Healing and Authority Ps 36:1-9; Isa 35:1-8; John 5:1-29
Sermon Pt 1. John 5:1-18
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4psQDVHN1R8
Introduction
John 5 has a number of unique features compared to the other miraculous signs stories in the Gospel. William Barclay said there is hardly any passage where Jesus appeals for men’s love and defies men’s hatred as this one. Aside from Jesus himself, our attention is focussed on a lame man healed and the Jewish opponents of Jesus who have nothing good to say about him. They exhibit no faith, gratitude, honouring, no worship (John 9:38) and no discipleship (Matt 20:34). This is one of the most polarising discourses in the Gospels and it interrogates us as to the vitality of our response to the Lord.
Exposition
The story is quite simple, Jesus goes to a healing pool and picks out a man who has been lame for 38 years. The man explains to Christ that he has no one to help his climb into the healing waters, and which point “8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.” We need to remember that disabled people were commonly treated with contempt in the ancient world, so this man’s healing meant a whole new life. What happens next is therefore quite astonishing.
The “Jews” reproach the man for carrying his mat on the Sabbath, which they considered a violation of the Law of Moses. The man reports that he was only doing what his healer told him to do. A little later Jesus locates him and remarks, “See, you are well! Sin no more/stop sinning, that nothing worse may happen to you.” In other places Christ flatly rejects a one to one correlation between sin and sickness (John 9:2-3), but in this case the text suggests that the man was continuing in some sin and in danger of more serious physical or spiritual consequences. Everyone with pastoral experience knows bad attitudes like repressed anger and unforgiveness can underlie states like depression and perhaps many physical ailments as well. With this understanding James exhorts the sick person and the elders called to pray for them to confess their sins to one another in order to be healed (James 5:16). This is a powerful therapeutic dynamic rarely recognised in Protestant churches.
After hearing Jesus’ counsel to stop sinning the man immediately runs to the Jews and names Jesus as his healer. This man is never said to have faith, to worship Jesus, to marvel at this healing or to follow him as a disciple. He has no interest in honouring his healer. His behaviour evidences a denial of the identity of Jesus as the Son of God and nominates him as one who at the Last Judgement stands to suffer more severely than those who never touched by the healing power of Christ (Matt 7:21-23; Luke 13:22-30). This is a terrifying prospect. Clearly this man did not see or enter the kingdom of God and needed to be “born again” (John 3). If you are not a “born again” person or not sure whether you are, it is a matter of urgency that you talk to someone about how to receive spiritual birth rather than run the risk of appearing at the end-time tribunal of God and finding out too late that you were never a real disciple of Christ.
When the Jews persecute Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, he responds, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” (5:17). No Jew doubted that God was continually sustaining the world, but in “calling God his own Father” Christ’s opponents believed “he was even, making himself equal with God” and so “were seeking all the more to kill him” (5:18). In calling God “his own Father” Jesus is teaching something much more than God by creation is the Father of all people (Acts 17:28). In the framework of his orthodox Jewish hearers Christ was not merely repeating the sin of Adam and Eve in Eden (Gen 3:5) but entering into the iniquity of the devil by attempting to elevate himself to the level of the Creator (Isa 14:14; Ezek 28:2). In this way Jesus was breaking the first of the Ten Commandments and under the Law of Moses he fully deserved to die. His extended reply will give them even greater grounds to stone him (John 8:59; 10:31).
Sermon Pt 2. John 5:19-29
Jesus unashamedly declares that he shares not only in the acts of the Father in raising the dead and judging the world but in the most basic attribute of the Father of having “life in himself” (self-existence/aseity). In speaking like this about himself Jesus was not “making himself equal with God” but testifying that his Father has elevated his humanity to share divine sovereign dominion over the world. He only “does” what he sees the Father doing, not only by sharing in the first act of creation (John 1:3) but also in the far greater action of raising the dead to life and judgement and launching a new and eternal creation (John 5:21-22).
These claims are totally astounding and bring to mind C.S. Lewis’ argument that Jesus is just what he claims, God and Lord of all (John 20:28), or, a lunatic, like some of the very sick folk I have spoken to in psychiatric institutions who fully believe that are Christ himself, or, he is a liar. Was Jesus, and all his followers i.e. us, sincerely deluded about the veracity of his immense claim, “an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” For if we truly believe in these words in our hearts they will seize us like nothing else and move us to make sacrificial choices without limit through the power and encouragement of his accompanying promise, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24).
With authority to raise the dead and judge them, Jesus absolutely deserved to be honoured by men and women “just as they honour the Father” (5:23). Such honouring made perfect sense in a religious society centred on Torah obedience, Sabbath keeping and Temple devotion, but what might it mean in a secular society like our own?
Application and Conclusion
I have already remarked about the amazing ingratitude of the man healed, who I think is pretty much a “typical Australian”, it doesn’t seem to matter how much we are blessed by God physically we are rarely thankful to the Lord, “in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:18 cf.Eph 5:20), to quote Paul. In this matter Western Australians are worse than anyone else. Unlike the folk beleaguered by the coronavirus in the eastern states we remain essentially COVID free and with a booming mining sector. I only wish that the front page of our newspaper, THANK GOD FOR WA (West Australian 23/7/20) was meant literally.
Why did God the Father direct Jesus to heal that particular man (John 5:19) rather than some other sick person at the pool who would have certainly become a disciple of Jesus? I can only assume that this choice magnifies the miracle of grace and the limitless authority of Jesus, showing, amongst other things, that the power of God is way bigger than our faith. It is important, not the least for our prayers, that we believe this. A past student told me an interesting story of how he came to Jesus. He had a severe spinal deformity and as he was crossing a road a stranger walked up and asked if he wanted to be healed. He responded with something like, “I haven’t got anything to lose.” God did heal him, and he came to the Lord. In moving towards my conclusion, I want to focus on something from this passage generally overlooked by commentators.
Jesus’ said, “the Father loves the Son and shows him (i.e. Christ) all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you (includes us) may marvel” (John 5:20). This must ultimately refer to the Son’s own marvelling at the taking away of sin in the cross and his resurrection from the dead (John 17:1-5; 19:30) upon which all his later great works will depend. Thus when the first person healed “in the name of Jesus” after Pentecost is a lame man, he immediately begins “walking and leaping and praising God” (Acts 3:8), because, unlike our healed man in John 5, he’s experienced a gospel miracle and the gospel is amazing beyond measure (Rom 1:16).
If John 5 is polarising, Paul speaks of the Second Coming and the resurrection of all the dead, as polarising the totality of humanity. On one side are those who “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”, and then on the other side Christ’s being “glorified in his saints, and…marvelled at among all who have believed, because our (gospel) testimony to you was believed” (2 Thess 1:9-10). The fruit of the gospel is a body of people who will be eternally amazed at being forgiven. Just as we have all sung, “How marvellous, how wonderful And my song will ever be How marvellous, how wonderful Is my Saviour’s love for me”. We are those, in Peter’s words, called to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called (us) you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1Pet 2:9).
Christians are not like Jews, Moslems and others who merely affirm “God” will raise and judge the dead, we marvel at the fact that Jesus will raise us through the healing power of his resurrection love. The same shepherding voice which called us to himself (John 10:27) and forgave our sins will raise us to everlasting life. This is inexpressibly glorious (2 Cor 9:15). As God’s masterpiece (Eph 3:10) we will draw forth admiration, astonishment, praise and breath-taking wonder from the angelic host (1 Pet 1:12) and the rest of the redeemed forever.
We lose such childlike Spirit-inspired amazement when we live as though we are under the Law and become conscious of our own obligations and efforts (works) instead of glorying in the power of the grace-filled gospel of the all-sufficiency of what God has done for us in Christ. It’s time to turn away from being, in any way, like the ungrateful healed man in John 5 and his pharisaic friends, and turn wholly to the marvels of God in Christ.