(CHAP. 5)
ANOTHER scene now opens, divinely portraying man afflicted governmentally because of transgressions and iniquities. That mercy was mingled with God’s discipline is true; and not the less so that His own earthly people had fallen under the rod of chastisement instead of sitting in the throne of government. Jerusalem has its Bethesda, a house of mercy, and in its five porches are gathered on that Sabbath day a multitude of sick, blind, lame, and withered.
For those who could help themselves, or could count upon the devotedness of friends, there was hope of healing, if able to avail themselves thus of the divine intervention on their behalf. But Jesus finds one man whose case had now become hopeless. Having sinned, he had suffered thirty-eight years under his infirmity, and not a man had he to help him, so that when the water of the pool was troubled another stepped in before him. He was near indeed to the gates of death, in spite of being in the house of mercy.
Hopeless and sad, his case appealed mutely but irresistibly to the Saviour’s compassionate heart. Wouldst thou become well? He asks. But how, for human power fails? One thing alone can meet the case — the word of God. This Jesus speaks, saying to him, “Arise, take up thy couch, and walk.” He sent His word and healed him.
The word of God, even as the need of man, knows no Sabbath. To the Jews who opposed ordinances to God’s grace the Lord replies, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Equal with God, yet because in manhood perfectly dependent on the Father, He works in grace to accomplish all that the Father has designed in blessing.
Man under law might think that given favorable circumstances he could perhaps attain to eternal life and resurrection, little knowing that he was under the curse, and soon to be proved so. But into that scene of spiritual death the Son has entered, not helping man to help himself, or restoring his state under law, but quickening whom He will; so that, to believe His word, as come from the Father, is to have eternal life. Moreover, for such, judgment has no place, they are passed out of death into life.
Sin had brought in death, and judgment followed; the word of Christ delivers from both by quickening dead souls now. They hear the voice of the Son of God and live. In believing they have already given honor to the Son; and therefore judgment which is given to the Son that all might honor Him, has no application to them. He has exercised His absolute authority over them in grace, and will not need to assert it in their case by executing judgment. This is reserved for those who have not honored Him, nor therefore the Father who sent Him.
Thus He quickens and judges with a twofold object: first, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father; and secondly, that the dead may live by hearing the voice of the Son of God, or be judged by Him, being the Son of man.
At His word the body, too, shall be raised in its due time for life or judgment, according as men have practiced good or evil. And the standard of judgment, or test of this, is not now merely law — one’s duty to God and to one’s neighbor — but the honoring of the Son in manhood come in grace, and therefore of the Father who sent Him, according to the will of whom the judgment shall be pronounced.
The Lord concludes His discourse by raising the most important of questions, namely, Has such witness been rendered to Him as to make inexcusably culpable those who do not believe Him, nor come to Him, nor receive Him? If they have not honored Him, why?
The testimony to Him in point of fact was positive, complete, and conclusive. Had He witnessed on his own account His witness had not been true. He bore witness for the Father, and the Father witnessed concerning Him. John, in whom they had boasted for a time, had also witnessed to the truth concerning Him, but only from the point of view of man in the flesh. Yet this should have made his testimony the more convincing to them. But more, His works were a divinely perfect proof that the Father had sent Him, for He accomplished them as perfectly as they were given Him to do. And the Father Himself had personally borne witness; though, to hardened unbelieving hearts, unheard and unseen. Finally, the Scriptures bore irrefragable testimony to Him, as documentary evidence of supreme importance.
All was in vain; He had come in His Father’s name, and they had not received Him. Another would come in his own name and be received.
The cause of such incredulity and hardness of heart was a moral one, and not far to seek. They received glory one of another, and sought not the glory which comes from God alone.
They professed to trust in Moses, and thus to reject Christ. But God’s Word is absolutely harmonious throughout, whether written down by Moses, or spoken by the Son; and, rejecting Him, Moses himself would be their accuser. Moses wrote of Him, and had they believed Moses they would have believed Christ. But not believing his writings whom they trusted, how should they believe the words of One whom they despised and feared?
The whole narrative makes prominent the power of the Word, whether expressed in the voice of the Son of God, who is Son of man, or in the fourfold testimony borne to Him. This word, moreover, takes a double form; one transient, namely, the spoken words, the other put on enduring record by writing in the Scriptures, both equally authoritative, but the latter for abiding reference.
This word alone it was that availed for Israel, or any soul sick unto death and perishing; but Israel as such was hopelessly sunk in hardened unbelief. Blessing, then, can only be secured in the exercise of purely divine power in sovereign grace, quickening the dead — equally available, therefore, and as free, for any soul of man, since all were equally lost in consequence of sin.
Nicodemus needed and received divine instruction as to the way of God; the woman of Samaria, the knowledge of God’s grace and the gift of Christ. The Pool of Bethesda tells of the word of the Son of God, the efficacious substitute for means of blessing dependent upon man’s use of them, and failing, therefore, in their effect.