ONE Sabbath day the Lord Jesus visited the pool of five porches, which was “at Jerusalem.” It bore the name of Bethesda House of Mercy), for an angel came down at certain seasons and imparted healing life-giving qualities to its waters, the benefit of which he received, who first stepped into the pool after the angelic visit. The five porches or colonnades round this Pool of mercy were the abodes of suffering and misery, for “in these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water;” all too well assured that only one out of their number could receive the longed-for blessing.
One of this hapless host was a man, whose infirmity for thirty-eight long years had held him fast. Jesus saw him lie, and, knowing all about him, inquired, “Wilt thou be made whole?” But the man knew not the voice which spake to him—his soul heard not the words; for he answered, “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.” How like the multitude, who think more of ordinances, of angels, and of human help than of the Son of God! Tens of thousands of so-called Christians look to angels for healing, and to man for help, and looking thus are no nearer eternal life than since they were born!
By one word Jesus imparted new vitality to the body of the helpless man, who in a moment rose up and walked at the Master’s bidding.
This act of mercy done on the Sabbath day roused afresh the bitter prejudice of the Jews, boastful of the Law. Religion, not God, was what they valued, and religion rendered sacred to them by tradition. The letter which killeth, not the Spirit which giveth life, was their portion in Moses. It is easy to contend for creeds and to do battle for forms and ceremonies, with the heart as far from God as were the hearts of these Jews who persecuted Jesus, and sought to slay Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath day. The men zealous for Moses crucified Christ!
The Lord’s act of healing the helpless man drew around him a crowd of offended religious people. He was in their midst, not with the shining countenance of the Law-Giver, but lowly and despised. His words were not ushered in with the tremendous emphasis of a thundering heaven and a quaking earth, but with the gentle goodness of one act of healing mercy. The words of God, by Moses, were, “Do this, and thou shalt live;” and these Jews, like too many professing Christians, looked complacently within themselves for power to do and to live. Self-righteous men are ever self-satisfied! Ah! if they had read Moses aright, they would have discovered that, “As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” (Gal. 3:1010For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. (Galatians 3:10).) But who, expecting righteousness by the law, and life by that righteousness, ever heeds its curses? Man has ever a back door of excuses open, whereby to withdraw from the stern commands of God. Man may put himself under the law to magnify his pride of doing and living, but when the edge of the legal knife cuts his conscience, away he goes cringing, and saying that he cannot help doing a few crooked things.
As the Lord Jesus stood in the midst of these self-satisfied men, He unfolded a glory of grace; and this God had not revealed in the law given by Moses. One of the Lord’s glories is that of Life-Giver. “In Him was life;” it never had a beginning in Him, but pertained to His being, and everlastingly was in Him; and “the life was the light of men.” Such is His glory as the Life in connection with men. The Law-Giver had said to men, “Do this and live” —but none had done aright, and not one had lived by his doings—and Jesus proclaimed Himself as the Life-Giver to those who being dead could not do and live.
Men heard from the lips of the Son of God the truth as to their spiritual condition.
The Lord looked round upon them, and said, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live” (John 5:2525Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. (John 5:25)). His hearers were alive in their religiousness, alive in their ideas of law keeping, but dead towards God—dead in mind and heart, utterly so towards God.
Is this a “hard saying” of the Master’s? Say we, “Who can hear it?” Surely few believe the divine record concerning themselves. Constant religious effort is the constant denial of the Master’s words. And this insensibility to believe our spiritual state to be that of death, is perhaps the great hindrance to receiving the truth concerning life—eternal life.
And more, when awakened by the Holy Spirit to feel our need of Christ, the fact of clinging to self, disbelief in what the Son of God says about our being dead, sorely hinders our souls from receiving Christ in His fullness. It is almost always the case when a sinner is first aroused to the sense of his sins before God, that he begins to turn to God by trying to reform. He tries to fit himself for God, and usually it is not till after much disappointment and self-learning, that he accepts the solemn truth about himself which the Lord conveyed to these self-righteous, self-satisfied Jews.
But are we not to repent, to pray, to try? Should we sit still, waiting to feel something which shall indicate that we are of the elect; No doubt every honest soul repents; but repentance does not give life, neither do prayers or efforts procure life. Not all the plowing in the world would produce a crop of corn, and repenting is like plowing, most necessary, but not life-giving. As to sitting still and waiting to see if we are of the elect, we might as well ask a man in the top story of a burning house, to sit indifferent and still, and wait to see whether, perchance, the fire escape came or came not, as to ask a really earnest soul, roused by the Spirit of God to the reality of eternity, not to trouble himself till he awoke in heaven or in hell. The doctrine of fatalism is only palatable to lovers of sin. Yet not all the cries and tears of the poor man in danger of being burned would make the fire-escape. Our prayers are not our Saviour.
“Uncalled Thou cam’st with gladness,
Us from the fall to raise,
To change our grief and sadness
To songs of joy and praise.”
And Jesus is calling. But few listen.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you he that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life” (v. 24.) The moment a dead sinner hears the word of the Son of God, he lives. If we have heard Him, then we have life. If we heard yesterday, or a year ago, we lived, having heard. Divine life was communicated when we heard. There might have been law-keeping, doing this and that in order to live, and a desire after the good, but there was no new life, no eternal life until we had heard. We were merely evolving something out of self, and out of self, self comes. Divine life cannot be wrought out of us, or produced from us, any more than natural life can be got out of stones; it is put into us.
Jesus is the Life-Giver. He presents Himself to us as to those who are dead. He tells us that it is the Father’s will that He should give life to whom He will. We quicken not ourselves. It is the direct work of the Son of God. We are slow to learn, slow to believe His words. And the Lord bids us not be stumbled at the wonderful truth that He is the Life, and that such as hear His voice shall live; saying, “Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the grave shall hear His voice and shall come forth” (v. 2 8.) We believe in the resurrection of the body; that when the great day comes the Lord will awake the dead, and call them forth out of death to live again; and He bids us know that in the hour which now is (this day of grace), the spiritually “dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.”
There are two shalls in these words of the Lord. “The dead shall hear.” And despite all that men may say, and the numbers that do not listen, still there are the dead who do now hear the voice of the Son of God. He has said of the spiritually dead, that they shall hear. And He quickens whom He will. No discordant religious voices, no clamor of the world, can hinder Jesus from commanding the ear of dead sinners. The numbers who are daily brought to confess His name, evidence the strength of His first Divine shall.
And this is the second, “they that hear shall live.” This is for you, troubled soul. None can rob you of the power of the Lord’s blessing. Whatever your state, whatever your sin, has the voice of the Son of God reached you? Then you shall live. You shall not die. His Father sent Him to save you, and to give you everlasting life. He that hath the Son hath life. It is yours now this very moment, and never, never will be taken from you. Neither shall you come into judgment. The sins you dread have been borne by Jesus. You are in Him, who has passed through the judgment for you, and who is now out of it, never more to die. You are also passed from death into life. H. F. W.