Pictures of Jesus: The Son of God (John 5:16–30)

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Person of Christ from John 5:16–30

Turn, if you will in the Scriptures to John, chapter 5. I shall read from verse 16 to verse 30. Jesus has just healed the invalid by the pool of Bethesda. This healing took place on a Sabbath. Beginning in 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.’“

So reads the Word of God.

Have you stopped on occasion to think how strange this terminology is? Jesus, the Son of God? It drops from our lips so easily because we have become Christians and that is the language of Scripture. It is the language of the church. We say the expression quickly and sometimes do not stop to think how strange it is.

We use it in our prayers. We address the Father, and as we speak to the Father we say, “We beseech this of you, our God, in the name of your dear Son Jesus, our Savior and Lord.” Yet it is strange. Son of God is not unambiguous language. Indeed, even in Scripture it is used in a variety of different ways.

It is used, for example, of us, of believers, of Christians. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” Yet presumably if we are Christians, we would not want to say that what that means for us is precisely what that means with respect to Jesus. Indeed when we examine the texts of the New Testament, we discover very quickly that every biblical writer makes some kind of change, some kind of difference between our sonship and Jesus’ sonship.

For example, in Paul, Jesus is the Son of God, while we are the adopted sons of God. In John, we find something else. Jesus is the Son of God; we are the children of God. There is a difference in terminology. It is, in fact, the possibility for confusion here that has encouraged some Indian theologians (Indian from India, not North American Indians) who have been influenced by their own surrounding Hindu culture to argue that there is no final distinction between the sonship of Jesus and our sonship.

If we taste deeply enough of grace, we will rise into the same kind of sonship that he enjoys, they argue. That kind of semi-mystical thinking has invaded some churches in the West as well. He is like we are only better, further along the track. We rise to what he becomes. In some measure, there is truth.

Yet one cannot read far into the New Testament without discovering that there are some elements to his sonship that are completely impossible to attain so far as we are concerned. By contrast, when you listen to Muslims talk, a rising number of Muslims in our society, and ask, “What, to you, does such an expression as son of God mean?” They are frankly horrified.

It is simply Christian blasphemy. God is one. There is but one God. There is no other. There is none like him. How can you speak of God having a son? It sounds like some kind of disgusting relationship, this virgin birth business. It is an insult to deity, a blasphemy. That is how son of God appears to Muslim ears.

Christians remember that they spring from Judaism, from Old Testament religion borne down by Jews and from Jewish monotheism, the belief that there is but one God. In one sense, we want to affirm as strongly as any Muslim that there is but one God. One cannot read long in Isaiah without hearing the trumpet call again and again, “There is but one God. Yahweh is his name. Listen to him. There are no other gods. I, the Lord, have spoken. There is none else. There is no one beside me.”

We remember too that from out of this antecedent revelation from the Old Testament, son of God does crop up. The nation Israel is called God’s son. At the installation of the Mosaic covenant in Exodus 19 and 20, there Israel is called God’s son. Picked up again in Hosea. “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” referring in the first instance to the exodus, to Israel.

The king of Israel is also sometimes peculiarly called God’s son. Though God might send Saul away, David is a man after his own heart. His son Solomon is the son of God. Him I will not reject. What then do we mean by the term when we apply it to Jesus Christ? What is meant? Now there are many texts that could be examined at length, but perhaps the most important of them all is this passage that I have just read, John 5:16–30.

The background is the healing of the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda. After the healing of this man who had lain there impotently for 38 years, Jesus tells him to take his mat and go home. Because it was a Sabbath, this formally breached the Pharisaic objection to carrying any burdens from domicile to domicile on the Sabbath day.

They were less interested in the fact that the man was now healed than in the infringement of their interpretation of Sabbath law. They are outraged. So they come to Jesus with extra reason to oppose him. That is what we read in verse 16. “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath …”

Not only telling this man to carry his mat, but healing on the Sabbath as well. Making no distinction as far as they were concerned between Sabbath and other days. “… the Jews persecuted him.” What then do we learn of Jesus’ sonship in the following verses? I will suggest to you four points.

1. Like the Father, the Son works on the Sabbath.

“Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’ ” This response of Jesus is unlike that found in any of the other Sabbath controversies. In fact, when you put all of the Sabbath controversies together, the first thing that strikes you is the sheer originality of Jesus’ response in each one. He has a new reason thought up to fit every single circumstance. This one has no close parallel. Notice carefully what he does not say.

The Jews were saying, “God, in the Old Testament, forbids you to work on the Sabbath. We want to obey God, don’t we? What does it mean not to work on the Sabbath? Let’s define this a little more. We’ll lay out some rules. If you keep those rules, then surely you will be obeying the generalized rule ‘Do not work on the Sabbath.’ ”

So they had 39 rules. The one commandment was broken down into 39 subcategories. One was, for example, you weren’t to make any anointment, any little mud pack or anything like this. Jesus got into trouble on that one on another Sabbath when he spat in the ground and made a little mud pack. One of the rules was not to carry anything from one domicile to another.

The Jews themselves could sometimes get around that. The day before the Sabbath they would say, “We hereby declare that these two domiciles are one.” Then it was possible to move something on the Sabbath from one domicile to another without breaking the law because at that point it was one domicile.

From the perspective of Old Testament revelation, the primary concern of the Sabbath was that those who engaged in certain activities six days a week should not engage in them on the seventh. It was not so much a question of whether or not you were allowed to pass a pot across the back fence.

It was a question of whether or not you were permitted to do your normal work, the work you do on six days, on the seventh as well. There the prohibition was clear. Therefore, when Jesus said to this man who had been ill for 38 years, “Take up your mat and go home,” strictly speaking he was not disobeying the Old Testament law as the Old Testament law stands written.

After all, this man was not making a practice six days a week of trotting around town with his mat rolled up. He was not earning his bread from trotting around town with his mat. It was not as if he was trying to earn a few extra zuz on Sunday, as it were … on Saturday, the Sabbath … by carrying his mat for a pittance.

No, this was a special miracle, and he was simply told to take his bed and go home. Nor was Jesus some kind of doctor, some kind of medical practitioner who earned his keep by healing people six days a week and then, on the Sabbath, along he came and did some more so he could earn a few extra zuz.

In that sense, Jesus could well have answered, “Listen, by your rules you have made the Sabbath so complicated when in point of fact, what I have done does not breach anything in the Old Testament. Why are you so upset?” That is what he could’ve answered. It is not what he does answer. What he does instead is elevate the entire discussion from the level of law to the level of Christ.

The question becomes not, “Who’s got the right interpretation of the law? You or me?” The question becomes, “Don’t you know who I am?” Listen to what he says. “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” He is alluding to Genesis, chapter 2, verses 2 and 3, which tell us that God ceased … sh‚bath; hence, our word Sabbath … his creative work on the seventh day.

Then the Jews argued, “Does that mean that God ceased all of his work from then on?” No, because God continues his work of providence, of maintenance, of governance, of revelation, of disclosure. “Well, then,” they asked, “does God keep the Sabbath so far as work is concerned?” The Jews of Jesus’ day had a major controversy going on that point.

They decided, most of them, that no, God himself did not keep the Sabbath. He had to keep working, because if God ceased working entirely the whole universe would collapse. Surely God has got to keep going with the work of providence. Surely God has got to maintain all things by his own powerful word.

Some tried to argue that although God works on the Sabbath, yet he still wasn’t breaking the Sabbath law because the whole universe was his, so if he moved things around in the universe, he was still doing it within the framework of his domicile. Thus the rules became more and more and more complex. Jesus cuts through all of that. He says, “You say God works, Sabbath or no. That’s what you say. He’s my Father. I’m working too.”

You can see immediately what that is doing. If that kind of argument sanctions Jesus’ work, he must then be a Son to the Father like no other human being, for all other human beings must keep his Sabbath law, must they not? Jews get the point. We read, 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.”

In other words, the Jews were prepared to make an exception for God as the one who could work on the Sabbath, since after all he was God. He had to uphold everything seven days a week. But to make it for Jesus? The argument is somewhat akin to the argument found in Mark, chapter 2, verses 23–28 where Jesus declares himself the Lord of the Sabbath and as a result insists that his disciples, those associated with him, are free to pluck the heads of grain and kneed it in their hands.

It is an argument based on his own authority rather than simply an argument based on their misunderstanding of the Sabbath. In other words, Jesus insists that whatever else his sonship means, it means this: like the Father, he the Son has the right to work on the Sabbath. From the Jew’s point of view, this was challenging the fundamental divide between God and man, between the infinite and the finite, between the creator and the created.

From the Jew’s point of view, this was blasphemy. From John’s point of view as he writes this, he expects his readers to remember back to John 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 1:18: “No one has seen God at anytime, but the unique one himself God, he has narrated him, he has exegeted him, he has told us what he is like.”

Eventually, there will be the great confession of Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” These Jews, in a sense, spoke better than they knew. From John’s point of view, there is immense irony. They have some insight into what Jesus means, but instead of pausing and asking fundamental questions they accuse him of blasphemy and are prepared for mob execution.

It is important before we go on to the next point to point out that what the Jews meant by equal with God is not quite what John the Evangelist or Jesus himself meant. What they meant was that if Jesus was really equal with God, it would be as if he was another God. There would be two gods. There would be God, whom all the Jews acknowledged, and Jesus, another god, another center, another divine center, another god, a competing god. That’s what they saw as inherent in Jesus’ claim.

The ensuing verses, therefore, turn out to be, on inspection, not only a powerful defense of what Jesus means by sonship, but it turns out to be a powerful defense of the doctrine of God in the Scripture, of a Trinitarian God, for Christians hold to monotheism, to belief in one God; they do not want to hold to ditheism, as if there are two Gods. In that sense, the Jew’s understanding of what Jesus was saying was dead wrong. Part of what Jesus now says to explain his sonship turns on the importance of clarifying their misunderstanding. That brings us to the second point.

2. The Son insists he is subordinate to the Father.

Verse 19: “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.” That is an extremely important point. If you have been a Christian for some time and you have read your Bible again and again, you know that it is John’s gospel above all four gospels that is strongest in affirming the deity of Jesus Christ. Unambiguous statements.

“He who has seen me has seen the Father.” “My Lord and my God,” addressed to Jesus himself. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” Yet if you read it closely again, you also discover that John’s gospel, above the four, most frequently and insistently underscores the obedience of the Son to the Father, the dependence of the Son upon the Father, the subordination of the Son to the Father.

Not only in this verse, which we have read, but again in verse 30: “By myself I can do nothing.” You never get the Father saying that about the Son. You only get the Son saying that with respect to the Father. “I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” You never get the Father saying, “I seek to please him whom I sent.”

There is one who sends and one who is sent, one who commands and one who obeys, one who commissions and one who goes, one who sends into the world and one who comes into the world. There is a subordination of function within the Godhead. It is not only in this chapter. It recurs again and again and again. I will mention just one other text. 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.” That’s what Jesus says.

The Father has not left Jesus alone, because Jesus always does what pleases him. You do not get the converse statement, “The Father always does what pleases Jesus.” In fact, what pleased Jesus at one level of his being, at least in the garden of Gethsemane, was that this cup be taken from him. Then he said, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Never does the Father address that to the Son.

In other words, there is a consistent pattern in the Gospels, not least this gospel, which stresses the deity of Christ, to the effect that the Son is subordinate to the Father. In this connection, I want to say something in passing about a verse that troubles many Christians. It is John, chapter 14, verse 28. “The Father is greater than I.” It is a favorite verse in the hands of Jehovah’s Witnesses and other Arians.

But a text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text. It’s important to see what the context of this is. When you say that A is greater than B, the word greater is a slippery term, and it is important to think through what it means. For example, I might say, “Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is greater than I.”

It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that that’s a true statement. He is greater as a politician, greater in worldly status, greater in political clout, greater in the affairs of government, greater among the nations, greater so far as his being known is concerned. I hasten to add that he is not more of a human being than I. He is only a man. I am only a man.

Just because Jesus says, “The Father is greater than I,” does not by itself necessarily mean that Jesus is not on a par with God. It doesn’t necessarily mean that. In fact, when you read the context carefully, you see that it means something else. Chapter 14, verse 28, Jesus addressing his disciples on his way to the cross. “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” What does he mean?

He means, “Listen, you people are crying your eyes out because I’ve said I’m going away. The reason you’re crying is because you’re selfish. You’re interested only in your own loss. If you really understood who I am and if you really loved me with all your heart, as you protest to do, in one profound sense you would be glad that I am going away, for I am going home! Aren’t you glad for me? I’m going back to the one with whom I had glory before the world began.”

Isn’t that what Jesus says in John 17? “Glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world began.” “I’m going back to where I properly belong. I’m going back to the one who has greater glory than I. The Father is greater than I am. That’s the turf I’m going back to. Why aren’t you happy?” In that context, therefore, far from being a suggestion that Jesus is less than God, it is the insistence that he is going back to God’s turf, to heaven, the domain of God, the glory of God where he properly belongs.

After we’ve said and done all this in defense of the deity of Christ, the fact remains that functionally the Son obeys the Father. That is a cardinal difference. The Son insists he is subordinate to the Father. This principle is then elucidated by what I’ve called four fors. They’re hard to see in some English Bibles because the words that introduce the various clauses that come are words used to smooth things out in English.

In the original, each of the next clauses is introduced by a for so you have some kind of explanation. Such and such and such … for. There are four of them, so I call them the four fors. When we see what the four fors are, justifying the subordination of the Son to the Father, we will have a better grasp of what it means to confess Jesus as the Son of God.

The first for is in verse 19, the last clause. We’ll read the entire verse. “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, for …” There’s your first for. “… whatever the Father does the Son also does.” That is astonishing.

This is not simply saying that the Son does some things that the Father does, but whatever the Father does, the Son does. That can be said of no other human being. None. Although Jesus is subordinate to the Father and although he does only what the Father gives him to do, in point of fact he ends up doing and saying everything that the Father does and says.

In other words, the argument is this: For all that the Son does is both coincident with and coextensive with. He does it with the Father and he does as much as the Father, all that the Father does. There is between the Father and the Son a perfect identity of will and action. Do you see what this means in answer to the Jews? They were afraid that Jesus might become a second God: God number one over here and God number two over here … a separate center, another God, a competing God.

But Jesus can’t be a competing God, for he does only what the Father says and he does only what the Father does, but he does all that the Father says and does. Instead of having two gods, you’ve only got one. One will, one commitment in action. There are not two centers after all. There’s still but one God. That is part of Jesus’ understanding of his own sonship.

The second for is in verse 20. “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” The love of the Father for the Son is attested repeatedly in this book. In John, chapter 3, verse 35 we read: “The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.” Here we read in chapter 5, verse 20, “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.”

That really explains the last clause. The clause at the end of verse 19 says, “The Son does everything that the Father does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything.” You must understand that the model of father and son emerges right out of the ancient Near East. Today, how many of us do what our fathers did?

Your father might be a farmer. You’re a computer technician. Your kids might be garbage collectors or they might be space station engineers or they might be taxi drivers. They might even be preachers. There is very little connection between what the father does and what the son does in our society. We’re independent.

There is very little emphasis on the extended family, not even much emphasis on the nuclear family, very little idea of passing on skills from one generation to another. We’re a group of independent people, but in the ancient Near East, that’s not the way it worked. In the overwhelming majority of families, the fathers passed on their skills to the children.

That’s why so many names, both in the ancient world and more recently, in medieval times, were “son of” something: Bakerson, Smithson … the son of the person who was the baker, the son of the person who was the smith. The same trades, the same skills, the same secrets were passed on from father to son, from father to son.

Similarly on the daughter’s side, the mother taught the daughter all the cooking skills and the sewing skills and how to make money go a little farther, and so on. Generation, world without end. That’s the same kind of model that’s being used here. This son is so uniquely the Son of God that the Father, God himself, loving the Son, shows him all his trade skills, as it were.

He shows him all the secrets. He shows him all there is to being God. Just as a baker shows his son all there is to being a baker. Just as a farmer shows his son all there is to being a farmer. So God shows his Son all there is to being God. That’s why the Son does everything the Father does. This is consequent upon the Father’s love for the Son.

“The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” That’s what the text says. Indeed, it goes the other way too. This book also insists that the Son loves the Father. In fact, in John, chapter 14, verse 31 we read these words: “The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.”

The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. It is out of this paternal, filial relationship, Father/Son, this relationship of love, that the plan of redemption is forged. That is why the Son does all that the Father does. There are two critical implications for this that are foundational for our faith. If you don’t remember anything else I say this evening, remember these two points.

A. The Son, by his obedience, is acting in such a way that he is revealing the Father.

That is foundational to all of John’s gospel. The Father gives certain things to the Son, and all that the Father is and does he passes on to the Son, and the Son does them. Where does he do them? He does them here, in space-time history as the Word made flesh.

He does them at a particular parcel of ground in history. The Father shows him and he does them. The Father commands them and he obeys and performs them, so that the very obedience of the Son to his Father is the mechanism (if I may put it that way) within the triune God by which God himself reveals himself to us precisely in the obedience of the Son.

We should not, therefore, think of the Son as being God (that’s one truth) and the Son as being an obedient man (that’s another truth) and we just sort of have to hold those truths in funny tension. Very awkward, a bit embarrassing, but we’ll hold them because we’re Christians. Far from being embarrassing in the gospel of John, they are at the very heart of how God has chosen to reveal himself to us.

It is precisely in the obedience, the perfect obedience of the Son, who receives as an act of love from his Father all that God wants him to do, all that God himself is and does. Precisely because the Son, as an act of love toward his Father, performs these things so completely before us that we see in space-time history, in a man, a God-man, exactly what God is like.

The subordination of the Son, therefore, far from being an embarrassment to the truth of Jesus’ deity is precisely the way the triune God has chosen to reveal himself to us in this fallen, sinful, blind world. That is why Jesus can later say in 14:9, “Have you been so long with me and have you not known me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

He is not confusing the persons of the Godhead there. He is saying, “What my Father does, I do. What my Father says, I say. You are not going to see more than what you see in me. For all that the Father does, I do. He who has seen me has seen the Father.” That’s the first implication.

B. This marvelous self-disclosure turns, in the first place, not on the Father’s love for us but on the Father’s love for his Son.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, that’s extremely important. In evangelical circles today, we are hearing, let me tell you quite frankly, a tremendous amount of bilge water about the love of God. We really are. We are being sold a bill of goods.

The argument often runs like this. “God loves me; therefore, I am important. God loves me and, in fact, he’d probably be a little bit lonely in this universe without me. God loves me, and this elevates me somewhat in the scheme of things.” That’s not the way it works at all. Even when the Scripture tells me that God loves me, it is not because I am important but is despite the fact that I am rebellious.

When we read in what used to be the most commonly known verse in the New Testament, John 3:16 … That’s not the most commonly known, incidentally, any more in our society. The most commonly known today is Matthew 7:1. “Judge not that you be not judged.” This is the age of pluralism. When we read in what used to be the most commonly known verse, John 3:16, that “God so loved the world,” this does not prove the greatness of the world! The point is that the world in John is the created moral order in rebellion against God.

When it says, “God created the world,” this does not elevate the status of the world to some great, high pedestal. What it is saying is that despite our rebellion, despite the fact we shake our puny fists in the face of almighty God and say, “My way, not yours!” yet God so loved this world. That’s what the text is saying. It magnifies the love of God. It does not magnify the world at all.

Here we see something deeper yet. At the heart of God’s plan of redemption, antecedent logically to God’s love for the world is God’s love for his Son. God chose to love his Son so much that all that he does and all that he says, the Son also would do and say. Antecedent likewise to the Son’s love for us is his love for the Father.

What do we read in 14:31? “The world must know that I love the Father and do whatever he tells me to.” We are standing now on holy ground, very close to the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity. For before ever the world was, the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father and they needed no other. The Father and the Son loved the Spirit and the Spirit loved the Father and the Son. They needed no other. God so loved the Son that he chose, through the instrumentality of the Son, to reveal himself to us.

The third for is in verse 21. It gives an example, an exemplification of how the Father does something and the Son does something. “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.” Now it was a common belief in Judaism, as in the Old Testament, that God alone has the final power of life.

If you recall the story of Naaman coming to the king. He wants some kind of relief. He wants some kind of help. The king is distraught and says, “Am I God? Can I kill and make alive?” But Jesus is not just God’s agent, unlike an Elijah or an Elisha. Rather, just as God has the authority in himself to raise the dead and to give life, so also the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.

The fourth for is in verse 22. It gives a further exemplification. “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son …” Here the parallel with verse 21 breaks down a bit. In verse 21, the Father does something and the Son also does it. Here in verse 22, the Father goes one stage farther and says, “So far as judgment of human beings is concerned, I back off that one. I do not handle that one. I entrust all judgment to the Son.”

Then why? The question is asked. What is the purpose of all this subordination of the Son to the Father, all of this entrusting of certain tasks to the Son by the Father? What is the purpose of the whole thing? Verse 23: “… that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. For he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.”

That stands at the very heart of all New Testament faith and life and truth. Do you see what it means? Up to this point in redemptive history, men did not have to honor the Son as they honored the Father, for few thought deeply enough to understand the Old Testament texts well enough to see more than but a faint foreshadowing of such things.

Human beings are always responsible to respond positively to the revelation that God has given up to that point. Once God has to the next point, there is no merit in sticking back here with some previous level of revelation. That is why Paul got into trouble with so many first-century Jews.

They wanted the antecedent revelation of Moses and his law to supersede in authority, in status, the new revelation that had come along in fulfillment of that law in Jesus Christ. Paul wouldn’t have it. He says, “You’re not understanding the Old Testament properly. Let me tell you how it should be understood.” And he

… explanation, for example, in Galatians 3 and Romans 4 and elsewhere.

So also this is not saying that Abraham could not possibly be a saved person, acceptable before God, because he didn’t honor the Son. What is being said is this: now that God in this point in redemptive history has so fully disclosed himself to human beings, has so fully revealed himself to us in none less than his Son, his dearly beloved Son, you cannot reject that revelation without rejecting God himself.

That is why I am a Christian. You cannot possibly honor the God of the Bible while rejecting his Son. You cannot honestly please God while displeasing his Son. You cannot truly believe God while disbelieving his Son. For if you attempt to do so you are saying, “The god in whom I believe, the god whom I trust, doesn’t really have a son like Jesus.” In which case, it is a false god you are trusting.

That is why now that this revelation has come, there can be no true faith in God, not amongst Muslims, not amongst Arians, not amongst Hindus, not amongst anyone who denies the definitive revelation of God in his unique Son. For to do so, to reject that revelation is to say, “The God in whom I choose to believe is not the God who presents himself in Scripture as the Father of the Son.” In which case, what god is it?

This is what is distinctive in Christianity, one of many things that is distinctive in Christianity. “God has done this 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.” The last two points I may give more briefly.

3. Like the Father, the Son has life in himself.

If I were writing a book, that would be put with hyphens between each word. Life-in-himself. In other words, life-in-himself is almost a concept by itself in these next verses. Verses 24–26.

Jesus says, “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.”

This is again extremely important. In verse 21, we are told that the Son gives life to those to whom is pleased to give it. Now in verses 24 and 25, “those to whom he is pleased to give it” are more fully defined. They are the ones who hear Jesus’ word and, in consequence, believe the one who sent him, believe the eternal Father. Those who believe Jesus’ word, those who follow his word and thus trust the one who sent him, have eternal life.

The same sort of thing is taught again and again. For example, in 8:31 Jesus says, “If you hold to my word, you are really my disciples.” If then someone holds to Jesus’ word, hears it, hears it in that sense of adopting it, absorbing it, holding it, and in consequence believes in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that person has eternal life and will not be condemned.

In this passage, nothing is said about how this salvation is effected, but those who go on and read to the end of the book, those who remember that the book opens up by announcing Jesus not only as the Son of God but also as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, know well that they are acquitted before the bar of God’s justice.

They are not condemned precisely because the Son, whose word they have come to trust, has come to bear their sin. They recognize themselves as hopeless, hapless sinners before God except for God’s love in his Son by which we may be saved. The wonderful thing is that these people have already crossed over from death to life.

Christianity does not simply promise new life by and by over there. It insists that the age for new life has come already. God pours out his Spirit upon us and we are born again. We have new impulses, new desires. The sins that we once clung to become distasteful to us. We become sons of God, children of God ourselves.

Not in the unique way that Jesus is, but in the derivative sense, his Spirit working in us so that we learn to look to God and cry, “Abba, Father. What you do, I want to do. If you are holy, I want to be holy. If you tell the truth, I want to tell the truth.” Just as a son in the ancient world learned to imitate his father, so we as the children of God learn to imitate our heavenly Father, this because by faith in Jesus Christ we pass from death to life. Christianity, at the end of the day, is a religion of power.

It’s not just a creedal system. You can be as orthodox as Paul and not know new birth, not know new life, not pass from death to life, but those who trust Christ and his word pass from death to life experientially. In consequence, they no more stand condemned before the bar of God’s justice but learn what it means to be adopted sons of God themselves. This has come about because the Father who has life-in-himself has granted the Son to have life-in-himself. The Son dispenses this life.

4. The Son of God is also the Son of Man.

As such, he is the God-sanctioned judge of all. We read, verse 27: “And he has given him authority to judge …” The Father has given Jesus, the Son, authority to judge. “… because he is the Son of Man.” What does that mean? The Son of Man is one of the most ambiguous titles in all the New Testament.

In point of fact, it has quite a lot of different overtones. Sometimes the Son of Man is seen as the one who is coming on the clouds of heaven in the last days. That is the way Jesus presents himself to the high priest at the temple. “The time is coming when you will hear the voice of the Son of Man. You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Here there is a direct allusion to Daniel, chapter 7, where one like a Son of Man receives from the Ancient of Days, from God himself an eternal kingdom that destroys all other kingdoms. Jesus is the heavenly Son of Man. But that Man thing in there keeps having overtones of weakness. Jesus is the suffering Son of Man. He is the human being as well.

That is almost certainly the special overtone here. Ezekiel is called a son of man. Israel is called a son of man. Here Jesus is the Son of Man. He is so identified with the human race that he is fit to judge. He has stood where we stand. He has been tempted in all points like as we are. At the end of all things, in the last day, although he has perfectly obeyed the Father, he has also stood where we have stood. That makes him peculiarly fit to judge. That’s what the text says.

“And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this …” For the very power of God, which Jews expected would bring forth the dead on the last day. This now is mediated through the Son. “… 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.”

Can you see it? On the last day, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Son of Man stands. Now his glory is unveiled. Those who have rejected his Word, those in consequence whose life has not been turned around so that from deep within they have wanted to serve him and confess him as Lord and do what is pleasing to him, they call for the rocks and the mountains to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb.

The dead would as soon stay dead. But he says, “Hitler, come forth!” and Hitler comes forth. Every tyrant that ever lived will give an account of what he has done in his flesh. Every petty tyrant in the house and every crooked employer and everyone who ever cheated on his income tax and every liar and every boastful person will come forth.

Who will hide then? On that last day, if there are some who stand acquitted before the bar of God’s justice, it’s not because we will say, “Here, look at me, how good I am, how holy I have been.” We will say,

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly,

Wash me, Savior, or I die.

But he who has all the authority of God, he who has stood with us and so is peculiarly equipped to judge us will cry on that day, “Come forth,” and we will come forth. The Son of God is also the Son of Man, and as such he is the God-sanctioned judge of all. Yet even here he does not operate independently. He ends up by saying, 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.”

Here all of divine omniscience, all of the wisdom and discernment and knowledge of all the things that might’ve been and could’ve been and all the excuses and the ins and the outs in our heritage and our genes and our upbringing and our backgrounds and our opportunities, all of this information is also Jesus’ information. Jesus judges exactly as the Father judges. So there is no higher court. That is the Supreme Court, and its judgment is just. So the church says, “I believe in Jesus, the Son of God, our Lord.”

In conclusion, let me draw two or three threads together that are very important. Built into this theme in John’s gospel is a theme I have barely alluded to that would be good to explore that we don’t have time to. I want to draw your attention to it so you’ll think about it. It is the theme of fulfillment.

In John’s gospel, Jesus fulfills Old Testament feast days. He fulfills in various ways the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Dedication, the Feast of Passover. He fulfills the temple. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. This he said not of the temple of Jerusalem, but of his own body.”

He fulfills in certain ways the Sabbath. He fulfills the word of Moses. He fulfills the Law. He fulfills a whole lot of Old Testament things. There are Old Testament bits, Old Testament institutions, Old Testament laws, Old Testament structures, which cumulatively anticipate and point to and, thus, prophecy Christ. Christ fulfills them.

The way that is worked out is made abundantly clear in John and in Matthew and in Hebrews and elsewhere in the New Testament. I suggest to you that the sonship motif is one more of those. For Israel was God’s son. Instead of being God’s light to the nations, Israel failed. Adam was God’s son. Luke says so explicitly. But Adam introduced sin. We need a new Adam, a new humanity.

The covenantal king in the Old Testament was God’s son. The kings brought the nation to ruins and to exile. Now there has arisen God’s Son, God’s Son par excellence, God’s Son of whom all the former sons are but pale types, pale apparitions, pale anticipations of the Son of God par excellence.

In other words, the Son of God motif is a biblical motif where Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises of sonship that came before. Where Adam failed, he introduces a new humanity. Where Israel failed, Jesus does not, as the Son. Just as Israel was the vine that failed, and Jesus is the true vine. As Israel was light to the nations, so Jesus is the light of the world. As Israel was the son, Jesus is the true Son. It is important to learn to read the whole Bible together. This is one of the themes that link the Testaments together.

You and I who hold to the truth of God’s word need to worship God as he is, not God as we would like him to be, not God as we have simply received him to be, but God as he is. That means part of our deepening knowledge of God inevitably ought to result in deeper worship, more knowledgeable worship.

So the proper function of studying the Scripture in order to know God better … (Isn’t Packer’s title wonderful? Knowing God.) Part of the proper function of that then is deeper spirituality. I was talking with Packer a few weeks ago when he was teaching at Trinity. He said the reason people read that book is because it is not simply a book about God; it is a book about spirituality.

He is right. Truly knowing God deepens our walk with God. Thus, to study who Jesus is should not be done in function of sorting out our Christology for a dogmatics exam or confounding the next Jehovah’s Witness who comes through the door. In the first instance, it should be done as part of our disciplined development of our knowledge of God so we may worship better the God who is there, the God who is, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we understand these themes aright, we will understand a little more clearly how God has chosen to reveal himself to us in the person of his Son precisely so that human beings like you and me may be saved. It will shape how we go about our evangelism. It will shape how we talk to our neighborhood Hindu, to our neighborhood Muslim, or to our neighborhood pagan. It will shape how we talk to men and women.

Our understanding of the truth of the gospel is not simply, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved,” if they don’t know who the Lord Jesus Christ is! If they don’t know what being saved is! If they don’t know what belief is! So part of our growing to be ready to have an answer for everyone for the hope that is within us is bound up with our getting to know God and of revelation that he has disclosed to us in the pages of his Word and supremely in his Son incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ.