Jesus at Bethesda
24 “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.
God’s will for us is that we hear him and that, hearing him, we put our faith in him. Through faith, we receive his forgiveness and eternal life.
There is a creature without arms or legs that looks like a snake but isn’t. It is the caecilian, a rare tropical amphibian that has a mysterious organ extending from just below each eye. No one yet knows what it’s for—touch, taste, smell, or something else, like the stuff that fills the massive frontal lobes of whales and dolphins? Our faith is something like a mystery organ, except that we know what it does. Like an ear or an eye, our faith is something that receives what God sends it.
But like a man closing his eyes or covering his ears, people can shut down their faith. They can reject what God sends to them. But Jesus is talking here about the way faith works; not about man’s sinful misuse of this wonderful gift.
25 I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. (NIV)
Since Jesus says that “a time is coming and has now come,” we understand that he is talking about the spiritual life of faith, although it is equally true that on the Last Day, he will speak and all of the dead will come to life—he will talk about the resurrection in the verses that follow. But here, he is still describing the life we come to inside: the life of faith.
As Jesus continues into verses 26-27, he uses a special title for himself, “the Son of Man.” Although he is completely comfortable calling himself the Son of God and telling the woman at the Samaritan Well that he is in fact the promised Messiah, he also uses this title, Son of Man. So far in John’s Gospel, he has used this special Old Testament title for himself in conjunction with certain prophecies. The first time was the reference to Jacob’s Ladder (John 1:51) in which he showed that he himself is the stairway, the only way, into heaven. Next, in John 3:13-14, he showed that the Bronze Snake of Moses is also a sign fulfilled by Christ, who would be lifted up so that “everyone who believes in him (the Son of Man) may have eternal life.” Now Jesus draws on the vision of the Son of Man in the prophecy of Daniel, who “approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him…” (Daniel 7:13-14). Daniel’s vision was of Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, who has authority to judge. Jesus clearly tells us that he himself is this Son of Man whom the Father “has given…authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.”
Jesus is the promised Messiah, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and the one who fulfilled the Old Testament laws of Moses in our place. He is the one who has taken away our sins, and he is the one who will also judge us on the Last Day.
We put our faith in him because he has raised us from the spiritual death of doubt and unbelief to the spiritual life of faith and trust. Pray for God to strengthen your faith, and to give you the courage and the words to share your faith with the people you love. There’s room in heaven for us all.
Something Extra:
Ecclesiastes 1:16-18
16 I thought to myself, “Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
Who ruled over Jerusalem before Solomon? Saul didn’t; it was captured by David from the Jebusites. But Solomon might also be talking about a man like Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18) and the Amorite king Adoni-Zedek (Joshua 10:5) and the Jebusite kings who ruled there.
Solomon even says that he pursued the understanding of “madness and folly,” quickly learning that no enlightenment lies along that path. Luther thought that Solomon meant that he tried to keep “madness and folly” away from his kingdom by promoting other qualities, which could certainly be the case. But either way, he found that this was “a useless anxiety,” (I’m quoting Luther now), “therefore the wisest thing is compose oneself in such a way that one can stand anything” (LW 21).
Such things led Solomon to express himself once again in poetry:
18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief. (NIV)
If we spend our whole lives worrying, we will waste our time and God’s. Knowledge itself is a blessing, but knowledge without faith is useless. It would be the same with anything—even a pair of shoes. Without faith, our shoes keep our feet dry and healthy and preserve our feet from wounds and infections and keep us alive, but if they do all this for someone without faith, what good have they done? Better to be a shoeless cripple who will have eternal life through faith than to wear the best shoes that money can buy without any faith at all.
We thank God for everything we have, from diplomas to tennies. Everything we have is a gift, but the greatest gift is the Son of God himself, who gave himself to rescue us from the madness and folly of sin, and to bring us to eternal life.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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