John 5.31-47
If you know the story, Jesus
Instead the Judeans pitched a fit, ’cause Jesus cured him
Elsewhere in John,
John 8.13 KWL - So the Pharisees told Jesus, “You testify about yourself. Your testimony isn’t valid.”
Because alithís ordinarily means “true,” various interpreters leap to the conclusion the Pharisees were accusing Jesus of lying. And no doubt some of ’em believed he was lying. But interpreting it “Your witness is not true” (
Deuteronomy 19.15-17 KWL - 15 “Don’t stand up only one witness against a man
- for any act of evil, offense, or trespass, which he committed.
- From the mouth of two witnesses, or the mouth of three witnesses,
- a word may stand.
- 16 For when you stand up a false witness against a man,
- to accuse him of rebelling against the Law,
- 17 the two men who are in dispute are before the L
ORD ’s face, - before the face of priests and judges who are in office in those days.
Jesus prefaced his remarks with “Amen amen,”
I should point out some commentators claim Judeans wouldn’t accept anyone’s testimony about themselves. Supposedly in a Judean court, neither the accused nor the plaintiff could make statements. Well, the scriptures demonstrate people could, and did. In the trials of Jesus, Peter and John, Stephen, and Paul, all of ’em made statements. (Stephen took a whole chapter.
So Jesus brought ’em forth. Starting with
John 5.31-35 KWL - 31 “When I testify about myself, my testimony ‘isn’t valid’:
- 32 The one who testifies about me must be another person.
- Fine. I know a witness who is valid, who testified about me:
- 33 You sent for John, and he answered truthfully.
- 34 I don’t accept testimony from people, but I say this so you can be saved:
- 35 John’s a burning, shining lamp, and you wanted to rejoice in his light for an hour.”
True, some interpreters think John’s testimony was private, just for his pupils. It wasn’t. John spread this around. Remember, the reason he came to baptize was so he could make Messiah known.
Hence Jesus pointed to John. His listeners knew who John was, and what John taught. All of ’em “wanted to rejoice in his light for an hour”—they heard John announce Messiah was coming, and they were all for it. They heard John point to Jesus. But they balked when Jesus began to claim Messiah wasn’t just an earthly king, but a cosmic one—something the scriptures had already stated, but they were too fixated on their own End Times theories to realize any of this.
Okay, what about the miracles?
A lot of Christians don’t believe in miracles. Either they’re liberals who assume all the miracles in the bible are myths, or they’re conservatives who assume every miracle in the present day is fake or devilish. Weirdly, they all accept Jesus’s statement in the following passage: If he really did the supernatural acts attributed to him, he’s gotta come from God. Heck, lots of people accept that premise.
But they don’t wanna believe in Jesus. And don’t really trust the scriptures. So they don’t believe.
John 5.36-35 KWL - 36 I have a greater witness than John: The works the Father gave me so I’d complete them.
- These works I do testify about me that the Father sent me.
- 37 The Father who sent me: He testified about me.
- You’d never heard his voice, nor heard his form, before.
- 38 You don’t have his word living in you.
- He sent it to you, and you don’t trust it.
- 39 Study the scriptures! You expect life in the age to come to be there?
- They’re a witness about me— 40 and you don’t want to come to me so you can have life.
The problem, as Jesus said, was the people didn’t know God. Not really. They’d never seen his eídos/“visible form”—I added “before” to my translation because in Christ Jesus, they were definitely seeing it now;
Didn’t know the Father. Didn’t have the Father’s word living in them; didn’t trust it.
Okay, what about the scriptures?
In recent translations, verse 39 gets rendered “You search the scriptures…” (
Probably the latter is the correct translation, for Jesus was stating a fact, not giving a command. After the destruction of the temple of Solomon in 586BC, the Jewish scholars of the Exile substituted the study of the Law for the observance of the temple ritual and sacrifices. They pored over the OT, endeavoring to extract the fullest possible meaning from its words, because they believed that the very study itself would bring them life. By so doing they missed the chief subject of the OT revelation. Jesus claimed the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Writings) as witnesses to his person and claims.
Lk 24.44 He rebuked his hearers for their inconsistency in studying the scriptures so diligently while rejecting his claims, which were founded on those same scriptures.Merrill C. Tenney, Expositors Bible Commentary at John 5.39-40
But Jesus wasn’t telling his hearers, “You already study the bible; you might’ve noticed it’s all about me.” He told them, “Study the bible!—for you don’t study the bible. If you were, you’d have found me in it.”
Yeah, the Judeans had a reputation for studying the bible. But it wasn’t legitimate. Just like American Christians claim the bible’s their favorite book, that they read it every day—and they try to prove this by quoting it like crazy. Often
Neither, really, was ancient Judea. The scribes knew the bible, but your average Pharisee, not so well. They knew what the rabbis taught, but likewise lost the forest for the trees. It’s why they went nuts when Jesus “broke Sabbath”—even though, from the Law’s standpoint, Jesus never did. Never sinned. Not once. Not ever.
So why do people prefer to teach, “You already study the bible”? I suspect it’s so they can make the same accusation to today’s bible scholars. “You guys study the bible, and think you know what it means, but you missed Jesus.” It’s a great way for a pious buffoon to take the piss out of a few puffed-up know-it-alls.
And yeah, a few of us know-it-alls really don’t know Jesus. That’s fair. But way more of us do than don’t.
Being ignorant of the bible is hardly a new problem. It’s all too human to believe anything we hear,
Jesus doesn’t care about our opinions.
People frequently misunderstand this next bit because they misdefine the word dóxa, which Jesus uses throughout. The
John 5.41, 44 ESV - 41 “I do not receive glory from people. […] 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”
Hence some Christians actually claim Jesus taught his glory and honor come from the Father, not us; our praises mean nothing to him. Wait, what?
Yeah, it’s bad theology. It’s not about greatness, might, power, or honor; those are things we covet. Jesus doesn’t, and readily gave ’em up to become human.
John 5.41-44 KWL - 41 “I don’t accept people’s opinion, 42 because I know you:
- You don’t have God’s love in yourselves.
- 43 I came in my Father’s name, and you don’t accept me.
- Yet whenever some other person comes in their own name, you’ll accept them.
- 44 How can you trust me?—you who accept the opinions of one another,
- and never seek the opinions which come from God alone.”
And people have a lot of uninformed, ignorant, biased opinions about Jesus. I know I’ve sure spouted a bunch, back when I didn’t know any better. I grew up in churches which taught a lot of Christian-sounding junk. Some of it political, some sexist, some stingy or faithless or stupid or otherwise fruitless. None of it biblical, but it suited our biases. We swallowed it whole, and repeated it to whoever’d listen.
The flaw in our opinions? Same as the Judeans: We didn’t have God’s love in ourselves. We didn’t wanna love our neighbors, help the needy, acknowledge our powerless, pathetic relationships with God. We liked our opinions, and fought off any attempts to change them—even when they came from the Holy Spirit himself. We were willing, same as the Judeans, to listen to any idiot who told us what we wanted to hear. We embraced ’em like game show hosts who wanted to give us free cars. No tests for rotten fruit; we just swallowed the shiny fruit whole.
If that’s the way we behave, of course we’re gonna struggle to know and follow Jesus. We’ve sank his message in a fetid lagoon of waste matter, and are too busy wondering why our lives smell so foul.
Moses for the prosecution.
Pharisees believed, same as a lot of Christians do, that when they died they’d stand on trial before God. Satan would fulfill its original job as their prosecutor,
So it’s interesting when Jesus teaches the following, he says, “Don’t assume I’m the plaintiff.”
John 5.45-47 KWL - 45 “Don’t assume I’m the plaintiff against you before the Father.
- Your plaintiff is Moses, in whom you put your hope.
- 46 For if you trust Moses, you should trust me: He wrote about me!
- 47 If you don’t trust what Moses wrote, how’ll you trust my words?”
If you wanna know your real prosecutor, it’ll be the Law. The Law defines sin.
Pharisees (and Jews today) see Moses as Israel’s advocate. When the Hebrews built the gold calf, an outraged God said he wanted to smite ’em and start over with Moses,
The Lord has on their behalf appointed me to pray for their sins and make intercession for them. For not for any virtue or strength of mine, but of his good pleasure have his compassion and longsuffering fallen to my lot. Assumption of Moses 12
Yeah, I know the Assumption of Moses isn’t bible. Still reflects what Pharisees believed. So it was a huge twist for Jesus to say Moses wasn’t on their side: He was their prosecutor. He’d told the Hebrews one day a prophet was coming whom they should definitely listen to,
Christians skim over this idea because we imagine our trial before God way differently. And wrongly.
But back to Jesus’s point: Moses pointed to Jesus, and if you know your bible, you’ll know this. If you don’t, you won’t. Study the scriptures!
In summary…
So Jesus listed three witnesses in his favor: John the baptist, the supernatural works his Father had empowered him to do, and the bible. They back up who he is.
Same as people today, the Judeans weren’t impressed by these witnesses. They figured John was some demoniac;
It’s what I keep warning Christians whenever they insist
Kind of a bummer to end upon. Sorry. Hey, next time I’ll move on to Jesus forgiving taxmen. ’Cause everybody loves taxmen, right?