The Man at the Pool
Here then we have the unique instance of the Lord singling out one from a number of sick folk, and putting to him the question, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Why is this case given? Because it is good for us to know that He possessed the right to help and to heal whomsoever He would. It is so still. In our prayers, for example, we have no rights before God. The rights are wholly His. He is gracious to hear and to answer, but He is supreme, and we have no valid claims upon His bounty.
The Lord's question awakened only surprise in the sick man. It was to him a strange question. From the countenance of the speaker he did not discern the Lord of glory. He only regarded Him as a man who might perhaps have kindness enough to stand by and put him into the pool at the proper moment. His thoughts rose no higher than this: “I have no man to put me into the pool,” he said in reply. There was thus no recognition of the Lord. The eyes were dull, the heart heavy, the sensibilities blunted. The Son of God was speaking in solicitude; but there were no ears to hear. There was no appreciation of the Person who addressed him. In short, there was no spiritual life there.
This deficiency however proved no hindrance, for the Lord had come to Bethesda to supply all that was lacking in this case, in contrast with the provisions of the law. “If there had been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law” (Gal. 3:2121Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. (Galatians 3:21)). While the law was “weak through the flesh” the Lord rose above such limitations. In spite of the man's dullness, debility, and deadness, He bestowed upon him the gift of healing. He was acting here in His own rights as the Son of God.
Thereupon the word of the Lord went forth to the prostrate sufferer, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” Now with that word went a supernatural power which wrought a stupendous change in the hearer. He no longer regarded Jesus as a man who might peradventure put him into the pool. He now recognized Him as One whom he was bound to obey. The word of the Lord imparted new life to him. He believed. He obeyed. He was confident that the word which bade him rise was not spoken in mockery and that the ability to respond which he lacked in himself would in some manner be supplied. He believed the Lord, and like millions beside, he was not made ashamed.
PERSECUTION BY THE JEWS
A great testimony for God was hereby rendered in the city of Zion. The Son acting in His Father's name avoids the temple which He had already pronounced to be no longer His Father's house, and visits the crowd of impotent folk waiting for one of their number to be benefited by the troubling of the pool. He selects an absolutely helpless and hopeless man who, in obedience to His command, carries his bed through Jerusalem on that very sabbath as a witness to the genuineness of the cure. But this was a witness to more than the power of Jesus; it testified also to the authority He possessed as the Son of God to abrogate the conventionalities of the law.
This act of grace by the Lord became a reason for His abuse and His persecution by the Jews. They repudiated altogether the claims He made. They sought to kill Him because He had broken the sabbath, and because He said that “God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.”
This obstinate unbelief and opposition of the Jews gave occasion for the Lord to reveal further glories concerning Himself. Their blindness of understanding showed the desperateness of their case as a nation. Though they were well acquainted with the letter of the ancient oracles, they utterly failed to receive the Lord and His words, and this failure in the face of such exceptional testimony was because they were spiritually dead.
What then is the resource when there is such hopeless obduracy? What sort of a person can help in such circumstances where the powerlessness is that of death? Only One who can act for God without any compromise of the nature of God; and, more than this, only One who can act as God and with God. Hence the Lord said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Such a One then can only be God's own Son. He possesses more than a delegated authority, for in His own inherent right He can speak in His own authority. This He does, prefacing His words with the phrase characteristic of this Gospel, “Verily, verily, I say unto you” (verses 19, 24, 25).
THE SON CLAIMS EQUALITY WITH THE FATHER
The Lord in His answer to the Jewish cavils demonstrates His equality with the Father. This mode of reply is to be weighed. In respect of His work of mercy on the Sabbath, the Lord does not here refer, as in the other Gospels, to the case of David and the show-bread, nor to the priests in the temple, nor to the utilitarianism of the act justifying it, as when the life of a sheep was preserved. In this instance He calmly asserts His divine right as the Son of the Father.
The Lord then declared His glory as the Eternal Son, resting it upon three grounds. He showed that His Sonship appears—
(1) In His union and communion with the Father (verses 19, 20).
(2) In Himself as the Quickener of whom He will (ver. 21).
(3) In Himself as the appointed Judge of mankind (ver. 22).
In the first place then, the Son is seen to be acting in the Father's name. His competency to do this is shown by His union with the Father. And the union is implied in the statement, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do; for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” His adequacy is also further affirmed by the communion existing with the Father; “for the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth: and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.”
Had He not said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work"? To work in such partnership involves equality with the Father; for while not acting independently, i.e., “of Himself,” He is competent to do all the Father does, and to do it all in the same manner, that is, divinely. The Son does not only what He is told to do, but also what He sees the Father do. Consequently, in the life, the actions and the words of the Lord Jesus Christ we have the fullness of the Father's heart of love, otherwise inaccessible to man, brought into view in this world. It is indeed cause for marvel when we reflect that in that lowly Man passing patiently onwards through a path of obloquy we have a perfect exhibition of the Father's love on high. So that looking upon and studying Him we learn the essential features of God's ineffable grace and truth.
And this subject we can only learn in communion with the Father and the Son. There is a great difference between learning a thing from a companion and learning it from a book. Affection and regard play not a small part in the former process. This part of the New Testament, which from one standpoint may seem abstract and dreamy, enters into the very marrow of Christian life because the Person of Christ stands there revealed in His highest glory. Through and in Him the believer learns his most valuable lessons.
The Christian life is not a mere code of ritualistic obedience to a series of specified commands, the fulfillment of certain duties defined with precision. Such was the Mosaic method, where you have not the operations of a new life so much as the repression of the old life. The law came with the coldness of an “army order"; it lacked life. The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life.
Eternal life brings us into relationship with the living Word—a Person to whom we may come and appeal directly, telling Him our sorrows and our joys, and find comfort and peace in the telling. For this privilege, true from the beginning, is not now obsolete, except so far as we make it so by our neglect.
We now come to the second point: the Son is the Giver of life. It has been observed that He is in no whit inferior to the Father. What God does, the Son does in like manner. What a Savior for sinful men! In addition, we are taught that the Son exercises the divine function of bestowing life. “As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” And this function He exercises in His lowliness as Son of man: “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (ver. 26). This attribute was displayed in His ministry. Everywhere He went He had life in Himself. There could therefore be no death in His presence. He possessed a store of life-giving energy, to the power of which the daughter of Jairus, the widow's son of Nain, and the beloved Lazarus were monuments.
It is true that in all these vivifying acts, He was the subject One, but still in the place of subjection He had what no creature could have, His sovereign rights, and could give life when and where it pleased Him: “the Son quickeneth whom he will.”
In the third particular, also, the Son is said to exercise a divine function. Who but God can in the absolute sense (and this is the only possible sense here) judge men? And we read, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.”
This authority to judge mankind is conferred upon Him “because He is the Son of man.” But being Son of God He is at the same time competent in His own right to execute this high function. In the days of His flesh He was in this dark and evil world as Heaven's Light to expose, not to judge, sins, to forgive sins not to condemn the sinner. But we learn that He who was sent to atone for sin is He who will be sent as the Executor of divine judgment, all judgment being committed unto the Son.
Hence the call to honor the Son in His proper excellency. Those who do not by faith see His glory in His humiliation will be compelled to witness and acknowledge it when He is manifested in His own glory and in His Father's. This glory will be so transcendent in character that it will perforce bow all stubborn hearts and knees in reverent homage to the Son of man, the Father's fiat being that all should honor the Son even as they honor Him.
The believer recognizes this equality in worship and adoration. Whatever God is, the Son is also. This we freely and gladly acknowledge, and God is jealous of this, since it was the Son who suffered for sins. God was glorified in Him. And “if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself” (John 13:31,3231Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him. (John 13:31‑32)).
[W. J. H.]
(Continued front page 203) (To be continued)