From Death to Life

The religious leaders wanted Jesus dead because He called God His own Father and made Himself equal with God (John 5:18). A man under that threat might be expected to soften his words. Jesus does the opposite. He explains exactly what He meant, and every sentence raises the stakes.

John 5:19-20 — The Son does what the Father does

Jesus tells them, with a solemn affirmation, that the Son does nothing on His own initiative. He acts only as He sees the Father act, and every work of the Father is likewise the work of the Son (John 5:19).

Do not hear weakness in that. No creature could say it. A prophet does some of what God commands. Jesus claims to do all that the Father does, in the same manner. That is not a servant copying a master. It is one divine will and one divine work, shared by the Father and the Son (John 10:30, 14:9-10). The Son is not a junior partner in the Godhead. He is of the same substance, equal in power and glory (Philippians 2:6) (Colossians 2:9).

Then He tells them why: the Father loves the Son and lets Him see all of His own work (John 5:20). The healing at the pool was not the end. Greater works are coming, and they will leave His hearers astonished (John 5:20).

John 5:21-23 — Life and judgment belong to the Son

What greater works? Two that belong to God alone: giving life and passing judgment.

As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son makes alive the ones He chooses (John 5:21). Read that slowly. He does not give life to whoever wishes it. He gives life to whomever He wills. The dead do not resurrect themselves (Ephesians 2:1, 4-5). The Son chooses, the Father draws, and none the Father gives will fail to come (John 6:37, 44). If you are alive to God this morning, it is because the Son willed it before you ever did.

He goes further. The Father has given the whole work of judging into the Son’s hands (John 5:22). The reason is so that the Son receives the same honor men owe the Father. Whoever withholds honor from the Son withholds it from the Father who sent Him (John 5:23) (1 John 2:23).

There is no religion that honors God while dishonoring Christ. A man who says he worships the Father but treats Jesus as merely a good teacher has not found a gentler faith. He has refused the Father’s own verdict about His Son.

John 5:24 — Already passed over

Now Jesus turns from the crowd to the individual. The man who listens to Christ’s word and trusts the Father who sent Him possesses eternal life right now. Condemnation will never reach him. He has already left death behind and stands in life (John 5:24).

The tense matters. The believer does not hope to pass over someday. He has passed over, and it stands done. His judgment was settled at the cross, where the Judge Himself bore it (Romans 8:1, 33-34). The courtroom you fear has already announced its sentence over you, and the sentence is life.

John 5:25-27 — An hour that is now

Jesus says a time is on its way, and has in fact already arrived, when men who are dead will hear the Son of God call to them, and the hearing itself will make them alive (John 5:25).

This is the first resurrection, the one that happens before any grave is opened. Men walking around dead in sin hear Christ’s voice in the gospel, and they live (Ephesians 2:5) (Colossians 2:13). Lazarus could not decide to hear. The voice gave him ears (John 11:43-44). So it is with every sinner the Son calls.

Life belongs to the Father by His very nature, and He has given the Son that same life by nature (John 5:26). The Son does not borrow life. He is its fountain (John 1:4). And the Father has given Him authority to judge, because He is the Son of Man (John 5:27), the very figure Daniel saw receive everlasting dominion (Daniel 7:13-14). The One who will judge you took on flesh like yours.

John 5:28-29 — An hour still coming

Then Jesus tells them that none of this should surprise them, because a second time is on its way. Notice He does not say it has already arrived. Every buried body will hear Him call and will rise from the grave (John 5:28-29). Those whose lives bore good fruit will be raised to life, and those whose lives were given to evil will be raised to condemnation (John 5:29) (Daniel 12:2).

Do not read that as salvation by works. Jesus has just told you how a dead man comes to life: by hearing and believing (John 5:24). The good deeds of 5:29 are the fruit of that life, not the price of it (Ephesians 2:8-10). Every grave on earth will open at one word from Christ. The only question is what life was already in the man before he went into it.