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§13 Witnesses to Jesus (John 5:30–47)

The discourse of verses 19–47 can be divided into two parts on the basis of a change from the third to the first person at verse 30. Instead of referring to himself as “the Son,” Jesus now uses the emphatic pronoun I (vv. 30, 31, 34, 36, 43). But part two of the discourse begins like part one with the insistence that Jesus’ authority is a derived authority. He does nothing on his own but acts entirely on his Father’s instructions (v. 30; cf. v. 19). If he does what he sees his Father do (vv. 19–20), he also judges according to what he hears God telling him (v. 30).

Possibly the reference at the end of verse 29 to “the resurrection of judgment” (RSV) provided a natural transition to part two of the discourse. The twofold work of life giving and judgment is still in view, but attention for the moment centers on Jesus’ role as judge. His decisions are just and not arbitrary or based on personal whim: I seek not to please myself but him who sent me (v. 30). The atmosphere is that of a courtroom. From the standpoint of the Jewish authorities (cf. v. 18), Jesus is on trial, but from the Gospel writer’s standpoint they themselves are on trial, and Jesus is the prosecuting attorney. His case is built on the scriptural principle that at least two witnesses are necessary to make a charge stand up in court (8:17; cf. Deut. 19:15). One person’s testimony—even the testimony of Jesus—is insufficient by itself (v. 31). He therefore begins calling his witnesses: John the Baptist (vv. 33–35); the works of Jesus (v. 36); the Father himself (vv. 37–38); and the Scriptures (v. 39; cf. vv. 45–47). But the list is not a random one. Jesus begins by speaking in the singular of another (v. 32), a particular witness who testifies on his behalf. Though he mentions John the Baptist in passing, he makes it clear that John is not this witness (v. 36). John’s testimony to the Jewish authorities (cf. 1:19–28) had its own value, and Jesus reminds them of it in the hope that they still might believe it and be saved. Yet it is only a human testimony (vv. 33–34). Jesus has in mind someone far greater than John, and a testimony far more decisive.

Clearly, another who testifies is the Father (v. 37). Jesus’ works are mentioned not for their own sake but as pointers to the Father. They are work that the Father has given me to finish and they show that the Father has sent me (v. 36). Are the works then the Father’s testimony on Jesus’ behalf (v. 37), or is something more specific in mind? The thought of the Father testifying directly on the Son’s behalf recalls the synoptic accounts of the divine voice at Jesus’ baptism and especially at the transfiguration (“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Matt. 17:5; cf. also 1 John 5:9). But the primary point of reference (and one to which the transfiguration account may itself be alluding) is God’s promise to Moses to send Israel “a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him” (Deut. 18:18; cf. John 1:21). The context of this promise was a request by the people “not [to] hear the voice of the LORD” as he spoke from Mount Sinai “nor [to] see this great fire anymore” for fear they would die (Deut. 18:16). Because it is easier to listen to the voice of a man than to the voice of God, a prophet is announced as a kind of substitute for the terrifying Sinai revelation. When Jesus reminds his hearers that they have never heard [the Father’s] voice nor seen his form (v. 37), his point is not merely that they were not present at Sinai, nor that their experience suffers from the same limitations as that of Moses and the people of Israel, who were not allowed to see God’s face (e.g., Exod. 33:20–22; Deut. 4:12). His point is that they have rejected the promised messenger. They do not believe the one he [the Father] sent, and because they do not, God’s message has no place in their hearts (v. 38). If they believed, they would hear God’s voice, and even see his face—in the person of Jesus (cf. 1:18; 14:9).

The implied reference to the prophet like Moses mentioned in Deuteronomy 18 leads Jesus to discuss more generally the Father’s testimony on his behalf in the Scriptures (vv. 39–47). At the heart of the issue was a tragic irony. If there was one testimony that should have counted with the Jewish authorities it was that of the Scriptures. They studied the Scriptures earnestly in the hope of gaining eternal life, yet when the Scriptures pointed them to Jesus as the way to life (as in Deut. 18:15–18), they were unwilling to come (vv. 39–40). Jesus returns to this point in verses 45–47: If they really believed Moses (i.e., the Scriptures that he wrote), they would have believed what he said about Jesus. It is because they do not believe Moses’ writings that they cannot accept Jesus and his claims (vv. 46–47). In this sense Moses is their accuser (v. 45), but to believe Jesus is to believe Moses as well; to reject what he says is to reject Moses and the Scriptures. In the end, Jesus is the touchstone determining whether a person lives or dies.

It turns out, therefore, that the two witnesses necessary to make a charge stand up in court are both embodied in the testimony of Jesus. The other witness who testifies on his behalf (i.e., the Father) speaks most decisively, not apart from Jesus, but in and through his very words. In a later discourse, where this inseparable bond between Jesus and the Father is assumed, Jesus can say: “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going.… I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me” (8:14, 16; contrast 5:31). Jesus’ words are self-authenticating precisely because they are not his own. They are words that the Father commanded him to speak (cf. Deut. 18:18).

Sandwiched between Jesus’ final references to the testimony of the Scriptures (vv. 39–40, 45–47) is a brief section in which he contrasts his own attitude toward praise or glory with that of his hearers (vv. 41–44). Jesus’ goal is not human praise but praise that comes from the only God (vv. 41, 44). They, on the other hand, like to accept praise from one another (v. 44). Even those among them who are later said to have believed in Jesus “would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved praise from men more than praise from God” (12:42–43). Jesus’ estimate of them parallels and helps to explain his unwillingness to trust himself to those who “believed in his name” at his first Passover visit to Jerusalem (2:23–24). There the narrator explains that Jesus “knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man” (2:24–25). But here Jesus speaks for himself: I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts (v. 42). The similarity in thought tends to confirm the suggestion that chapter 5 is actually a collection of material preserved in connection with that early Passover visit, not all of it directly related to the controversy over the Sabbath and over Jesus’ authority as the Son.

It is entirely possible that traditions of Jesus defending his authority against bitter opponents were remembered and handed down alongside traditions in which he unmasked the pretensions of some who aspired to be his disciples. Verses 41–44 show traces of belonging to the second category, but in the present form of the Gospel, the two “audiences” have merged. Jesus is represented as addressing the Jewish authorities in the same way whether they oppose him and seek his life or whether they privately believe in him but refuse to break with the religious establishment (cf. 8:30–59; 12:37–43).

Jesus’ second answer to challenges leveled against him by the Jewish authorities ends appropriately, with an implicit (vv. 36–38) and an explicit (vv. 39–47) appeal to the Jewish Scriptures. Verses 19–47 can now be seen as a long and illuminating sequel to the terse claim of verse 17, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” They unfold for the reader the nature of Jesus’ divine work (exemplified in the healings that precede and follow), and they establish the continuity of Jesus’ words and deeds with the Father’s self-revelation in the past to Moses and, through Moses’ writings, to the Jewish authorities themselves. The authorities’ unwillingness to acknowledge Jesus’ claims calls into question their commitment to Scripture, the very heart of their faith and basis of their hope of life.