READ:
John 5.
KEY
VERSES: 19, 20, 21 and 30.
In chapter 5 we are
back again with Christ in Jerusalem. We must not miss the
importance and significance of the visits to Judea and
Jerusalem as recorded in "John." These visits
have a relationship with the position, condition and
destiny of the Jewish nation in an official sense. Take,
therefore, full account of every visit and every event,
and, the connection of each. The details of these will
come out as we move on, but we call attention in a
general way to two aspects; one, the close association
with Israel's past history, and the other, the place of
the Mosaic order.
Look at some of these:
Chapter 1. "The
Lamb of God." What a lot of history in Israel there
is behind that phrase.
Chapter 2. The
marriage. Just look at two passages.
Jeremiah 31:35-33: "Behold, the days come, saith the
Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the
covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I
took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of
Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an
husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After
those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their
inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be
their God, and they shall be my people."
Hebrews 8:7-10:
"For if the first covenant had been faultless, then
should no place have been sought for the second. For
finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come,
saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not
according to the covenant that I made with their fathers
in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out
of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my
covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For
this is the covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my
laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and
I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a
people."
Here, as you see, the
point was a marriage covenant, and this is transferred
from the covenant made through Moses to the covenant made
in the Blood of Jesus Christ.
Chapter 3. The serpent
lifted up. (Numbers 21.)
Chapter 4. The
springing well. Here it is interesting and significant to
notice, that in Numbers 21 the springing well came into
view almost immediately after the lifting up of the
brazen serpent, and this is the order in John 3 and 4.
Chapter 5. The impotent
man. (We are going to deal with this in the present
chapter.)
Chapter 6. The Manna.
Chapters 7, 8 and 9.
The Feast of Tabernacles.
Chapter 10. The Feast
of Dedication.
Chapter 11. Contains
the spiritual meaning of Jordan - death, burial and
resurrection as something right at the heart of Israel's
history.
Chapter 12. Israel's
blindness (verses 37-41). See in this connection the
passages in Isaiah, chapters 6 and 53, quoted.
Chapter 15. The Vine.
Isaiah 5 represents Israel as the vine, or the vineyard,
and the vine was a common figure amongst the prophets of
Israel. This is transferred in John 15 by the Lord Jesus
from Israel to Himself.
Chapter 17. The High
Priest, with the altar and the whole burnt-offering in
view.
This is only a
selection, and more features can be traced, but there is
one thing to be remembered that is, that everything to do
with Israel in "John" is in a bad light, and
represents the setting aside of Judaism to bring in the
Church. This is done by Christ Himself taking all the elements of
Israel's true life, and embodying them as the spiritual
features of the Church's constitution, life and vocation.
Everything which subsequently comes out in the doctrine
of the New Testament will be found in germ in the
Gospels, and especially in "John."
Now we can come to our
particular chapter, John 5. Here, as on a number of
occasions in "John," it is a Feast of the Jews
which brings Him to Jerusalem, or is the occasion of His
being there. What Feast this one is is quite uncertain.
Other Feasts are mentioned, some by name such as the
Passover and some are marked by such definite features as
to leave us in no doubt as to what they are. In this
instance the article is not present. It does not say THE
Feast of the Jews, although some translations have
included the article. If it were present we should know
that it refers to the Passover. We are left very largely
to conjecture, but, as far as it is possible to trace the
date of this incident, it would seem that it is the Feast
of Purim. This Feast was originated in the days of the
captivity, and we have the account of it in the book of
Esther. It related to the marvelous overruling by God of
the counsels of the evil Haman, and the deliverance of
the Jews from the awful death, under sentence of which
they were living until the Lord turned their death to
life.
If this is the Feast of
chapter 5, then verses 24-27 take on a wonderful
significance: "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. Verily, 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. For as the Father hath life in himself;
so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and
hath given him authority to execute judgment also,
because he is the Son of man." Carry these words
back into the book of Esther and see how wonderfully they
fit in. Condemnation and death exchanged for life, and
the Lord Jesus taking the place of Mordecai, to Whom at
length the authority to execute judgment is given, even
to Him Who has been set aside, humiliated and rejected by
men.
But there is another
historical feature in the background of this chapter. The
immediate foreground is occupied by the impotent man at
the pool, and we are told that he had been there in that
state for thirty-eight years. Now that was exactly the
period of Israel's wanderings in the wilderness, from the
giving of the law at Sinai to the death of Moses. Note
these two things: (1) the law given, (2) a subsequent
life in impotence, weakness and failure as under the law.
What a lot of light is thrown upon this for us by the
subsequent writings of the New Testament. The apostle
Paul says a good deal about it in his letter to the
Romans. He points out that, while man was weak, the
weakness of man was not made manifest and brought to
light until the law was given; and then, when the law
came, the great fact, the universal fact that man is
utterly impotent in the presence of the requirements of a
holy God is made all too apparent. Not that the law is
evil in itself. Nay, but good, and if only it could be
lived up to, it would be a great blessing to man. God
never imposes upon man anything that is not for his good,
but then, because of sin and man's fallen state, there is
an inherent weakness, which renders him totally incapable
of standing up to God's demands; and so, what should be
for his good and benefit, becomes the very instrument of
his conscious weakness and helplessness.
This is exactly what we
have in John 5. Here is a man on his bed for
thirty-eight years. A bed is intended to be a good thing,
a blessing, but in the case of this man the bed has
become the symbol of his weakness and bondage, and had
really become a tyrant rather than a friend. So, right in
the heart of Jerusalem, we have this long stretch of
Israel's helplessness illustrated in the life of a single
man lying in the bondage of his own weakness for
thirty-eight years. What is the hope for Israel? What was
the hope for this man? Hope lay only in one direction.
That direction is indicated right at the commencement of
John's Gospel: "The law was given by Moses, but
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Hope, then,
lies in the direction of grace and truth, coming in the
Person of the Lord Jesus. Thus we find Him coming on the
scene when all other hope had faded and disappeared, and
well-nigh, if not altogether, settled down in the heart
of this poor, helpless victim.
What a picture this is,
not only of Israel but of all men without Christ. It is
not a matter of sins, many or few. It is not a question
of comparative moral strength, greater or lesser; but it
is the issue of standing face to face with the perfection
of God in the Christ. How can man at his best measure up
to that, and give an answer wholly satisfactory to God?
There is no man who can do it. Remembering that a breach
in one point declares imperfection, and involves the
individual, and the race, in the fact of sinfulness, we
have to come to Paul's conclusion: "All have sinned,
and come short of the glory of God." "There is
none righteous, no, not one." But we cannot escape.
We must all give an account before the judgment seat.
What is our hope? Our hope is in Christ alone, and the
grace of God in Jesus Christ. In his wonderful letter to
the Galatians the apostle Paul opens up for us God's
matchless grace in delivering us, through the death of
Christ, and our death with Him, from the bondage of the
law.
Now this man did not
finish his history there. There was a glorious issue when
the Lord Jesus came into his life. Whereas at the outset
his bed was his master, at the end he was the master of
his bed. Whereas in the beginning he was completely
dependent upon others, and all his strength was outside
of himself, in the end there was that within him which
made it possible for him to stand upon his own feet, and,
not only walk, but, as the Greek tense of the words
shows, "keep on walking," or "be walking
all the time."
So we see, then, that
what is in view in the first place is deliverance from
the bondage of the law, and from the hopeless impotence
and weakness of all men by nature, when they stand
confronted by the standard which God demands, and from
which He will not excuse one single individual. That
deliverance is found to be mainly along the line of
grace, brought into experience by reason of a vital
relationship with the Lord Jesus. But, while walking in
the power of God is the object in view, what we have to
see before we close is the law of this divine truth and
blessing. What is the law of this walk in life and power?
Well, our key verses bring us to that. The man in the
story had tried many, many times to find in himself the
energy by which he could get upon his feet and walk. That
energy he had never found. Now, when the Lord Jesus comes
on the scene, that man discovers that in Him (Christ)
there is energy, and that energy flows out as the words
are spoken - a literal fulfillment of another thing said
by the Lord Jesus in this Gospel: "...the words that
I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are
life." So that this man, unable to walk as out from
himself, found himself able to rise up and walk by the
energy which proceeded from Christ; and the simple law of
this walk in the power of God is that of meeting
everything as out from the Lord, and not from ourselves.
This was the law of Christ's own life of moral and
spiritual ascendency. Taking the place of man
representatively, He said: "The Son can do nothing out
from himself, but what he seeth the Father
do...." He spoke of the words, and the works, as
proceeding out from the Father, and not out from Himself.
In the text the little word "of" is the Greek
preposition "out from." So that Christ lived
His life as out from the Father, meeting every demand,
carrying every liability. Thus His life was one of
victory over all weakness and ineffectiveness.
But notice further,
this all took place on the Sabbath day, and the Sabbath
in this chapter signifies God's rest. God has come to the
end of His works, and rests. As in every part of this
Gospel, Christ is the chief character in view, and this
Sabbath points to Him and says: God has reached the end
of His works in His Son, is satisfied and at rest. Christ
is the sum total of all the works of the Father. Out of
that fullness of God in Christ we, who have labored under
the bondage of the law, may now walk in the rest of being
set free by faith in Jesus Christ.
Now the life of the
believer is one of learning continuously and
progressively how to live as out from the Lord. We shall
always be conscious of our own weakness. In ourselves we
shall never be anything but weak and impotent, but we do
not stay there. We see that in Christ all strength, all
ability, all wisdom, all grace resides, but that it is in
Him for us, and as we, refusing to accept our own state
as the criterion and the final argument, by faith take
hold of the Lord Jesus, and move out to meet our
obligations as out from Him, we shall find that we are
able to do what we have never been able to do before,
though we may have tried many times. We shall learn now
what the apostle meant when he said that the Lord had
told him that His strength was made perfect in weakness.
Do we feel crippled? Do we despair of ever being able to
walk and serve to any good purpose? Have we tried and
failed again and again? Let us learn the lesson of John
5. Nothing out from ourselves but everything, hitherto
impossible, out from Christ.
Let us ask the Lord to
show us how to live by faith in the Son of God. That life
is a life of overcoming what has before been our bondage,
our very tyranny. It is not something, it is the Lord
Himself, and, reverting to the Esther link which may be
somewhere in the background of this chapter, we shall
know the wonderful joy of what is recorded in that little
book as the issue of the divine intervention, "a
good day"!