C. Jesus and the Sick Man in Jerusalem (5:1–18)
1After these things there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2At the Sheep’s [place] in Jerusalem is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethsaida, having five porticoes. 3In these would lie a multitude of the sick, blind, lame, or shriveled up. 5There was a certain man there who was thirty-eight years in his sickness. 6When Jesus saw him lying there, and found out that he had been like that for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?” 7The sick man answered, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and whenever I get there, someone else goes down ahead of me.” 8Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” 9And all at once the man got well, and he picked up his mat and walked. But it was the Sabbath that day. 10So the Jews said to him who had been cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to pick up your mat.” 11But he answered them, “The one who made me well, that man told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ” 12They asked him, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Pick up and walk’?” 13But he who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had ducked out—there was a crowd in the place.
14After these things Jesus finds him in the temple and said to him, “Look, you have gotten well. Don’t sin any more, or something worse may happen to you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who made him well. 16And for this the Jews began pursuing Jesus, because he did such things on the Sabbath. 17But Jesus had an answer for them: “My Father is working even until now, and I am working.” 18So for this the Jews kept seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only abolishing the Sabbath but was claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God.
“After these things”1 (v. 1; compare 2:13; 3:22) links the ensuing account only very loosely to what has preceded. The same phrase occurs again at the beginning of chapter 6 and chapter 7, each time signaling a change of scene or a turn in the narrative (see also v. 14). A number of scholars over the years have proposed reversing the order of chapters 5 and 6, so that Jesus’ ministry at Cana in Galilee to the royal official (4:43–54) is followed immediately by the feeding of the multitude, still in Galilee near the shore of the lake (6:1–15).2 This explains why Jesus at the beginning of chapter 6 is assumed to be already in Galilee, simply crossing from one side of the lake to the other (6:1). But there is not a shred of manuscript evidence for such a move. Readers who dutifully follow the course of this rearranged Gospel from chapter 4 to chapter 6 to chapter 5 to chapter 7 will discover at the beginning of chapter 7 that Jesus is suddenly “walking around” in Galilee (7:1) without any notice of how he got there from Jerusalem, and within nine verses is back in Jerusalem again (see 7:10). The rearrangement solves one problem only to create another.3 While it may tell us something of the original historical sequence of certain events in Jesus’ life, it tells us nothing of the literary sequence of John’s Gospel. Its mistake lies in trying to “improve” the text by making it more chronologically aware and intentional than it intends to be. “After these things” means little more than “The next thing I would like to tell is this.” Better to interpret the text as it stands than rewrite the text. With this in mind, let us move from chapter 4 to chapter 5, not to chapter 6. The new chapter finds Jesus in Jerusalem, where he again (as in 4:43–54) performs a miracle that gives “life” to someone who is “sick.”
1 Instead of “going down” to Capernaum from Cana in Galilee (katabēthi, 4:49), Jesus “went up”4 to Jerusalem, just as he had done at Passover (see 2:13). Having firmly established that Jesus is a Galilean (2:1–12; 4:3, 47, 54), the author makes Galilee his point of reference and brings Jesus to Jerusalem only for “a festival of the Jews.”5 Ordinarily the “festival” is named, as either Passover (2:13; 11:55), Tents, or Tabernacles (7:2), or Dedication (now known as Hanukkah) (10:22). Here alone it is unnamed, either deliberately or because the story was preserved and handed down without a precise temporal setting. In 2:13–22 it may have been important that the festival was “the Passover of the Jews” because of veiled references to Jesus’ death and resurrection (2:17, 19–22), anticipating Jesus’ last Passover. Here we find nothing linking the events of the chapter to a specific festival. What turns out to be important instead is that “it was the Sabbath that day” (v. 9; see vv. 10, 16).
If the author has purposely left the festival nameless, he could have done so in order to conceal a departure from chronological order. If the healing to be recorded in this chapter was remembered in connection with Jesus’ first Passover described in chapter 2, then it could have originally been one of the impressive “signs he was doing” that attracted the attention of “many,” including Nicodemus (see 2:23; 3:2). If, as many believe, the story of the temple cleansing was transferred at some point in the tradition from the last week of Jesus’ life to that first Passover in Jerusalem, it would have tended to overshadow other stories already associated with that early visit. The healing recorded in chapter 5 could have been one of those accounts “rescued” from its original setting, given a new literary setting of its own, and made the basis of further controversy between Jesus and the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem (vv. 16–18, 19–47; see also 7:21–23). None of this, however, sheds light on the Gospel in its present form, where the events described are clearly subsequent to Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem and Judea (2:13–3:36), and to his ministries in Samaria and Galilee (4:1–54). Whatever the historical facts or traditions, in its literary setting this unnamed “festival of the Jews” could be any festival between the first Passover in Jerusalem (2:13) and the second Passover (presumably a year later) at the time Jesus fed the multitude in Galilee (6:4). It is unlikely, therefore, that the author intends us to think of it as Passover. He has left it nameless, and we should do the same. The only reason for mentioning it is to bring Jesus to Jerusalem from Galilee, and for this any “festival” will do. Again (as in 2:13) the mention of “the Jews” in charge of the festival tells us who Jesus’ antagonists will be (see vv. 10, 15, 16, 18).
2 The author might have taken Jesus directly to the temple for this “festival of the Jews” (see 2:14), but first he sketches a scene in Jerusalem for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with the city. Jesus will get to the temple soon enough (v. 14), but attention focuses for now on a “pool” at the “Sheep’s [place],”6 leading into the city, probably (as Brown locates it) “northeast of the Temple where the sheep were brought into Jerusalem for sacrifice.”7 The author claims that this pool “is” (estin, present tense) in Jerusalem, even after the city’s destruction in A.D. 70 (assuming that John’s Gospel is written after 70).8 Quite likely he is right, for archeological evidence from later times suggests that the pool was still used as a healing sanctuary to the god Asclepius long after the city was destroyed and rebuilt by the Romans.9 While he knows that the readers have little likelihood of ever visiting the spot, the author invites them to visualize the scene as it unfolds.
The Hebrew name of the place, probably unfamiliar to them and quite uncertain in the manuscripts, is less important to the story than the author’s description of the pool’s “five porticoes” or “colonnades,” and the “multitude of the sick, blind, lame, or shriveled up” lying there (v. 3). The most important ancient witnesses (including P75, B, the Vulgate, and Coptic versions) give the name as “Bethsaida” (P66 offers a slight variation of this), Others (including א and 33) have “Bethzatha,” and still others “Belzetha” (D, and the old Latin), or “Bethesda” (A, C, and the majority of later manuscipts). Conventional wisdom is quick to dismiss “Bethsaida” because it appears to be based on a confusion between this pool in Jerusalem and the town in Galilee that was home to Philip, Andrew, and Simon Peter (see 1:44; 12:21).10 Yet this author is quite capable of letting a single name do double duty for two different towns or places (see “Bethany” in 1:28, in 11:1, 18, and in 12:1). If he did so here, scribes might well have tried to correct him (just as Origen did at 1:28), by changing “Bethsaida” to “Bethzatha” or “Bethesda” on the basis of what was known about this section of Jerusalem,11 or this pool in particular.12 This is at least as likely as a change in the opposite direction, and for this reason we have followed the earliest manuscripts in reading the name as “Bethsaida” (see n. 11). The “five porticoes,” or covered colonnades,13 should not be interpreted allegorically, any more than the “six stone water jars” at Cana (2:6) or the Samaritan woman’s “five husbands” (4:18).14 The five porticoes simply contribute to the impression of a great amount of space,15 appropriate to the “multitude” (v. 3) of those who gathered there.
3, 5 The scene unfolds, not merely as something that met Jesus’ eyes when he arrived in Jerusalem, but as what went on at the pool on a regular basis, whether at the Jewish festivals or all the time. It is a customary or repeated scene that the reader is invited to visualize, not a one-time event. Within the five porticoes or covered colonnades “would lie16 a multitude of the sick, blind, lame, or shriveled up” (v. 3). “The sick” could be read either as a general designation of the whole group (as if it were followed by a colon), or it could be read as referring (rather vaguely) to one group among the four. In any event, the “sickness”17 (v. 5) of the man who will be at the center of the story (v. 7) is not specified. His inability to get into the pool (v. 7) will suggest that he is either one of the “lame” or the “shriveled up,” but we are never told explicitly.
At the end of verse 3, the manuscripts diverge. Codex D and some of the old Latin add “paralytics” to the list, possibly because of a similar-sounding story in the synoptic Gospels in which Jesus says, “Get up, pick up your mat and go home,” to a man explicitly called a “paralytic” (Mk 2:10–11; see also Mt 9:6). D had only a few followers in the Latin tradition, but other manuscripts made far more sweeping changes. The first, shorter addition, “waiting for the moving of the water,” appeared also in D and its followers, but in a wide range of later manuscripts and versions as well. Its effect is to explain why so many sick people would congregate in these five covered colonnades at the Bethsaida pool. They were waiting for something, and the reader can infer already that “the moving of the water” in some way represented an opportunity for healing (see v. 7). A much longer addition explains why in much greater detail: “For an angel of the Lord would come down from time to time in the pool and stir up the water. The first one in after the stirring of the water would get well from whatever disease he had.”18 Interestingly, all the main verbs in this added material confirm the impression that this was not a single event that happened on one memorable day, but something that happened again and again as a common occurrence.19
These additions (especially the second one) obviously make the Gospel’s readers much more knowledgeable about the situation than they would otherwise be—too knowledgeable, in fact.20 All we are supposed to know for the moment is that a large crowd of the sick and disabled gathered regularly at a famous pool in Jerusalem. Our attention is meant to focus on “a certain man” (v. 5)21 and his experience “there” (ekei). We will learn of what went on at the pool not from a narrative aside by the author (which is what v. 4 would be if it were genuine), but from the narrative itself. We will see the man through Jesus’ eyes (v. 6), hear the man’s own account of his predicament (v. 7), and witness a miracle (vv. 8–9). The only piece of information we are given in advance is how long the man has been sick—“thirty-eight years.” Here again commentators have looked for allegorical meanings (see n. 14), but again unconvincingly.22 More likely, this is a tradition handed down from the time the story was first heard, remembered, and retold, serving here to heighten the impression of a knowledgeable (if not omniscient) author-narrator.23 The man’s “sickness,” like that of the royal official’s son at Cana (4:46) is not named (see also 6:2; 11:3–4). In the earlier incident we learned that it involved a “fever” (4:52), and in this instance we learn that it makes him unable to walk or get into the water.
6 Arriving in Jerusalem (v. 1), Jesus surveyed the whole scene just described (or so we can assume), but what we are explicitly told that he “saw” is the one man “lying” there,24 the man to whom we have just been introduced. When Jesus “found out25 that he had been like that26 for a long time,” he asked the man, “Do you want [theleis] to get well?” In contrast to his encounter with the royal official at Cana (4:47–48), Jesus now takes the initiative to heal. His question is straightforward. It carries no hidden rebuke or psychological analysis, as if to say, “Do you really want to get well, or have you become quite comfortable in your life of dependency all these years?”27 Instead, Jesus is asking, “What do you want? What can I do for you?” He is saying just what he said to blind Bartimaeus in Mark: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mk 10:51).28 Bartimaeus had an answer ready (“that I might see,” v. 51b), but here Jesus supplies the obvious answer for the sick man: “to get well.”29 “Well” or “healthy” is used only of this healing in John’s Gospel, and it is used repeatedly (see vv. 9, 11, 14, 15, and 7:23, as well as the scribal addition in v. 4). To “get well” is as generalized and unspecific as being “sick.” John’s Gospel is not interested in the clinical details or symptoms of the illnesses Jesus cured, only in his ability to make things right by giving life to those in need (see 4:50, 53, “your son lives”).
7 The sick man hears Jesus’ words simply as an offer of help from a kind stranger, so he suggests something Jesus might do for him. “Sir,”30 he replies, “I have no one [literally, “no man”]31 to put32 me into the pool when the water is stirred up.” He needs “a man” (probably male in this instance), either a slave33 or a good friend,34 to assist him, and Jesus is a likely candidate. Without the “helps to the reader” provided by later scribes (see v. 3, and n. 18), we are left to infer that the pool must have had healing qualities (or at least that the sick man thought it did), and that these qualities were in effect only at certain times when the pool was “stirred up,”35 presumably by an intermittent spring of some sort. “Whenever I get there,” the sick man complains, “someone else goes down ahead of me.”36 There is reason to suspect his motives. Unless others in the “multitude” at the pool (v. 4) had a slave or close friend by their side, most of them were in the same situation as he. No such healthy companions are mentioned in the author’s opening sketch of the scene (v. 3). The reader is left wondering. In trying to recruit Jesus to help him, is the sick man gaining an unfair advantage?37
8 Jesus will have none of it. Instead, ignoring the pool and its supposed healing powers, he tells the man, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” The setting of the incident, so elaborately introduced (vv. 2–3), is virtually forgotten. Jesus and the sick man are still at the pool, but it no longer matters. They could be anywhere. Readers familiar with other Gospels will remember a story in which Jesus and a paralytic are in Galilee, not Jerusalem, and in a house, not by a pool. Unlike the sick man here, this man had friends to help him (not one but four!) who carried him on a “mat” (Mk 2:4),38 and dug through a roof to get to Jesus. Jesus’ words to this man were the same: “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” (Mk 2:9). In both instances the healing was immediate, and the ensuing action matched the command almost word for word. The paralytic “got up and at once39 picked up his mat and went out” (Mk 2:12). In our story, “all at once40 the man was well, and he picked up his mat and walked” (v. 9).
A natural question to ask in both stories is, Why mention the “mat”? Why not just say “Get up and walk?”41 In Mark the answer is fairly clear. The paralytic was brought in to Jesus on a “mat,” but now he no longer needs it. Carrying his mat signals his newfound independence and marks his departure from the scene. He does not walk simply to demonstrate his ability to walk, but he goes home, and because the mat is his property he takes it with him (see Mk 2:11, 12). In John’s Gospel, although the mat has not been mentioned before, the reader can infer something similar. In telling the sick man, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk,” Jesus is not saying, “Get up and walk around to prove to everyone that you are healed.” He is saying, “Get up, leave this place and take your mat with you, because you aren’t coming back. You don’t need to stay here any longer.”42
9 The notice that the man “got well” recalls Jesus’ initial question whether he wanted to “get well” (v. 6).43 Whatever doubts there may have been about the man’s motives (see v. 7), Jesus knows that he truly wants to “get well,” and he grants his wish unreservedly, with no requirement, or even any mention, of “faith” (contrast 4:50, 53; also Mk 2:5). The story now takes a decisive turn, with the abrupt comment that “it was the Sabbath that day” (v. 9b). The notice, like some other narrative asides in John (see 1:24, 28; 3:24), comes belatedly. Both here and later in the case of the blind man at the pool of Siloam (9:14), the author waits until the healing is over to tell us that it is the Sabbath, in contrast to several healing stories in other Gospels in which we know from the start that this will be an issue (see Mk 2:23; 3:2; Lk 13:10; 14:3). The effect of the news is to change the story’s direction. Its setting is the weekly Sabbath now, not simply an unnamed yearly “festival of the Jews” (v. 1), and the Sabbath will determine the story line from here on.
10 At this point the question of why Jesus mentioned the carrying of the mat resurfaces. A new reason now emerges. “The Jews” make an abrupt appearance,44 reminding “him who had been cured”45 of what the reader has just been told (that “It is the Sabbath”), and warning him that “it is not lawful for you to pick up your mat.” The reader now learns that whatever else it may have been, the mention of carrying the mat (vv. 8 and 9) was a way of setting the stage for this warning, and for the ensuing charges of “the Jews” against Jesus of breaking the Sabbath (see vv. 15–16). This was a function it did not have in the Markan story of the paralytic in Capernaum. But it was part of the oral law that “taking out from one domain into another” was one of thirty-nine activities considered to be work and forbidden on the Sabbath,46 and it is probably to some version of that law that “the Jews” are referring.
Are we to infer that Jesus knew this when he told the sick man to carry off his mat? From what we know of the Johannine Jesus, we can be sure that nothing he says or does is unintentional. He knew exactly what he was doing, and his command to “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” was a deliberate challenge to the religious authorities in Jerusalem and their Sabbath laws.47 With their words, “it is not lawful,”48 the issue is joined (compare Mk 2:24, 26; 3:4). If not a Sabbath breaker himself, Jesus has at least contributed to the delinquency of one.49
11–12 Always quick to make excuses (see v. 7), the Sabbath breaker replies, “The one who made me well, he told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ” For their part the Jewish authorities are quite willing to accept his excuse, perhaps in the hope that it will lead them to the real target of their investigation. We seem to be witnessing here a resumption of the aborted confrontation at the Passover festival three chapters earlier. “The Jews” held their peace before (after 2:20), but we have not heard the last of them. “Who is the man who told you, ‘Pick up and walk’?” they ask, and we sense that they are on Jesus’ trail once again. Already the issue is shifting, as it will explicitly later in the chapter (vv. 16–18) from the Sabbath question to that of Jesus’ identity. To the healed man, Jesus is “the one who made me well” (v. 11), but to the Jerusalem authorities he is simply “the man who told you, ‘Pick up and walk’ ” (v. 12). They have no interest in, and no direct knowledge of, the healing. To them Jesus is not a healer or miracle worker, only a Sabbath breaker. All they care about is his identity, whether in order to charge him for breaking the Sabbath, or to connect him to the earlier act of provocation in driving the money changers from the temple (2:14–16). Their question, “Who is the man?” will echo and reecho through this Gospel in various ways, with multilayered answers.50
13 For now the question of “who it was” goes unanswered. Jesus’ identity remains a mystery to those who do not believe. “He who had been healed” did not know Jesus’ name, and could not point him out because “Jesus had ducked out51—there was a crowd in the place.” The implication is that he made his escape quite intentionally, knowing what the authorities had in mind.52 The “crowd in the place”53 brings the narrative back to the opening description of “the place” (the pool at Bethsaida, v. 2), and the “multitude” of the sick lying there (v. 3). Yet this “crowd” cannot simply be identified with that “multitude,” for it seems to be made up of onlookers standing and milling around, more like the ubiquitous “crowds” in Mark’s Gospel. As we have seen, the healing could have happened anywhere, but the author reminds us again of the pool and the opening scene, just in time to set the stage for an abrupt change of venue to a very different kind of “place.”
14 “After these things” again (as in v. 1) marks an undisclosed time lapse and a break in the narrative. At the first Passover (2:14), Jesus had “found in the temple” money changers and sellers of livestock. This time, at another “festival of the Jews” (see v. 1) he “finds” the man he had healed, again “in the temple.”54 Presumably the temple was his destination from the start, when he “went up to Jerusalem” for the festival (v. 1), until he was caught up in the scene at the pool. Having left that “place” abruptly (v. 13), he would inevitably go to the temple, “the place where one must worship” (4:20),55 above all at Jewish festivals. In short, Jesus had reasons to be in the temple that had nothing to do with the man at the pool. Still, their meeting is not a chance encounter. Jesus “finds” the man quite intentionally, just as he “found” Philip (1:43) when he enlisted him as a disciple, just as Andrew “found” Simon Peter (1:41) and Philip “found” Nathanael (1:45).56
Instead of “Follow me” (1:43), Jesus makes a more modest—but at the same time more ominous—demand. First he reminds the man of the miracle at the pool: “Look, you have gotten well.”57 Then he adds the thinly veiled warning, “Don’t sin any more,58 or something worse may happen to you.” If the notice that “it was the Sabbath that day” (v. 9) caught the reader up short and changed the course of the story, so too does this belated warning from Jesus. It is the first occurrence of the verb “to sin” in John’s Gospel. Neither the first disciples, nor Nathanael, nor Nicodemus, nor even the Samaritan woman (despite 4:18), were said to have “sinned.” Nor did the healing of the royal official’s son address any “sins” of either the child or the father.59 The reader may have sensed a certain selfishness and duplicity in the behavior of the sick man at the pool, but there has been no hint up to now that Jesus judged or condemned him, or for that matter forgave him. All he said was “Do you want to get well?” (v. 6), and “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” (v. 8). Yet if we remember Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem, we will also remember that he “knew what was in the person” (2:25). If Jesus knew “what was in” people in general (enough not to “entrust himself” to them), we need not be surprised that he knew what was in this particular man—specifically that he was a sinner. Jesus would hardly have failed to notice what even the attentive reader is able to infer. Yet why does Jesus issue this warning? “Look, you have gotten well” is what we expect (see vv. 6, 9, 11, 15). “Don’t sin any more, or something worse will happen to you,” is not. It sounds as if it belongs in that other story, the one in which Jesus proposed healing someone with the words, “Your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5), and then demonstrated dramatically that “Your sins are forgiven” and “Get up, pick up your mat and walk” amount to the same thing (Mk 2:9–12). No such demonstration has taken place here, yet the man Jesus healed is supposed to understand that “Look, you have gotten well” is equivalent to “Look, your sins are forgiven.” Or if he does not understand it, at least the reader is expected to. Either way, the warning follows as a logical corollary.
This story in John’s Gospel and the story of the paralytic in Mark appear to be intertwined in the Gospel tradition. At least one detail, as we have seen—the picking up of the mat—turned out to be even more at home in this story than in the other, because of the issue of working on the Sabbath. Now we find that another—the link between healing and the forgiveness of sin—was integral to the Markan story from the start, but comes in here almost as an afterthought. While Mark’s account of the paralytic helps us fill in the gaps and make sense of the narrative in John, can we assume that John’s readers would have been familiar with Mark? Probably not. Without help from Mark, what do we make of Jesus’ warning to the man he had healed? It implies that a connection between sickness and personal sin is at least a distinct possibility. The possibility is later raised explicitly by Jesus’ disciples on encountering the beggar who was blind from birth (9:2), and Jesus did not claim that such a connection was unthinkable, only that it did not apply in that instance (9:3). On the other hand, the issue never came up in the case of the royal official’s son, nor does it when Jesus learns of the illness of his friend Lazarus (11:3). Jesus in this Gospel views sickness first of all as an opportunity for healing and salvation (see 9:3–4; 11:4), not as a punishment for sin, and the same is true here.
At most there is an analogy between sin and sickness in that both can lead to death or not, depending on circumstances and severity. “Lord, come down before my little child dies!” the royal official said (4:49), and Jesus assures his disciples that the illness of Lazarus will not “lead to death” (11:4). In heated debate, Jesus warns his hostile questioners, “You will die in your sin” (8:21), or “in your sins” (8:24), and another Johannine writing draws a distinction between sin “leading to death” and sin “not leading to death” (1 Jn 5:16–17).60 In the present passage, too, death (whether physical or spiritual) is presumably the “something worse”61 of which Jesus warns the man.62 His fate remains uncertain. The sick man has “gotten well,” and by implication his past sins have been forgiven,63 yet he is not “born from above,” as Jesus told Nicodemus a person must be (see 3:3, 6). His status, like that of Nicodemus himself, is still undecided. We do not know, and will never know for certain, whether this man is one “who practices wicked things” and “does not come to the light” (3:20), or one who “comes to the light, so that his works will be revealed as works wrought in God” (3:21). But we can guess.
15 The immediate outlook is not good. The man said nothing in reply, no word of thanks, no expression of belief, no commitment to stop sinning. Instead, he “went away64 and told the Jews that it was Jesus who made him well.” Much later, after the raising of Lazarus, we will hear of many who “had come to Mary and seen the things he had done” and “believed in him” (11:45), and of others who instead “went off65 to the Pharisees and told them the things Jesus had done” (11:46). Those who were not believers became informants, and their information led to the Sanhedrin’s decision that Jesus must die (see 11:47–53). The long process that ended with that decision begins here at this early “festival of the Jews,” and here too the informant is not a believer, at least not yet and perhaps never. As soon as Jesus said to him, “Don’t sin any more,” he “went away” and did exactly that. As for the “something worse” awaiting him, it is left to our imaginations.
16 “The Jews” at Jerusalem did not care that “it was Jesus who made him well” (v. 15), only that Jesus had done so by telling him to pick up his mat (v. 12). “For this”66 they “pursued” or “persecuted” Jesus. Here, as at the beginning of the chapter, the imperfect tenses are noteworthy. The verb “pursued” (ediōkon, imperfect) describes a repeated or constant action, a fixed policy of regarding Jesus as a marked man.67 If we assume that this was already the case in light of his actions in the temple earlier, then it could be translated “kept pursuing.” But if it was not (and we have no evidence that it was), then the verb should be rendered “began pursuing,” and this is the course we have followed in translation. By the same token, what Jesus “did” on the Sabbath is not viewed here as a single act of healing, but as part of a regular pattern of behavior. Probably we are meant to conclude that Jesus “did such things68 on the Sabbath” more than once, even though only one instance has been given (see 20:30; 21:25).69 It is important to note that this was the perception not only of “the Jews” but of the Gospel writer. Like the other Gospel writers, he is convinced that Jesus actually did violate Sabbath law, but equally convinced that he was fully justified in doing so.
17 Jesus immediately gives his justification for breaking the Sabbath. He “had an answer”70 for the Jewish authorities who claimed that he broke the Sabbath. It was not an answer remembered as having been given at a specific time and place, or in relation to specific words from “the Jews.” We have no reason to believe that it is still the Sabbath, or that Jesus is still in the temple.71 No real dialogue takes place between Jesus and “the Jews.” He makes his pronouncement (v. 17), and instead of saying anything to him in reply they simply make plans to kill him (v. 18). Then Jesus “gave answer” again (v. 19),72 this time at great length (vv. 19–47), with no interruptions from “the Jews” and still no response. It is not so much an actual debate on an actual occasion as a literary construction based on what “the Jews” in Jerusalem must have thought and what Jesus would have said in reply.73 It is the writer’s first real venture into the mind of Jesus, speaking for himself in the first person.74 “My Father is working even until now,” he says, “and I am working.” He had spoken of “my Father” once before, when he said in the temple, “Stop making my Father’s house a house of trade!” (2:16), but it did not register. This time it does. “The Jews” at Jerusalem now hear the expression “my Father” and grasp its implications (see v. 18). Jesus is picking up the thread of a rather familiar discussion in Judaism about the Sabbath. The notion that God “rested” after creating the world in six days (Gen 2:2–3) could not be interpreted to mean that God is now inactive in the world. On the contrary, God is at work constantly, giving and sustaining life, rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked. In short, God, and God alone, lawfully breaks the Sabbath.75
With the pronouncement, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working,” Jesus injects himself into the equation. The result is a kind of riddle,76 open to several possible interpretations. Does it mean that after creating the world God continued working until now, but that now Jesus takes over in God’s place? Or does it mean that God continued working and is still at work, only now through Jesus the Son?77 Or that God has been at work ever since creation, first through the preexistent Son and now through the incarnate Son? Or is it simply that God is still at work, and Jesus is God’s imitator, like a son apprenticed to his father?78 There is no sure way to tell what the relation is between the Father’s work and the work of the Son. Interpretations will vary according to the degree of sophistication the reader brings to the text. The implication in any event is that because God breaks the Sabbath Jesus can do so as well, and for that reason alone the “riddle” (if that is the right word) is highly provocative.79 Beyond this, all the reader has to go on is Jesus’ earlier comment to his disciples that “My food is that I might do the will of the One who sent me and complete his work” (ergon, 4:34). Not surprisingly, he now identifies “the One who sent me” unmistakably as “my Father” (compare 2:16), implicitly claiming for himself the title of God’s “One and Only” (1:14, 18; 3:16), or “Son” sent into the world (see 3:17, 34–35). The stage is set for a confrontation, or more precisely a series of confrontations, not limited to a single occasion, or to one Sabbath or one unnamed festival, but spanning the rest of the first half of John’s Gospel (chapters 5–12).
18 The answer to Jesus’ “answer” echoes v. 16, where “for this,” that is, for healing on the Sabbath, the Jerusalem authorities “began pursuing” Jesus. Here too it is “for this,”80 for what he has just said, that they “kept seeking all the more to kill him.” The reader now learns that when the authorities “began pursuing” Jesus (v. 16), their intent was “to kill.”81 Now they are “all the more”82 determined to do so, and they will persist in this intent throughout the Gospel (see 7:1, 19, 20, 25; 8:37, 40; 11:53; 18:31).83 Again the imperfect tenses are conspicuous. They “kept seeking” to kill Jesus, not only because he was breaking the Sabbath on a regular basis—in their eyes “abolishing” it84—but for an even deeper reason: he “was claiming God as his own Father.”85 They are referring of course to what he has just said, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (v. 17), but they make no explicit attempt to interpret what he means either by his “work” or the Father’s “work.” All they seem to hear is the expression, “my Father.”86 That, perhaps together with his use of the emphatic “I” (kagō) is what provokes them. From it they conclude three things: that Jesus is referring to God, that he is claiming God as “his own Father,” and therefore that he is claiming to be “equal to God.”87
As far as the Gospel writer is concerned, these are perfectly legitimate conclusions: Jesus did “break the Sabbath,”88 he did claim God as “his own Father,” and he did claim to be “equal to God.”89 The text presents these affirmations not simply as what “the Jews” thought Jesus was saying, but as what he was saying, and what was in fact the case.90 Yet the repeated mention of “the Jews” (vv. 16, 18) also highlights the fact that such claims were highly problematic within Judaism, as much so or more than breaking the Sabbath. Philo, for example, even while acknowledging that “to imitate God’s works is a pious act,” cautioned that “the mind shows itself to be without God and full of self-love, when it deems itself as on a par with God;91 and, whereas passivity is its true part, looks on itself as an agent. When God sows and plants noble qualities in the soul, the mind that says, ‘I plant’ is guilty of impiety.”92 Philo’s warning against the emphatic “I” (egō) suggests that in John as well part of the offense may be traceable to Jesus’ emphatic conclusion, “and I am working.”93 Jesus’ claim that God was “his own Father”94 meant that God was (in C. H. Dodd’s words) “his father in a sense other than that in which any Israelite might speak of Him as ‘our Father in heaven.’ ”95 This could mean that he was speaking as Israel’s Messiah,96 or it could mean (as both “the Jews” and the Gospel writer assume) that he was speaking as a divine being. To the Gospel writer these are not mutually exclusive options, but to Jesus’ questioners the latter was the primary concern. In a later confrontation they will say, “It’s not about a good work that we stone you, but about blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making yourself God” (10:33).97 To the Jewish mind, making oneself “equal to God” (5:18) represented at the very least a first step toward the outright blasphemy of making oneself “God” (theos, 10:33),98 and in that sense a denial of Jewish monotheism.99 Yet the reader of the Gospel has known from the start that “God” (theos) is exactly what Jesus is (see 1:1, 18), so that to hear it from Jesus’ own lips (implicitly) and from his opponents (explicitly) comes as no surprise, but as confirmation. With the notice that the issue is “not only” (ou monon) the Sabbath, but Jesus’ claims about himself, we move decisively from the realm of legal observance to the realm of christology. The question “Who is the man?” (v. 12) will more and more take center stage. Jesus’ answer (vv. 19–47) will primarily address that question, and only secondarily (and indirectly) the issue of the Sabbath.
D. Jesus’ Answer to the Jews in Jerusalem (5:19–47)
19So Jesus gave his answer, saying to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the son can do nothing on his own, except what he sees the father doing. For whatever things he does, these in the same way the son does too. 20For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself is doing, and to your amazement he will show him greater works than these. 21For just as the Father raises the dead and brings them to life, so too the Son brings to life those he wants. 22For the Father judges no one, but has given all the judgment to the Son, 23so that all will honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24Amen, amen, I say to you that the person who hears my word and believes the One who sent me, has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. 25Amen, amen, I say to you that an hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26For just as the Father has life in himself, so too he gave to the Son to have life in himself, 27and he gave him authority to do judgment, because he is the Son of man. 28Don’t be amazed at this, for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice, 29and those who have done good things will go out to a resurrection of life, but those who have practiced wicked things to a resurrection of judgment.
30“As for me, I can do nothing on my own. Just as I hear I judge, and my judgment is right, because I am not seeking my will but the will of the One who sent me. 31If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. 32There is another who testifies about me, and I know that the testimony he testifies about me is true. 33You have sent word to John, and he has testified to the truth. 34I, however, do not accept the testimony from a human; I only say these things so that you might be saved. 35He was the burning and shining lamp, and you chose to rejoice for a time in his light. 36But I have testimony greater than John’s. For the works that the Father has given me that I might complete them, the very works that I do testify about me that the Father has sent me. 37And so the Father who sent me, he has testified about me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38and you do not have his word dwelling in you, because he whom that One sent, him you do not believe. 39You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life. And yet those are the [writings] that testify about me. 40And you are unwilling to come to me that you might have life.
41“I do not accept glory from humans. 42No, I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. 43I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me. If another comes in his own name, him you will accept. 44How can you believe, when you receive glory from each other, but do not seek the glory that comes from the Only God? 45Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. Your accuser is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. 46For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47But if you do not believe his written words, how will you believe my spoken words?”
This time, instead of being one brief pronouncement (v. 17), Jesus’ answer is his longest speech so far, and his longest uninterrupted speech to opponents anywhere in the Gospel (vv. 19–47).1 Its purpose is to explain in detail the brief riddle, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (v. 17), so as to refute his opponents and at the same time instruct the Gospel’s readers. The answer has two parts: first, an examination of the two kinds of “works” he has in common with his Father, giving life and judging (vv. 19–29); second, an actual exercise of judgment in which he presents testimony from several witnesses on his own behalf and against his accusers, and reaches a verdict (vv. 30–47). In the first part, Jesus speaks of himself mainly as “the Son” in relation to “the Father” (vv. 19–23, 25–27), while in the second part he shifts back to the emphatic “I” (egō, vv. 31, 34, 36, 43, 45) with which the confrontation began (see v. 17). All of it goes unanswered, at least for the time being.
19–20 Jesus again gives an “answer”2 to words not actually spoken. In a strange way, his answer recalls the answer of the sick man at the pool to the Jewish authorities. Just as he claimed that he carried his mat on the Sabbath not on his own initiative but at the command of Jesus (v. 11), so Jesus now says that he does not act “by himself,” but only at God’s prompting. His repeated use of the verb “to do”3 (v. 19) speaks directly to the charges that he “did such things on the Sabbath” (v. 16), and his denial that he acted “on his own”4 addresses the claim that he was “making himself equal to God” (v. 18).5 He begins his defense with the fifth “Amen, amen” saying in the Gospel (see 1:51; 3:3, 5, 11). Like two of the others (3:3 and 5), it deals with life’s impossibilities.6 “The son,” he claims, “cannot”7 do anything “on his own.” As in the earlier examples, the impossibility is qualified by an “except” or “unless” clause. There, we heard that no one can see or enter the kingdom of God “unless” (ean mē) they are reborn (3:3, 5). The accent was on the exception. Here too, the son can do nothing on his own “except” (ean mē) what he sees his father doing.8 This time the clause is commonly read as adversative rather than exceptive, yielding the translation, “but only what he sees the father doing” (my italics).9 Jesus will insist repeatedly in this Gospel that he never says or does anything “on his own” (see v. 30; also 7:17, 28; 8:28; 12:49; 14:10; the same is true of “the Spirit of truth,” 16:13).10 On the contrary, a person who speaks “on his own” is a person who “seeks his own glory” (7:18). Jesus is not such a person (see 5:41, 44; 8:50, 54). He does nothing “on his own,” but “seeks the glory of the One who sent him” (7:17–18).11 In this respect he behaves like a prophet,12 but even more like a son apprenticed to his father, who learns from his father by imitation. Jesus goes so far as to say that the son “sees” what the father does, and does the same things himself. He has said before (3:11), John has repeated (3:32), and Jesus will say again (8:38), that he “has seen” certain things which he now reveals to the world, and more specifically that he “has seen the Father” (so 6:46). The perfect tenses seem to refer to Jesus’ preexistence, when he was “with God in the beginning” (1:2). But what of the present tense, “sees,” here? Is Jesus claiming that he, as God’s Son, literally “sees” the Father on a regular basis during his ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem?
More likely, the terminology comes from the parable-like character of Jesus’ words. That is, a son, any son learning his father’s trade, does what he “sees” his father doing.13 Interpreters who notice the parabolic language tend to use it as evidence of sources behind the Johannine narrative, leading back (possibly) to actual words of the historical Jesus.14 This is quite plausible, but is not our interest here. A commentary’s job is to ask how the use of parabolic language affects the present form of the text, that is, the dynamics of Jesus’ reply to “the Jews,” and the Gospel writer’s christological message to his readers. This is not the last time the Johannine Jesus incorporates parables (in the sense of illustrations from daily life) into his discourses. John has done so already (3:29), and three chapters later Jesus will say to another group of questioners under similar circumstances that “the slave” (any slave) does not remain in a household forever, but that “the son” (any son) remains forever (8:35). A slave can be sold, but a son cannot, for he is part of the family. Jesus then applies the designation “son” to himself: “So if the Son makes you free, you will really be free” (8:36). Later still, he will tell his disciples, “I no longer say you are slaves,” adding that “the slave”—any slave—does not “know what his master is doing,” while they by contrast are like “friends,” because “I made known to you everything I heard from my Father” (15:15). He is “the master” or “Lord,” and they are his “friends” (15:13–15). Again he moves smoothly from parable to straightforward theological discourse.
The same is true in our passage, where “the son” is any son, yet at the same time specifically Jesus. That a son “sees” what his father does (v. 19), or that a father “shows” his son what to do (v. 20) is a natural part of the story, not necessarily a profound disclosure either about Jesus’ preexistence or his visionary experiences. The accent is not on the “seeing” or “showing” per se, but on the theme of imitation, and on the consequent identity of the Son’s works with those of the Father. Jesus drives the point home with a series of four clauses, each introduced by gar (“for”). The first two of these affirm the identity of the works of the Father and the Son (vv. 19, 20), while the latter two specify just what works are involved and in what way (vv. 21, 22). In the first two, Jesus sets no limit either to the number or extent of these works, or to the degree to which they match: “For whatever things he does, these in the same way the son does too” (v. 19), and “For the Father loves15 the Son and shows him everything that he himself is doing” (v. 20).16 In these two pronouncements the parabolic language continues: an adult son’s work resembles his father’s when he is apprenticed to a father who loves him. And what is true in everyday life is just as true of Jesus, “the Son,” and God, “the Father.”17
What are “the things he does” (v. 19) that the Father shows to the Son? The next clause identifies them as “works” (erga), with the promise of works “greater than these” (v. 20). What are “these,” and what are the “greater works”? “These” are apparently the “things” Jesus customarily did on the Sabbath (“such things,” v. 16), typified by the healing of the man at the pool. Jesus has already identified them with the works of the Father “until now” (v. 17), that is, the works of God subsequent to creation. The “greater works” are yet to come, but will they come at the last day, or simply later in the Johannine story? Two later miracles explicitly qualify as “greater,” the gift of sight to a man born blind (see 9:32), and the raising of a man four days dead (11:39). But at this point in the narrative there is no way to know for certain what the “greater works” will be. All we are told is that Jesus’ antagonists will be “amazed”18 at what the Father will show Jesus (v. 20), and what Jesus consequently will show them. Aside from his introductory formula, “Amen, amen, I say to you” (v. 19), this is the first time Jesus acknowledges the existence of his audience, and he does so in order to promise that God will vindicate him against their charges. While “amazement” is a common reaction to Jesus’ words and deeds in the synoptic Gospels,19 surprises in general can be either pleasant or unpleasant.20 In this instance, given that those being addressed are bent on killing him (v. 18), “amazement” is more like “dismay” than “delight.” Jesus will return repeatedly to the emphatic “you” (hymeis) in the second part of his discourse (vv. 30–47), as he resorts more and more to direct polemic against his accusers and would-be assassins (see vv. 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 42, 44, and 45). Only momentarily does he pause here to anticipate this later polemic, hinting that God will intervene decisively to settle the argument in his favor.
21 With the third (of four) explanatory clauses introduced by gar (“for”), Jesus now becomes specific about the “works” of God. He assumes (and the Gospel writer assumes) that his opponents will not disagree with his assertion that God “raises the dead,”21 and “brings them22 to life.”23 For all practical purposes the assumption is that they are Pharisees, who themselves believed in resurrection.24 They are troubled only that he continues to call God “Father” (see v. 18). “Just as” introduces the agreed-upon premise that God “raises the dead and brings them to life.” The sticking point is the conclusion Jesus draws: “So too25 the Son brings to life those he wants.” All he is doing is repeating in effect that “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (v. 17), while defining that common “work” as resurrection, or bringing the dead to life. That Jesus brings the dead to life is something “the Jews,” Pharisees or not, can neither understand nor accept. Not so the Gospel’s readers. They—we—are not the audience being addressed (the emphatic “you” of v. 20), and are not “surprised” by what Jesus says. We are mere eavesdroppers to the exchange, yet we know, at least in part, what he means by saying, “the Son brings to life those he wants.” We heard him say to the sick man, “Get up” (5:8). We heard him say to the royal official, “Your son lives” (4:50, 53). We heard his testimony that God “gave the One and Only Son” so that those who believe “might have eternal life” (3:16), and John’s testimony that “whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (3:36). And because we know that Jesus is “the Son” (1:14, 18), it comes as no surprise or scandal to us that he gives life.
Jesus’ real audience, “the Jews,” heard none of these things, and if they had, they would not have believed them. So for them it is a very different matter. The notice that the Son gives life stands as a tacit rebuke to them for wanting to take life (v. 18).26 Jesus’ language echoes his response in the synoptic tradition to a charge of Sabbath breaking in Galilee. “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil,” he had asked (Mk 3:4), “to save life27 or to kill?” His work, he insists—and God’s—is to give life,28 not take it away. He claims, moreover, to give life not just to “the dead” but to “those he wants”29 suggesting that although he does not act “by himself” or on his own initiative (v. 19); he is no robot. He acts with a certain autonomy, doing what “he wants” (thelei) within the limits of his mission as One “sent” from the Father, and in the framework of his responsibility to obey the Father (see 4:34). In short, he does not back away from the implications of the emphatic “I” in his initial pronouncement, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (v. 17).30 At this point, Jesus does not say in so many words that the Son “raises the dead.” He evidently wants to define the Son’s works more broadly to include healings and a variety of other ways of giving life, from changing water into wine and providing “living water” not from a well (chapters 2 and 4), to multiplying loaves and fish to feed a multitude (chapter 6), or even bringing in an enormous, unexpected catch of fish (chapter 21). Even these are works of the Father, although he does not say so explicitly,31 and we will soon learn that Jesus, like the Father, “raises the dead,” both now and in the future (see vv. 25, 28–29; 6:39–40, 44, 54). In the case of Lazarus, we will see him doing exactly that (11:25, 43–44).
22–23 In one sense, the opposite of “life” is death (v. 24, “from death to life”), but in another, the opposite of “life” is “judgment.” Judgment is the theme of the last of the four clauses introduced by gar: “For the Father judges no one, but has given all the judgment to the Son” (v. 22).32 This seems to contradict what was said earlier, that the Son’s mission was “not to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through him” (3:17; see also 12:47). “Bringing to life” and “judging” are handled quite differently in this Gospel. Both the Father and the Son get credit for raising the dead and giving life, but neither wants to be known as the world’s “Judge.” Here the Father defers to the Son in that regard, while elsewhere the Son either avoids the role (8:15) or assumes it indirectly or with qualifications.33 For example, those who reject the Son are “already judged,” in that “the Light has come into the world” (“the Light” being the Son), and they “loved the dark and not the Light, because their works were evil” (3:18–19). Or, Jesus says, they “have that which judges them: the word which I spoke, that will judge them in the last day” (12:48). Even when he admits that “For judgment I have come into this world,” the judgment he brings involves healing as well as condemnation, for it is as much “that those who do not see might see” as that “those who see might go blind” (9:39). Such disclaimers make the point that while “life” or salvation comes solely on God’s initiative, those who are “judged” bring the judgment on themselves.
Nothing is said here of what “all the judgment” entails. “All” implies that the judgment is universal in scope. Its universality is echoed in its purpose that “all” will “honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (v. 23). John said it already, in slightly different words: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things in his hand” (3:35). Here Jesus accents “judgment” in particular as that which the Father has given, but judgment is not so much an end in itself as a means of bringing “honor” to the Son. The verb “to honor”34 occurs four times in a single verse (v. 23), but behind them all lies the assumption that the Father himself was the first to “honor” the Son, by making the Son his agent or representative on earth. Agency comes to expression in a variety of ways both in this Gospel and in the others. An agent acts on behalf of whoever sends him, and whatever is done to, or for, the agent is done to, or for, the sender.35 This gives the whole pronouncement an ironic twist. At first, Jesus seems to assume that of course those in his audience all “honor the Father,” desiring only that they will now “honor the Son” in the same way (v. 23a). But he immediately undercuts his own assumption with the comment that “whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (v. 23b). “The Jews” who comprise his audience (vv. 16, 18) obviously think they are honoring God by guarding God’s uniqueness and trying to kill Jesus for “making himself equal to God” (v. 18).36 Yet they are not honoring “the Father,” for “the Father” implies a Son, and if they do not recognize “the Son” they cannot recognize or worship God as “Father.”37 Ironically, the very words he speaks (v. 23) carry out the “judgment” that he says God has given him (v. 22). By not honoring Jesus as “the Son,” his hearers are dishonoring “the Father who sent him,”38 that is, dishonoring the God they claim to worship.39 Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman, “We [Jews] worship what we know” (4:22), are no longer true of those who dishonor Jesus. His rebuke to them remains quite general and impersonal—“whoever does not honor”40—but it will grow ever more personal and direct as the discourse moves on (see vv. 37–38, 42, 44).41
24 Again (as in v. 19) Jesus uses the “Amen, amen” formula to highlight what he will say next. Here, as in 3:3 and 5, two such pronouncements follow in quick succession and with similar meaning (vv. 24 and 25). The first of these drops “the Son” as a self-designation and shifts back to the “I” of verse 17. Jesus accents the solemn declaration, “I say to you,” by referring to “my word,” and to the necessity of “hearing.” It is as if he repeated the “Amen, amen” formula in bold italics, adding a kind of Johannine equivalent to another common Gospel formula, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.”42 This is what the pronouncement does for “the Jews” to whom Jesus is speaking.
For the Gospel’s reader it does more, identifying Jesus’ “word” (logos) as first of all a life-giving word, not a word of judgment. It is familiar ground, for the implied reader knows that Jesus is himself “the Word” (1:1, 14), and that “In him was life” (1:4). While this is the first time Jesus has referred to “my word,” the expression echoes earlier references to “the word Jesus spoke” (2:22), and to “his word” (in contrast to the Samaritan woman’s, 4:41).43 “My word” does not of course mean Jesus’ word in distinction from the Father’s, for John’s testimony was that “the one God sent speaks the words of God” (3:34).44 On the contrary, the appropriate response of “the person who hears my word,” Jesus says, is not to believe him, but to “believe the One who sent me.”45 The presumption is that God is speaking through Jesus. To believe Jesus is to believe God, or as he put it a moment before, to honor the Son is to honor “the Father who sent him” (v. 23). The reader now learns that Jesus’ “word” is the means by which he “brings to life those he wants” (v. 21). Whoever “hears” the Son’s word and “believes” the Father “has eternal life” as a present possession, and consequently “does not come into judgment.” Here, as in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, “life” and “judgment” are mutually exclusive realities (see 3:16–18). The point is not that those who believe are already judged and acquitted, and thereby granted eternal life.46 Rather, those who “have life” escape judgment altogether, while those who “come into judgment” do not have life. Moreover, those who “hear” and “believe” do not have to wait for some future “life after death,” but have already “passed47 from death into life” (see also 1 Jn 3:14). There is indeed “life after death,” but “life” in this instance is present, while “death” belongs to the past. This is the first mention of “death”48 in John’s Gospel. “Death” is presumed to be the situation in which people in the world find themselves by default, apart from the “light” that comes in the person of Jesus. Up to now it has been called “darkness” (see 1:5; 3:19), the opposite of “light”—just as “death” is the opposite of “life.” The author and his readers both know that “the light is shining in the darkness” already, and that “the darkness did not overtake it” (1:5; see also 1 Jn 2:8). They know that death’s power is broken for those who believe, and that they themselves have “passed from death into life.” The characteristically Johannine promise of “eternal life” here and now is for them, outside and beyond the story, not for Jesus’ accusers within the story, who know none of these things and have no way of comprehending what Jesus is saying. Quite conspicuously, he does not say to them, “If you hear my word and believe,” but “the person who hears49 my word and believes,” looking beyond them to a more receptive audience typified by the readers of the Gospel.50
25 The second “Amen, amen” pronouncement builds on the ending of the first. If some have “passed from death into life” (v. 24), then “the dead” have come alive, and this means resurrection. If the first “Amen, amen” was primarily for the readers of the Gospel, the second is intended both for them and for “the Jews” at the festival in Jerusalem. Jesus makes the double time perspective explicit with the same formula he used in speaking to the Samaritan woman (4:23): “an hour is coming and now is.”51 It is as if he said to his accusers, “an hour is coming,” and the Gospel writer chimed in with the postscript, “and now is,” signaling to the reader that what Jesus promised back then was now coming to realization. Yet the words are unmistakably Jesus’ own. He is simply repeating what he said in the preceding verse. This time it is intelligible to his immediate hearers, for it corresponds to what they themselves expected to happen in the future: “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” True, they still have the difficulty of acknowledging the “voice” at the resurrection as the voice of “the Son of God,”52 but the notion of God raising the dead is not foreign to them. Their viewpoint is like Mary of Bethany’s in a later conversation with Jesus about her brother Lazarus: “I know he will rise in the resurrection at the last day” (11:24), and Jesus will shortly agree that they are right about that (v. 28). But his extraordinary claim is not only that he is the Son who will awaken the dead, but that the future is now. The time has come and the long-expected resurrection is under way—metaphorically in the experience of the Gospel’s readers (see v. 24), but literally as well in the course of the narrative itself (11:43–44, “Lazarus! Out!” … and “The one who had died came out”). This “the Jews” are not prepared to accept, yet for the time being they say nothing. Jesus and his “voice” holds center stage. The very words that he speaks convey—not to them but to the Gospel’s readers—the “eternal life” about which he speaks.
What does it mean to “hear the voice of the Son of God”? More pointedly, what does it mean for “the dead” to do so? Common sense tells us the dead can hear nothing. Yet Ezekiel prophesied, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord” (Ezek 37:4), and Jesus will point to a time when “all who are in the tombs will hear his voice” (v. 28). Sleep was, and is, a common metaphor for death (see 11:11–14; also Mk 5:39; 1 Cor 15:51; 1 Thess 4:13). Daniel was told, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake” (Dan 12:2), and how better to awaken someone from sleep than by the sound of a voice? Paul quotes such a voice in Ephesians: “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and the Christ will shine on you” (Eph 3:14). But the voice that awakens the dead in John’s Gospel is the Christ’s own voice, “the voice of the Son of God,” reminding us that just as sleep is a metaphor for physical death, so death itself can be a metaphor for spiritual sleep, “darkness,” or alienation from God (again, see 1:5; 3:19; also 8:12; 12:35, 46; 1 Jn 1:5; 2:8). Therefore those who “hear the voice of the Son of God” in this Gospel include not only Lazarus, who was physically dead (11:44), but his sister Mary, still alive (11:29), and Jesus’ disciples, whom he called his “sheep” (10:3), plus “other sheep” he promised to bring later (10:16, 27), and finally “everyone who is of the truth” (18:37). All these belong to the ranks of “the dead,”53 and to all of them the promise goes out that “those who hear will live” (v. 25).54 The promise goes out as well to Jesus’ accusers on the scene, but with no evidence that they either “heard his word” or “believed the One who sent him” (v. 24; see vv. 37–38).
26 The form of Jesus’ next pronouncement echoes that of verse 21: “For just as the Father has life in himself, so too he gave to the Son to have life in himself” (italics added).55 What does it mean to “have life,” and what does it mean to have it “in himself”? Up to now, those who “have eternal life” are those who believe in Jesus (3:15, 16, 36; 5:24), and it is natural to assume that they have it because Jesus had it first (see 1:4, “In him was life”). “In himself”56 adds little to this, and should not be overinterpreted. It does not mean, for example, that the Father “made his Son to be the source of life” (GNB), even though that is true, nor does “life” here necessarily refer to “a creative life-giving power exercised toward men.”57 This would make verse 26 simply a doublet of verse 21. The formal parallelism suggests that the two pronouncements are indeed closely related, yet they are not quite synonymous. To have “life in oneself” is not something only the Father and the Son share, but something believers can claim as well. Those who “eat the flesh of the Son of man” can be said either to “have life in themselves” (6:53),58 or simply to “have eternal life” (v. 54).59 The two expressions mean the same thing: eternal life is theirs as an assured present possession, and that is all Jesus is saying here about himself and the Father. While his life is dependent on the Father’s (vv. 19–20), it is nevertheless his own (see v. 21), implying that no one can take it from him (see 10:17–18). Ironically, the reminder comes just as the Jewish authorities were “trying all the more to kill him” (v. 18), underlining the futility of their efforts.
27 If v. 26 builds on v. 21, v. 27 builds on v. 22. There, Jesus said that the Father had “given all the judgment to the Son.” This he offered as an illustration of the principle that “whatever things [the Father] does, these in the same way the Son does too” (v. 19). Here he adds that the Father “gave him authority60 to do judgment because he is the Son of man.” The expression “to do judgment”61 corresponds to “bring to life” (v. 21), and the two together comprise that which the Son “does” in imitation of the Father (v. 19). As in chapter 3, “the Son of man” and “the Son” or “the Son of God” are pretty much interchangeable (see 3:13–17), but “the Son of man” here, in contrast to all its other occurrences in the Gospels (1:51; 3:13 and 14 so far), lacks definite articles in Greek.62 A sufficient reason for this is Colwell’s rule that “definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article.”63 If the rule is in play here, then “Son of man” means “the Son of man,” just as in all other Gospel passages, and that is how I have translated it.
Many commentators look for different explanations, either that the title without the article is intended to evoke some specific biblical text (Dan 7:13, perhaps, or Ps 8:4), or that Jesus means simply that God has given him “authority to do judgment” because he is “a son of man” (that is, a human being). The latter is unlikely, even though at least one ancient source may have read it that way.64 It fails to take account of this Gospel’s pessimism about human beings and the human condition (see 2:24–25; 3:19; 5:41; 12:43; contrast Mt 9:8). Jesus may well be alluding here to texts or traditions, both biblical and extrabiblical, linking “Son of man” in some way with “authority” or “judgment” or both.65 The classic example is Daniel 7:13–14, LXX, where the prophet sees “one like a son of man”66 coming on the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days to be presented in his presence, “and authority was given him.” This authority is an “eternal authority, which will not be taken away.” In the interpretation a few verses later, the Ancient of Days “gave the judgment” to, or for, “the saints of the Most High” (7:22), who seem to have been represented by the figure of the “Son of man.”
Even though the scene in Daniel decisively shaped the New Testament image of Jesus as “the Son of man” (in Mark alone, see, for example, 2:10, 28; 13:26; 14:62), New Testament writers dropped the indefinite expression, “one like a son of man,” in favor of an actual title with definite articles, “the Son of man,” formed apparently on the model of “the Son of God.”67 This seems to have been true in 1 Enoch as well, where “the Son of man, to whom belongs righteousness” is identified as “the One who would remove the kings and the mighty ones from their comfortable seats and the strong ones from their thrones” (1 Enoch 46.3–4; OTP, 1.34). Just as in the Gospel tradition (Mt 19:28; 25:31), he is seen “sitting on the throne of his glory,” delivering oppressors “to the angels for punishments in order that vengeance shall be executed on them—oppressors of his children and his elect ones” (62.5, 11; OTP, 1.43).68 The similarities to Daniel and 1 Enoch are just as clear in John’s Gospel as in any of the others, but are not made closer or more striking by the absence of the article, which is probably attributable to Colwell’s rule, and that alone. In our passage, the reader is evidently expected—whether solely on the basis of Daniel, or with the help of traditions found in the other Gospels and 1 Enoch—to be able to associate “the Son of man” with “judgment” and the “authority” to judge. While nothing is said as to whether the judgment is present or future, the analogy between “doing judgment” and “bringing to life,” both “given” to the Son by the Father (vv. 26 and 27), accents its present aspect (see v. 30, where Jesus begins to exercise his role as judge).
28–29 “Don’t be amazed at this,” Jesus adds, implying that they are, and should not be (see v. 20, “to your amazement”).69 What exactly is “this” which amazes them? Not simply that Jesus is “the Son of man” (v. 27), as Chrysostom thought,70 but probably all of vv. 24–27, if not all of vv. 19–27. What is so “amazing” (that is, offensive to his hearers) in these verses? Is it the timing (“an hour is coming and now is,” v. 25), or is it the involvement of “the Son” in all that God does? Probably the latter. Timing is an issue only briefly (vv. 24, 25), but the relation between the Father and the Son has dominated the whole discourse up to this point. So-called “realized eschatology” may be a major concern of the modern reader (at least since C. H. Dodd), but there is no reason to think it made any more of an impression on Jesus’ audience here than on the Samaritan woman when he told her “an hour is coming and now is” (4:23). Their problem with Jesus is not that he said the end had come, but that he claimed God as his Father (v. 18). His main desire for them is that all will “honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (v. 23). Whether present or future, the work of “bringing to life” and “doing judgment” is the Son’s work no less than the Father’s. Jesus now clinches the point by repeating it in connection with that which is most familiar to his hearers, the resurrection and judgment “at the last day” (for this expression, see below, 6:39, 40, 44, 54; 11:24; 12:48).
But instead of “the last day,” he says “an hour is coming,” echoing verse 25, except that the transforming postcript, “and now is,” is conspicuous by its absence.71 This final “hour” is a time when “all who are in the tombs” (that is, those who are literally dead, not just spiritually dead in their sins) will hear “his voice.” In the context, “his voice” can only be “the voice of the Son of God” (v. 25) or “Son of man” (v. 27), not simply the voice of God as in traditional Jewish expectation. Jesus is not just repeating conventional wisdom. The offense in what he is saying is that he puts himself at the center of his accusers’ own expectations about “the last day,” pressing ever more strongly the claim that God is “his own Father,” and that he is “equal to God” (v. 18). Christology, not eschatology, is what unites the entire discourse. Jesus, Son of God and Lord of the present, is Lord of the future as well.
Two problems for modern readers arise from vv. 28 and 29. The first is that a futuristic eschatology is not what we have learned to expect from the Gospel of John. “Eternal life” is supposed to be a present possession, not a future hope, but here Jesus seems to be buying into what some modern interpreters might consider the “misguided” eschatology of his Jewish contemporaries. This is why some commentators have rejected these verses as an interpolation or later redaction.72 But to the Gospel writer and his readers it is not a problem. Far from asking us to choose between a present and a future resurrection, this author considers the reality of the latter the best argument for the former. If Jesus is going to raise the dead literally at the last day, why should we be surprised that he does so figuratively or spiritually even now?
The second problem is that good works, not faith, seem to determine salvation. This too is unexpected in John’s Gospel. It is not a matter of hearing and believing (as in v. 24), nor of simply hearing (as in v. 25) with the understanding that to hear means to awake and live. Rather, all the dead “will hear his voice” (v. 28), all will attain “resurrection”73 (v. 29), but for some it will be a resurrection of “life” and for others a resurrection of “judgment.”74 Life is reserved for “those who have done good things,”75 while judgment awaits “those who have practiced wicked things.”76 But again the problem exists only for modern readers, who have learned from centuries of biblical interpretation to set faith against works. It is not noticeably a problem for Jesus’ hearers on the scene, nor for the implied readers the author has in mind. The implied reader is expected to remember what Jesus told Nicodemus and his companions two chapters earlier: that human beings “loved the dark and not the Light, because their works were evil” (3:19), that “everyone who practices wicked things hates the Light and does not come to the Light” (3:20), but that “whoever does the truth comes to the Light” (3:21). So here as well, the test of whether one’s works are “good” or “wicked” is whether or not one “comes to the Light” (see 3:20, 21), that is, whether one comes to Jesus or not (see v. 40, “you are unwilling to come to me77 that you might have life”). Coming to the Light, or to Jesus, and “hearing my word” (v. 24) or “voice” (v. 25) amount to the same thing. Either way, believing in Jesus is what counts. Those who “do good things” or “do the truth” are those who believe. Those who “practice wicked things” are those who do not. Whatever may have been the case in Judaism, or in other branches of early Christianity, or other books of the New Testament, faith and works in the Gospel of John come down to the same thing (see, for example, 6:29, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the One he sent”).
In one respect, however, Jesus’ words differ here from what he said to Nicodemus and his friends at the first Passover (3:20–21). There, the alternatives began with the negative (“practicing wicked things”) and ended with the positive (“doing the truth”). Here by contrast Jesus ends on a negative note. The “resurrection of life” for those who have done “good things” comes first, and then the “resurrection of judgment” for those who have “practiced wicked things.” Judgment (krisis) is where the emphasis lies, and the judgment is aimed squarely at Jesus’ hearers and accusers, as the following verses will show.
30 If there is a break anywhere in Jesus’ long discourse to “the Jews,” it is here. He goes back to where he began, “the Son can do nothing on his own” (v. 19), only now in the emphatic first person: “As for me, I can do nothing on my own” (v. 30, italics added). His self-identification as “the Son” is explicit now if it was not before. The first-person singular (often emphatic) will dominate the discourse from here on. In a sense, vv. 19–29, with their simultaneous accent on “bringing to life” (vv. 21, 24, 25, 26, 29) and “judging” (vv. 22–23, 27, 29), were all preliminary to what Jesus will say now—words primarily of judgment. He begins to “judge,”78 not “by himself,” but “just as I hear”; that is, he judges at the Father’s prompting and in keeping with the Father’s instructions.79 Previously the metaphor was “seeing,” or what the Father “showed” him (vv. 19–20). Now the metaphor is “hearing,” but the point is the same. Like a son apprenticed to his father, Jesus acts on God’s initiative, not his own. His judgment is “right,”80 or fair, precisely because it is not his own. He has no vested interest in the outcome.81 “I am not seeking my will,” he explains, “but the will of the One who sent me.” Consequently his judgment is the very judgment of God (see vv. 22, 27). None of this is new to the Gospel’s readers. They already know that Jesus’ food is to “do the will of the One who sent me and complete his work” (4:34), and they have seen him at work in the healing of the royal official’s son and the sick man at the pool.82 Now they learn that his “work” involves judgment as well, and they will have a similar opportunity to watch him perform a work of judgment against his accusers (vv. 31–47).
31 While Jesus has repeatedly claimed to “judge” (vv. 22, 30) or “do judgment” (vv. 22, 27), he is never called “Judge” in the sense of one presiding over a court of law, either here or anywhere else in John’s Gospel.83 Instead, he merely “testifies” or gives “testimony”84 against his accusers. He begins by acknowledging his limitations: “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.”85 “About myself”86 (v. 31) echoes “on my own” (v. 30). In both instances the purpose of the disclaimer is to bring God into the picture (v. 32). What Jesus has in mind is the principle of Jewish law that “One witness is not enough to convict a man of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deut 19:15, NIV).87 This ruling was for the protection of the accused. Here Jesus is the accused (vv. 16, 18), yet he introduces the principle as if he were the prosecutor, admitting that his testimony alone is not sufficient to convict his adversaries of a crime. He needs at least one more witness (see vv. 32–40). This creates an ambiguity for the reader. Who exactly is on trial here, Jesus or “the Jews”? The tables are being turned, right before our eyes. Jesus the prosecutor now calls his Witness.
32 “Another”88 testifies on his behalf, Jesus claims, fulfilling the ancient requirement of two witnesses (compare 8:18). The reader knows that he can only mean “the One who sent me” (vv. 24, 30), the One he has repeatedly called “Father” (see vv. 17–23). His accusers do not know this, but he will shortly make it explicit (see v. 37). Nothing has been said so far about the Father’s “testimony” for Jesus, but now in a single verse we hear, almost redundantly, of “the One testifying about me,” and of “the testimony he testifies about me.” This testimony, Jesus claims, is “true,”89 but what is it? When was it given, and how? Someone familiar with the New Testament canon or the fourfold Gospel will think of the Father’s voice at Jesus’ baptism (“You are my beloved Son,” Mk 1:11) or the transfiguration (“This is my beloved Son,” Mk 9:7), but we have heard nothing of such a voice in John’s Gospel.90 When God identified Jesus by “the Spirit coming down and remaining on him” (1:33), the one “testifying” was John who saw it, not God (1:32, 34). A reference in 1 John to “the testimony of God which he testified about his Son” (1 Jn 5:9, 10) could be read in relation to Jesus’ baptism (see 5:6), but nowhere in the Gospel is the testimony linked to any specific incident. Just as Jesus’ glory is revealed not at a particular moment but throughout his ministry (see 1:14), and just as the Spirit not only comes but “remains on him,” constantly and “without measure” (1:33, 3:34), so the Father testifies for him and about him not just once but again and again, in all that Jesus says and does.
33 All this is known to the reader, but not to Jesus’ immediate hearers, “the Jews.” Jesus now focuses on them with the emphatic pronoun, “you”: “You have sent word to John, and he has testified to the truth” (italics added). The remark identifies these “Jews” unmistakably with “the Jews” (1:19) or “Pharisees” (1:24) in Jerusalem who sent a delegation across the Jordan to ask John who he was and why he was baptizing (1:19–28). Jesus here confirms what the Gospel writer kept telling us, that John “testified to the truth,” whether to them (1:19–20), or to his own disciples (1:32, 34; 3:26), or to “all” (1:7, 15–16). In “testifying to the truth,”91 John was simply doing what Jesus would do after him (see 8:14, 40, 45; 18:37), but in the Gospel’s first three chapters John was the predominant “witness,” and it is natural that his name should come up now. His encounter with the delegation from Jerusalem was inconclusive and ended abruptly. “We have to give an answer to those who sent us,” they told John (1:22), but what answer did they bring back, and more important, what was the reaction of “the Jews” in Jerusalem? The text does not say, but Jesus now implies that their questions were satisfactorily answered, and that their view of John is now positive. Significantly, he later moved from “Bethany, beyond the Jordan” (1:28) to “Aenon near the Salim” (3:23), west of the Jordan and closer to Jerusalem. There “the Pharisees” seem to have kept an eye on him, for when Jesus began to baptize more disciples than John, they knew it (4:1). Now Jesus reminds them of John’s “testimony to the truth,” with the implication that because they themselves cared enough to solicit it,92 they have every reason to take it seriously.
34 Jesus adds a disclaimer. The reason for mentioning John, he tells his accusers, is for their sake, not his. The emphatic “I” brings this out: “You sent word to John (v. 33).… I do not accept the testimony from a human”93 (v. 34, italics added). John, we remember, was “from the earth,” and spoke “from the earth” (3:31), and with “another” to testify on his behalf (5:32), Jesus does not need John’s testimony. He introduces John only “so that you might be saved.”94 It is tempting here to downplay the surprising reference to Jesus’ accusers being “saved.” While it is true that John came so that “they all might believe through him” (1:7), there is little to suggest that these antagonists are potential believers, and much evidence to the contrary (see vv. 38, 40, 42–44, 46–47). Nowhere else in this long discourse does Jesus even come close to inviting them to “believe” or be “saved.”95 Possibly he means no more than “I only say these things for your benefit,” referring not to their eternal destiny but to their “comfort level” in this encounter with Jesus and his claims.96 Still, it is doubtful that the notion of “salvation” can be excluded altogether. Only a chapter before, the Samaritans hailed him as “Savior of the world” (4:42), and there is little doubt that “the Jews” in Jerusalem who are “trying to kill him” (5:18) do in fact belong to “the world.” Earlier, Jesus insisted that “God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through him” (3:17), yet he added almost in the same breath that “whoever does not believe is already judged” (3:18), and that “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and human beings loved the dark and not the Light, because their works were evil” (3:19). Such evidence suggests that salvation and judgment can stand side by side—however uneasily—in Jesus’ teaching. He desires salvation for his hearers even while pronouncing judgment.97 Yet the possibility that they might be “saved” is fragile and fleeting, for “judgement” (v. 30) is his major theme. The reader has little reason to expect that these religious authorities will in fact be “saved,” whatever their response to John and his testimony may have been.
35 Jesus takes the opportunity to reminisce about John, building on the Gospel writer’s words near the beginning, “He was not the light, but [he came] to testify about the light” (1:8). Agreeing that “He was not the light,” Jesus gives John his proper role: “He was the burning and shining lamp” (italics added). Not “the light,” but “the lamp,”98 a bearer of light sent to testify to “the true [Light] that illumines every human being” (1:9). “Burning” evokes an image of judgment associated in the Gospel tradition both with John (Mt 3:10–12) and with Jesus (Mt 7:19; Jn 15:6), while “shining”99 accents the revelatory character of John’s ministry (see 1:31). While John—in this Gospel above all—came to reveal Jesus and not himself, he undeniably had a derivative “light” of his own (like the physical “light of this world,” 11:9), and Jesus now reminds his hearers that “you chose to rejoice for a time in his light.” Jesus’ picture of John’s reception by the Jewish authorities is quite different here than in the other Gospels. He does not suggest that they rejected John (Mt 21:25), nor that they thought he was demon-possessed (Mt 11:18), nor that “they did to him whatever they pleased” (Mk 9:13; Mt 17:12). The picture is more like that of Josephus, where John was said to have enjoyed great popularity among “the Jews,” and his death was blamed on Herod alone.100
Some have found in Jesus’ words an allusion to God’s promises to Jerusalem in Psalm 131(132):16–17, LXX: “I will clothe her priests with salvation, and her holy ones shall rejoice with great rejoicing. There I will raise up a horn to David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.101 His enemies I will clothe with shame, but on him my holiness will flourish.”102 If the parallel is intended, the pronouncement must be taken ironically. While John is indeed a “lamp” for God’s “anointed” (or “Christ”), the religious authorities seeking Jesus’ life are hardly Jerusalem’s “priests” or “holy ones,” and (despite v. 34b) by no means “clothed with salvation.” If anything, they are his enemies, “clothed with shame.” They evidently “rejoiced” in John’s light without embracing the “truth” to which he testified. The questions of the delegation they sent (1:19–24) suggest that they may have entertained the possibility that John was a messianic figure (see Lk 3:15), and “rejoiced” in such hopes “for a time,” only to have them dashed by John’s disclaimers.103 Another possible scenario is that they were concerned about what they feared were his messianic claims, and relieved to find out that he harbored no such ambitions for himself. In that case their “rejoicing” would have come later, as a result of his having (as Josephus put it) “exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practise justice toward their fellows and piety towards God, and so doing to join in baptism.”104 “For a time”105 would then signal what the reader knows to be true in any event: that John’s ministry has run its course and is now over. Jesus has “grown,” while John has “diminished” (see 3:30).106 He may be in prison (3:24), or he may be dead, but whatever his status, he is mentioned only in the past tense (compare 10:41). He has spoken his last words even to the Christian community (see 1:15–18; 3:31–36), and as for “the Jews,” the fact that they “chose”107 to bask in his glory for awhile no longer matters. All that matters is what they now “choose” to do with Jesus and his claims (see v. 40).
36 The brief digression about John (vv. 33–35) is over. The emphatic “I” is again conspicuous, as Jesus repeats his claim that “another” witness testifies on his behalf (v. 32). That testimony, he claimed, was “true” (v. 32), and now he adds that “I have testimony greater108 than John’s.”109 Ironically, the “lesser” testimony of John has been given explicitly in the Gospel more than once (1:29 and 34, for example), while the “greater” testimony remains implicit. The “greater” testimony is the testimony of Jesus’ “works,”110 more specifically “the works that the Father has given me that I might complete them” (see 4:34, “that I might … complete his work”). “The very works that I do,” he now reiterates, “testify about me,”111 and their testimony is “that the Father has sent me.” The key word here is not “works,” but “the Father.”
In effect, Jesus is renewing the claim that started all the trouble in the first place, that “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (v. 17). The sticking point for his hearers is not the “works” per se, but the claim that they are the Father’s works. Jesus is still responding to the charge of “claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (v. 18). He is not “making himself” anything, he insists, for his works are the Father’s testimony on his behalf, adding a decisive second testimony to his own (see vv. 31–32).
37–38 Jesus now makes this explicit. His next lines, “And so the Father who sent me” (v. 37), pick up the last clause of the preceding sentence, “that the Father has sent me” (v. 36), at last identifying “another” witness (v. 32) as “the Father.”112 The conjunction kai (“and”) is here translated “and so,” because it does not introduce a testimony in addition to that of Jesus’ works, but draws a conclusion from it.113 The testimony of Jesus’ works is the testimony of his Father.114 “He”115 has been testifying about Jesus all along (v. 37) in everything Jesus has said or done, but his accusers do not know it. They have “never heard his voice nor seen his form.”116 That they had never seen God was a commonplace, something with which they would have to agree. “No one has seen God, ever,” the Gospel writer told us early on (1:18).117 That they had not even heard God’s “voice” was more problematic. Jesus compares the Father’s “voice” testifying through his works to the voice of God long ago at Mount Sinai. In contrast to the people of God at Sinai who “heard the voice of words, but saw no likeness, only a voice” (Deut 4:12), Jesus’ accusers do not even hear God’s voice. The people back there were afraid, and begged not to hear (see Exod 19:16, 19; 20:18–19; Heb 12:19, 26), but these “Jews” at Jerusalem hear nothing.
His point is more than that they were not personally present at Sinai. When he adds, “You do not have his word dwelling in you” (v. 38),118 he proves again that “he knew what was in the person,” just as at the first Passover in Jerusalem (see 2:25). By “his word” he means the message of God delivered at Sinai (see 10:35, “the word of God”), but with the understanding that God whose mighty voice was heard there is still speaking, only now through his Son (see Heb 1:1; 12:25). If they will not hear the Son, they cannot hear the Father (see v. 24, “the person who hears my word”; v. 25, “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God”).119 God’s word is not “dwelling in” them because Jesus’ word is not in them.120 “He whom that One sent,” Jesus tells them, “him you do not believe” (v. 38).121 Step by step Jesus unmasks his hearers’ unbelief, just as he did earlier at Passover (see 3:11–12). It is not a matter of believing in Jesus so much as believing him, in the sense of believing his claim that God was his “Father” (vv. 17–18) who “sent” him (vv. 36, 37, 38). The theme of unbelief will continue to the end of the discourse (see vv. 44–47)
39–40 The indictment continues. Jesus could be challenging “the Jews” to “Search the Scriptures” (reading “search”122 as an imperative), but the reason would then have been “because in them you have eternal life.” Instead he says, “because you think that in them you have eternal life.” This implies that searching the Scriptures is their idea, and that the verb should be read as an indicative: “You search the Scriptures.”123 The Scriptures (literally “the writings”)124 are their Scriptures (see 8:17; 10:34; 15:25), something they value, just as they valued (though only “for a time”) the ministry of John (vv. 33–35). Judaism consistently taught that the Jewish Scriptures, centered in the Torah, were a source of life, and that studying them was a way to gain life. According to Rabbi Hillel, “the more study of the Law the more life,” and “If a man has gained a good name he has gained [somewhat] for himself,” but “if he has gained for himself words of the Law he has gained for himself life in the world to come.”125 “Searching” was a technical term for studying the Scriptures,126 but to the writer of this Gospel such “searching” did not always yield truth. Two chapters later, the Pharisees will tell Nicodemus, “Search and see, that a prophet is not arising out of Galilee” (7:52). The reader will know that they are wrong about that (see 7:40), and here too Jesus shows little confidence in what his accusers “think”127 either about their own Scriptures or about “eternal life.” He has told us already how to “have eternal life” (v. 24), not by “searching the Scriptures” but by believing the Son, and the Father who sent him (see also 3:15–16, 36).128 Still, Jesus takes what his accusers “think” and turns it to his advantage, just as he did their fondness for John, and their willingness to rejoice in John’s light (v. 35).
In a way they are right about Scripture, just as they were right about John. The Scriptures do give life, not directly but indirectly, by pointing to Jesus: “And yet129 those are [the writings]130 that testify about me.” This has been evident almost from the start, when Philip announced to Nathanael, “We have found someone of whom Moses wrote in the law, and of whom the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth” (1:45). This Gospel is at one with the rest of the New Testament in acknowledging that the Jewish Scriptures from beginning to end testify to Jesus and support his claims (see, for example, Lk 24:25–27, 44–47). Every citation of things Jesus did or of things done to him that were “written” beforehand in Scripture bears this out. We have had one such citation already (2:17), and many more will follow (see 6:45; 7:38; 12:14; 13:18; 15:25; 19:24, 28, 36, 37; 20:9). The message of Scripture is “Come to Jesus” (see 6:45; 7:37–38), yet those who look to Scripture for their life will not “come to me” (v. 40), Jesus says, in order to gain life.131 They “chose” to delight in John’s ministry (v. 35), yet they are “unwilling”132 to “come to Jesus” as disciples.133 By rejecting him, they strangle the life-giving power of their own Scriptures.
41 Jesus will return shortly to the subject of Scripture (vv. 45–47), but he pauses to draw a contrast between his accusers’ “thinking” (v. 39) and his own (vv. 41–44). “I do not accept glory from humans,” he begins. The noun “glory” echoes the verb “to think,” or have an opinion.134 This verb is used repeatedly in the Gospel of human opinions that turn out to be mistaken or in some way problematic (see v. 45; 11:13, 31, 56; 13:29; 16:2; 20:15). The “glory” that Jesus speaks of here is similarly “from humans,” that is, honor or recognition135 based on human opinion or approval.136 Jesus does “not accept”137 such “glory” or honor, just as he does “not accept” testimony on his behalf “from a human” (v. 34), not even from John. What counts is not the “glory” of human opinion, but glory or honor from God (see v. 44). The very term “glory” recalls the author’s personal confession almost at the outset that “we looked at his glory—glory as of a father’s One and Only” (1:14), and the notice after Jesus’ first miracle that he “revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him” (2:11). There, “glory” was understood as God’s splendor visible in Jesus the Son—if not literally, at least to the eyes of faith (see 11:40; 12:41; 17:24). Here, it is not something visible, but simply praise or recognition, whether from fellow human beings or from God.
42 In saying, “I do not accept glory from humans” (v. 41), Jesus implies two things: first, that he does not care what his accusers may “think” (v. 39) of him or of his claims; second, that they themselves” do “accept glory from humans,” whether from each other (see v. 44) or from anyone who comes along (v. 43). He confronts them head-on: “No,138 I know you,139 that you do not have the love of God in yourselves” (v. 42). Yet again (as in v. 38), Jesus knows what is—or more precisely what is not—“in the person” (2:25), in this instance, “the love of God.” Does he mean that God does not love them, or that they do not love God?140 Evidently the latter, because Jesus said, “God so loved the world that he gave the One and Only Son” (3:16), and they clearly belong to “the world.” All Jesus is saying is that they (with the rest of “the world”) “loved the dark and not the Light, because their works were evil” (3:19). He will say it more explicitly later on, even to those among them who (after a fashion) “believed in him” (12:42): they “loved the glory of humans instead of the glory of God” (12:43). Their credo (in Moses’ words) was “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:4–5, NRSV), but Jesus knows that in their hearts141 they have betrayed their credo, and with it Moses, their lawgiver (see v. 45).
43 How can Jesus claim that his hearers do not love God? He does so on the basis of what he knows to be true and has claimed to be true all along, that “God” and his “Father” are the same (see v. 18). “I have come in my Father’s name,” he continues, “and you do not accept me” (v. 43). We have heard this before, again and again—from the Gospel writer (1:11), from Jesus (3:11), and from John (3:32)—but now Jesus goes a step further. In rejecting him, he says, his accusers are rejecting “the Father who sent him” (see vv. 24, 37), in whose “name” he comes. As the Son he represents the Father and the Father’s authority, so that to reject the one is to reject the other (see, for example, 13:20). Consequently they are rejecting their own “God,” whom they profess to love. By contrast, “If another142 comes in his own name, him you will accept.” Here he has no particular person in mind, no “false prophet” or “Antichrist” figure (as, for example, in Mk 13:22 par.). Such a person, presumably, would come (falsely) in Jesus’ name (see Mk 13:6 par.; Mt 7:22), or like Jesus, in God’s name, not in his own. On the contrary, he has in mind virtually anyone who (unlike Jesus) speaks on “his own” authority, and “seeks his own glory” (see 7:18). As he will remind his disciples later, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own” (15:19).143 “The Jews” who question and accuse him are very receptive to people like themselves, Jesus is saying, even gullible, yet their ears are closed to God’s true messenger, the “One and Only Son.”
44 Having established that his accusers “do not believe” (v. 38), he now asks rhetorically, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from each other, but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (v. 44, italics added). The emphatic “you” is again conspicuous, and the implied answer is, they “cannot” believe, just as “no one can” see the kingdom of God unless they are born from above (3:3), or receive anything unless it is given from heaven (3:27). The entire discourse is haunted by the same specter of “impossibility” that faced Nicodemus and his friends (see 3:1–21),144 and this time without an “unless” clause to offer a ray of hope (see 3:2, 3, 5, 27). There is no way Jesus’ hearers will come to faith, but this does not mean he has failed. From the start, his purpose was not to bring them to faith but to refute their charges by exposing their unbelief, and in that he has succeeded. The core of their unbelief is that they “receive glory from each other, but do not seek the glory that comes from the Only God.” Glory “from each other” is equivalent to glory “from humans” (v. 41; compare 12:43), or even one’s “own glory” (see 7:18). Jesus views the members of a person’s tight-knit group, whether of Pharisees or priests, or even human beings generally, as simply extensions of one’s self. We want their approval because they are like us (or we think they are), and we expect them to judge us in the same way we judge ourselves. To seek, or even accept, such human “glory” is an expression of selfishness, the very opposite of seeking “the glory that comes from the Only God.”
The choice of words is telling. The whole confrontation began with the charge that Jesus was “making himself equal to God,” threatening Jewish monotheism (v. 18). With the phrase “from the Only God,”145 Jesus embraces the monotheism of his accusers and throws it back in their faces. As I have tried to show by capitalization, the adjective “Only” dominates the expression “the Only God,” to the point that some important manuscripts (including P66, P75, B, and W) omit “God” altogether, yielding the phrase, “the glory that comes from the Only One.” This reading would imply that “the Only God” and “the Only One” were interchangeable titles, just as “One and Only” (1:14, 18) and “the One and Only Son” (3:16, 18) seem to have been interchangeable. Yet “the Only One” by itself is unattested as a title for God, and the shorter reading is therefore likely a copyist’s mistake.146 Jesus’ reference to glory “from the Only God” recalls the Gospel writer’s early mention of “his glory—glory as of a father’s One and Only” (1:14),147 in both instances implying that Jesus’ “glory” as the Son comes from “the Only God” or from “the Father,” and from no one else. Jesus’ uniqueness as the “One and Only Son” is rooted in the Father’s uniqueness as “the Only God,” and consequently in Jewish monotheism. For “the Jews” (vv. 16, 18) to deny the Son is to deny “the Father who sent him” (see v. 23), and consequently to betray the monotheism they profess. This is the logic of Jesus’ discourse, and of John’s Gospel as a whole, strange as it might seem to Jesus’ interlocutors.
45 The next step in Jesus’ argument is that denying “the Only God” is a betrayal not only of monotheism, but of Moses, who fostered monotheism by writing such things as “I am the LORD thy God; … you shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:2), “See now that I, even I, am he; there is no other god beside me” (Deut 32:39), and “The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God” (Deut 6:4–5). Jesus hinted as much when he said, “I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves” (v. 42), and now he makes it explicit: “Moses,” and all that Moses represents, belongs to him and not to them. Moses it was who “lifted up the snake in the desert,” anticipating the gift of life through the Son of man (3:14–15), and Moses it is who now stands with Jesus in judgment on his own people.
Again (as in v. 39) Jesus anticipates what his hearers may “think”: “Do not think,”148 he cautions them, “that I will accuse you to the Father.”149 The negative present imperative implies that they are thinking exactly that,150 yet they are obviously not. He is speaking rhetorically. “The Father” is his term, not theirs, and if (as they suppose) he is mistaken in “claiming God as his own Father” (v. 18), they have nothing to fear from any accusations he might bring. The reader, however, knows better. The reader is expected to know that Jesus is both “Son” and “Son of man,” to whom all judgment belongs (vv. 22, 27, 30). In assuring his hearers that “I” will not “accuse you to the Father,” he implies that he could do so if he chose,151 but the remark is preliminary to his real point, that “Your accuser152 is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.” The latter (if anything) is what gets their attention. Appealing to “Moses” is the same as appealing to “the Scriptures,” and “setting their hope” in Moses is equivalent to looking to the Scriptures for “eternal life” (see v. 39). Yet it is shocking to hear of Moses in the role of “accuser,” Moses who pleaded to God for his people, “But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written” (Exod 32:32, NRSV). All Jesus is doing is repeating more forcefully what he said before, that the Scriptures “testify about me” (v. 39),153 with the implication that if they testify for Jesus, they testify against those who now challenge him. The Scriptures—and consequently Moses who wrote them—accuse his accusers.
46–47 While “Jesus” acknowledges that “the Jews” have “set their hope” in Moses (v. 45), he denies that they “believe” him: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me” (v. 46). The condition is contrary to fact:154 they did not believe Moses; therefore they do not believe Jesus. But the logic also works in reverse. If they do not believe Jesus—and he has repeatedly demonstrated that they do not155—then they do not believe Moses either. The reason, Jesus claims, is that “he156 wrote about me” (see 1:45, “We have found someone of whom Moses wrote in the law”).157 “If you do not believe his written words,”158 Jesus concludes, “how will you believe my spoken words?”159 Contrary to what “the Jews” might think (see 9:28–29),160 trust in Moses and trust in Jesus stand or fall together. Those who believe that “the law was given through Moses” should be the first to acknowledge that “grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ” (1:17), but the tragedy, as Jesus sees it, is that they have not done so.
The end of the argument demonstrates what has become increasingly evident all along, that salvation or “eternal life” rests on acceptance of Jesus and his word, and on nothing else (see v. 24). Jesus has called his “other” Witness, the Father (vv. 32, 36), and (to satisfy the whims of his accusers) two lesser witnesses, John and Moses, but in the end none of these testimonies matter. His own testimony is self-authenticating. As soon as his accusers reject his word (see vv. 38, 40, 42, 43), in effect they reject these other testimonies as well. When he began by saying, “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true” (v. 30), Jesus was merely playing his opponents’ game. But when they try to play the game again three chapters later (8:13), he will tell them what has really been the case all along: “Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, because I know where I came from and where I am going” (8:14). All the other testimonies are wrapped up in his own, and when that is rejected his accusers are judged. His parting question, “How will you believe my spoken words?” (v. 47) goes unanswered, just as the same question, “How will you believe?” went unanswered before, at the first Passover in Jerusalem (3:12). His accusers’ silence comes as no surprise because they have been silent throughout. Their last words were a question to the sick man at the pool, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Pick up and walk’?” (v. 12). Now that Jesus has told them at great length who he is, they have nothing to say.161 We can only infer that they have not “heard his word,” and do not have “eternal life” (see v. 24).162