, which is what it must mean with reference to God; it can scarcely mean anything else.… You can understand it if the text said, “As the Father has life in himself, so the Son has life in himself.” That would be a wonderful affirmation of the deity of the Son. But it’s not what the text says.

In fact, if that’s all that the text said, “The Father has life in himself, so the Son has life in himself,” then you might actually begin to warrant ditheism, belief in two gods. The Father has life in himself; the Son has life in himself. But in fact the text says, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.” Now my brain hurts.

It would be easier to understand if the text said, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life.” Then I could understand what granted means. But of course, if you’ve done that, then the Son is not fully equal with God because he doesn’t have life in himself. Instead, the text says, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.”

Christian theologians, Christian exegetes, Christian thinkers across the ages have tried to understand this verse. I’ll tell you what I still think is the best explanation. It can’t be an exhaustive one. I don’t even know all of what it means. But it seems to me that you have to think of this as an eternal grant.

By eternal I don’t mean something that happened way back then in eternity. That’s already presupposing time in a certain kind of linear model. You go back far enough and then it happened. It only happened once way back then. I mean eternal, right outside of time. But all the time? If you say “all the time,” you’re back in terms of time. I don’t even know what that means. No, you have to think of this as an eternal grant.

It is part of the peculiar relationship in the Godhead itself, such that you preserve simultaneously the Son’s functional subordination and the insistence that the Son, no less than the Father, has life in himself. Now you are treading on the very outskirts of the doctrine of the Trinity. That is what grounds the evangelistic text of verse 24, and it is what grounds the peculiar role Christ himself plays in the judgment on the last day at the final resurrection (verses 28–30).

Now the New Testament texts are not as explicit with respect to the love of Father and Son for the Spirit or Spirit for the Father. I acknowledge that. But although they are not as explicit, they hint strongly enough that there are some remarkable things that are said, which brings us to all the paraclete passages in John 14 and 15. I don’t have the time to take you through all of them. Let me just hint at a few things.

Jesus, in John 14, promises to send another parakletos. Another counselor? Paraclete? Advocate? Helper? No word quite does. Someone who is called alongside. In part, he exercises a kind of advocacy role. One of the things that is clear of him is that he, in some respects, replaces Jesus, so that whatever Jesus was to us, the Paraclete also is to us, except that Jesus was here in the days of his flesh and could be seen and touched and handled but was locked into a slot in history. Now he is gone and still has his resurrection body but can no longer be touched and handled.

Thus, God manifests himself to us in the person of the Spirit. We actually are told that the Father and the Son manifest themselves to us by the Spirit. The language is stunning. He comes and reminds us, we are told in John 14:26, of everything Jesus said, so just as Jesus says only the things the Father gives him to say, so the Spirit reminds us of what the Son says.

There is a further dependency in the Godhead itself that is bound up with the peculiar relationship of Spirit to Son and Spirit to Father (both languages are used) that is somewhat analogous on the relationship of the Son to the Father. This Spirit comes not only as successor to Jesus and the manifestation of the Father and the Son in the lives of believers, but as the one who reminds us of the truth that Jesus himself taught, which is, in fact, what the Father taught him to say. Thus, all of our salvation is bound up with an essentially Trinitarian understanding of God.

Our experience of God, our experience of forgiveness, our experience of the gospel, our experience of the purpose in ministry of Jesus is all bound up with this Trinitarian understanding of God. In chapter 16, we go further yet and learn that the Holy Spirit is the one who brings conviction of sin, conviction of righteousness, and conviction of judgment. He is the one who brings about conviction in the world and leads people to Christ. All this is part of the Trinitarian nature of the God whom we serve.

Now in this picture we have still not talked much about the atonement. I’ll say more about that tomorrow. What is clear is that in John’s understanding of all human experience of God, all that authorizes it is deeply Trinitarian. Not in some distant philosophical sense, not in some sense that forces you to explain the difference between substance and person and the like. No, no, no. It is explained first and foremost in functional categories bound up with the love of the Father for the Son, the love of the Son for the Father, and, by analogy, similar relationships between the Spirit and the Son, and so forth.

Now that sets us up for John 17. How shall we who are Christians, then, claim any deep spirituality if this Christ, whose very mission is born in the intra-Trinitarian love of God, insists that where there are genuine disciples of his.… “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Talk about spirituality. Genuine spirituality is presented again and again in love terms, reflecting the very Godhead himself. Do not talk about your deep knowledge of God if it does not bring you also deeper love for brothers and sisters in Christ, if it makes you amongst the elite of the elect, if you think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.

It is why the spirituality of the New Testament is never, not in any circumstance, withdrawn and monastic. Not ever. It is built rather in terms of service, because that is a function of love, and the love of the God whom we serve works out in the gospel itself. Thus, Christian spirituality is bound up not only with the gospel but with the very Trinitarian nature of the Godhead who gives us the gospel.

Now we have about five minutes or so for questions before we break up, and then tomorrow we’ll certainly allow more time for it. If you want to raise questions, now is the time. If, in fact, you prefer to reserve them until tomorrow, that’s all right too.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don Carson: I haven’t meant it to be deeply cognitive so far. Rather, I have spent a lot of time explaining how Christian spirituality is grounded in something other. It’s not primarily grounded in us. Far from being merely cognitive, I’ve tried to show now that it’s grounded even in the affective relationships in the Godhead. That’s not merely cognitive. Ultimately, that issues, too, in the way Christians are to love one another. We’ll come to more of that.

But I worry about an approach to spirituality that is first and foremost defined in terms of how we feel about things or whether we’re aware of the presence of God or whether we have an attachment to the infinite, precisely because those things can be so easily detached from what Scripture makes central.

In other words, if you’re really talking about the connection between human beings and God as lying at the heart of what spirituality consists of, then you first of all have to get agreement, it seems to me, on how that connection is drawn, and that’s finally drawn in the Trinitarian nature of God in the gospel. Now there are implications of that in terms of confession and love and even awareness of God. We’ll come to more of that.

It has already been hinted at in “new birth” language, in the sense that you must be born again. If you have a new nature, that’s going to show up somewhere. In fact, I skipped over one text that I’ll return to tomorrow. “The wind blows where it wills,” Jesus says after the connection with the new birth. “You may not know where it comes from or where it is going, but you cannot deny its effects,” is effectively what he says.

You see, this is the day before modern meteorology, where we may have at least some idea a little more closely of where the wind is coming from. There’s a high out in the Pacific or whatever. On the other hand, even though you may not know exactly where it’s coming from, you see the dust eddy as it kicks a dust devil across the streets of Jerusalem. You can’t deny its effects. So it is with everyone who is born of God.

In other words, the implication is you may not be able to explain all there is about the new birth or where it comes from or how it works, but you can’t deny its effects. In other words, one of the effects of this spirituality of the new birth is that it changes people. So now you start asking the question in John’s gospel, “How do people change?” Well, “By this shall all men know that you’re my disciple, if you love one another.” And in John’s letter, in terms of obedience to Christ and doing all that he commands. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.”

In other words, the spirituality of the new birth is bound up again in transformed behavior. So I worry about approaches to spirituality that are so based in affective or non-cognitive or whatever modes that we are losing the categories of Scripture itself, which discuss the nature of the relationship between human beings and God. That’s why I’ve taken the approach I have.

Now in terms of a broader approach along this line that might be useful, there’s a wonderful book by Peter Adam called Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality. Peter Adam has written two books of note. The first is Speaking God’s Words. It’s really a book on preaching. The latter half of it is fairly elementary, but the first 50 pages or so of that book are superb for a theology of preaching. If you want to find out how you should view preaching, the first third of his book, Speaking God’s Words, is pure gold.

Then his book on spirituality, Hearing God’s Words, is really quite wonderful. It works through a whole lot of biblical texts and also through some theologians, Calvin and others, to teach us what spirituality looks like in terms of receiving the revelation of God and how it should be experienced among us. In other words, I don’t want you to think I’m entirely all by myself saying this sort of thing. There is a whole tradition of what is sometimes called the spirituality of the Word, and this is really part of that vision. [Audio cuts off]

God is seeking to be worshiped, but if he is seeking worshipers, then he is seeking people who are rightly related to him. He’s caring for people. He’s seeking him. I’m not saying he’s suggesting that he’s seeking people for himself who don’t worship him, because that would deny his very Godhead.

In that sense, I suppose, derivatively you can speak of seeking worship, but on the other hand it changes everything once you start saying that God is seeking worship, because now it’s looking as if God is missing a certain something, and if only he can have this worship, that’s what he’s seeking. So the whole question is not whether we give ourselves to God but whether we do our worship right so that we give God what he’s seeking, but that’s not what he’s looking for.

The first commandment is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. That is the worship of God, because God is God. What he’s seeking, then, is rebellious men and women to be rightly related to him. It’s part of his salvific plan. He’s the God who cries, “Turn! Turn! Why will you die? The Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” He is seeking worshipers, because the only way men and women can be rightly related to God is precisely by worshiping him.

Now, of course, the only way they can get there is because of the sacrifice Christ has himself paid in order that our sins might be met, and they are expiated and God’s wrath is turned away. Yes, that’s all true, but at the end of the day, the end result of all of that is that men and women then, by God’s grace, come to love him with heart and soul and mind and strength. That’s the heart of Christian worship.

Thus, what he is seeking is not worship in the abstract but men and women to know him, to worship him, to love him, to obey him. It’s all part of the same package. You can’t have one without the other. Thus, he is seeking Christian worshipers.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: Oh no, I’m not suggesting he needs us. He seeks us out of grace. He could have written us all off and consigned us to hell with perfect justice. He doesn’t need us. That’s what makes grace, grace. But the fact of the matter is he seeks worshipers. What it speaks to is the relational nature of God, the graciousness of God in seeking rebels to worship him in spirit and in truth.

It’s not denying his aseity for a moment, nor is it trying to abstract the worshipers from the worship. Nevertheless, I’m merely pointing out that what the text actually says in John 4 is that God seeks worshipers. It doesn’t actually say that God seeks worship. Now obviously you can’t have the worshipers without the worship. I know that.

Nevertheless, the fact that the text says what it says makes the whole business seeking people, seeking the imago Dei, seeking the rebels to come and be reconciled to him, not seeking worship in the abstract. I think that’s a fundamental difference, because otherwise it would be a little easier to fall under the suspicion that somehow we can bring something to God that he finds charming, which is not the idea at all.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: It’s part of the same language. I don’t think that’s the difficulty. I think this is closer to responding to the classic definitions of the Trinity in terms of the eternal generation of the Son and the like. Now I don’t like that terminology quite. I know what is meant by it, and I’m happy to affirm it as long as it’s tied to verses like this one, but probably in terms of historic terms of christological debates, I think this is as close as you get in the New Testament to what in the Patristic period was known as the eternal generation of the Son.

Notice the eternal generation of the Son. It’s an eternal grant. It’s an eternal decree, whatever that means. You’re pushing right at the edge of anything I can understand. Am I allowed to quote Billy Graham here? To quote Billy Graham, “May the Lord bless y’all real good.”

Male: Our Father, we thank you for your Word that speaks to us of the richness of our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ and gives us these writ hints of that eternal relationship that you have with your Son and with your Spirit and of which our speech is so paltry. Yet we glory in this, that our salvation is a work of you our Father and of your dear Son and of your blessed Holy Spirit. We thank you for our brother, for his opening the Word. May you sustain us with it this day and bring us back again tomorrow. For Jesus’ sake, amen.