Hey, thanks for joining us.
As we continue through the Gospel of John.
We are in the fifth chapter, the 25th verse.
If I'm being 100% honest today, this is.
One of the kind of passages that I think
in some ways reflects my relationship with the Gospel of John.
I, I don't know if we've actually gone into this yet, Michael,
but you are a fan of the Gospel of John.
I, I, I don't want to use favorite, but you
you like the gospel of John very much.
I like some parts of the Gospel of John very much.
And then sometimes I just feel
the weight of John being John and
for me,
today's passage is kind of one of those where
we just are going to kind of pile on.
So I'm going to read a few verses.
I do think there's
some important stuff in here, but there's a lot of the personality
of John coming through in what Jesus says in these verses.
So starting with 25,
I tell you
the truth, the hour is coming is now here when the dead
will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will live.
For just as the father has life in himself,
so he has granted the son also to have life in himself,
and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.
Do not be astonished at this, for the hour is coming,
when all who are in their graves will hear his voice, and will come out.
And those who have done good to the resurrection of life,
and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.
So what do I mean by John being John here?
I think occasionally,
I don't think you're going to be able to read the Gospel of John seriously
without having some head scratching moments in which you reread and
and it sounds like John is saying some of the same things over
and over again, and you find yourself saying, what is the point here?
And I actually do think that's a good way to read.
What is the point?
Because if you can find the the Prime Mary point
that John is making, I think you can be a little less,
distracted,
maybe would be a word by some of the other stuff.
And so here we have this, this moment.
Michael, Jesus says, I tell you the truth, the hours coming.
Know the hours.
Hear when the dead will hear the voice of God, and those who hear will live.
Now, we've just had this conversation prior, yesterday's
study about death and life.
John may not have literally dead
here in mind, though that seems to make an appearance in a moment.
But again, a restatement of this idea
that living means listening
to God, hearing the truth, knowing Christ,
and that death means turning away from that.
And so then, and this another turn.
The father has life, and he's granted the son to have life.
So what's John telling us,
as we said yesterday, that life is found in relationship
with God through Christ, that that is where life is centered
and what it means to live for the believers,
and what it means not to live for those who turn away.
And that's not all John's going to say about it,
but it's another way of saying it here.
Well, one thing I would note here, Clint,
is that for all of the complexities of John and we've said this now so many times
already in the midst of this study, there's a lot
there's there's quite a few complexities in this book.
I think that John is no different
than the other three synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke.
It's no different from those in the sense that the center of it
is always and consistently Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the center.
What makes John, I think distinctive is when you come into it, excuse me?
And you come into it like this, and you begin seeing
the levels of spiritual teaching being offered.
What you discover is in red letters, as you have in the Bible
that we have on the screen here.
What you see very quickly is that Jesus is revealing,
as John recounts it, the truth of Jesus's centrality.
It began with the idea that Jesus Christ was with God
in the beginning, that the word was there, and even part
of the creating power of the world, the ordering power of the world.
And now here we have this amazing phrase that at the end of the day,
just as the father has life
unto himself, the idea that life is
doesn't need to be maintained, it doesn't need to be.
So the father isn't reliant upon anyone for that eternal life.
And in the same way, Jesus Christ has that same life. So.
So there's this beautiful kind of theological richness being offered here,
that what you see in Jesus Christ is fully God.
And when you see Jesus Christ, you're seeing God.
And when you see Jesus Christ,
you also see God's redemptive, perfect, redemptive effort for humanity.
I think there's a kind of maturity to this gospel because of it.
I also think if one is looking for, hey, John, what's the simple point?
This is not the easiest way to tell the Jesus story.
This is not the most simplistic way to hear Jesus's teachings
that I think you could argue, is done far more effectively by parables
and other gospels, where there's often Jesus even makes explicit reference.
Here's the point.
But in John, Jesus is not teaching.
Towards that end, Jesus is revealing the depth of who he is.
And I think that gives this book a different flavor.
But I think at the end of the day, to go back to how I began here, I just think
what it shares with the other gospels is Jesus is at the center.
And so if you're looking for a point of a section like this,
look for some answers to the question Who is Jesus in this text?
And it's going to get you close to the center of what John's trying to do.
Yeah, more
so I would say in the other Gospels, you have these moments where Jesus is is.
Teaching.
Defending himself,
sharing his identity and
I think, you know, if you're prone
to like the narrative things, the stories, if you the lessons,
I think maybe those these sections are going to be a little drier.
I think they take a little more work.
They sound confusing.
John has a way of kind of repeating himself as he quotes Jesus here.
And he's given him authority because he's the Son of Man.
Do not be astonished at this, for the hour is coming.
We've talked about that.
The idea that for John the cross and particularly
the resurrection are Jesus's moment.
And and all of his life is lived in awareness
at that moment is coming in that, that is his mission.
And yet it's not as though
when that happens, he will gain his authority and identity.
He already has that.
He is already Jesus.
He simply hasn't had that hour, that moment yet come.
And so he says here, the hour is coming
when even those in the grave will hear his voice and will come out.
So that again, this idea that death is not final
until it is a separation from God.
And even those who have died will have an opportunity to know life.
And then there is a part here, or I think we should spend a little time.
Michael,
those who have
done good to resurrection and those who have done evil
to the resurrection of condemnation and
language like that can be a little off putting to Presbyterian,
Reformed Christians who are worried about the idea of works
righteousness, that, you know, you would somehow be saved by what you had done.
I think, at least from our perspective,
it is worth saying that for John,
what one does is what one believes.
So it is not simply that these people would be resurrected
and they've done a lot of good, so they get eternal life.
Eternal life is always through Christ.
And if they've done good, they've shared in that goodness.
And I you know, John doesn't say it.
Maybe you could argue it.
I think the overhanging implication here
is that that's an extension of belief.
It's an extension of obedience and righteousness.
And and John intertwines all of that to together in a way that
reformed Christians have sometimes separated.
We have overdone the idea of a division between faith and works.
I don't think you find much of that division
in John, certainly not in a passage like this.
Yeah.
No, I, I think that would be importing it concern that John's not particularly
speaking to.
And I do also want to point out that the,
the teachings of Jesus tend to be less
interested in some of the
theological quibbles that the church has taken up.
And I think that this is a great example of it.
Clint, to your point,
the hours coming when all who are in their graves will hear the voice.
By the way, this is a significant concern for the early church.
We see this like in the book of Thessalonians, where the question about
what's going to happen to those believers who are either martyred,
you know, they've lost their life at the hands of, persecution.
But then also as that first generation of Christians
comes to the end of their own lives, the question of what comes next,
when we've been waiting and anticipating
the return of Christ, that this is a substantial concern.
And so what, you know, we might read past it was so important to them,
even those who are in their graves, they yet will have the ability
to hear his voice. Right.
So it's not just a matter of physical life which allows one
to experience resurrection power, the return of the ascended Christ.
Right now it's even those who are dead.
And then this frame, those who've done good resurrection of life,
those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation, the
the fact that we have this paired together here in John, I think, is important.
This reminds me, Clint, of like the separation of the sheep and goats, right?
Or the wheat and chaff.
I mean, Jesus has similar teachings and say there the book of Matthew.
What what I think is happening here in John, though, it's just
this idea that one's belief does have impact on one's
eternal place in God's economy and God's kingdom.
And I think that Jesus is making, the point here that not even death itself
can keep God from the ones who have entrusted their their belief,
and therefore their works would follow in that now,
I I'm clearly reading into that with lots of history and assumptions,
and you could argue that in different ways.
But I think when you come to a book like John,
what you have to remember is that this was written to a community
with the hope and intention of bringing good news to people,
asking real questions of the faith to recount the stories of Jesus
and the teachings of Jesus in such a way that the community would be built up.
Wood would understand their place in their role,
and I think a text like this could accomplish is that goal.
Because for people who are asking, what is death going to do?
As we consider Jesus's Messiah, his role, his salvific,
role in in God's kingdom?
Well, the answer is not even death itself can keep those
either those who did good or those who did evil, those who
whose belief was and whose witness and whose eyes saw the revelation of Christ,
or those whose eyes were closed, and those who didn't see that not even
death itself can hold those people from being reconnected in in Christ.
It's overstating it
a little, but I think we have to be careful
not to read all of these texts through the lens of things
like heaven and afterlife.
I think John has some of that in mind.
But when John uses these words life and death, he's also means
he also means the condition of our spiritual life.
And there is a connection of the condition of our spiritual life
and our eternal reality, or our life and death reality, our physical reality.
But but it's not simply physical for John to say eternal life.
And remember, he said that to the woman at the well,
he he doesn't mean you get to go to heaven and live forever,
in the sense that maybe the church later would think about it.
He means that the condition of your life is concerned
and consumed, and reflective of those things that are eternal, chief
among them God's covenant, God's justice, God's righteousness,
and and that God Himself, the eternal One, is seen in the character
and condition of one spirit, and that leads to life. Yes,
likely a life beyond death.
But again,
not simply death as the grave, death
as the opposite of what God wants to fill us with.
And so keep in mind that John uses these words life
and death to mean a multitude of things, and I think, express
a variety of realities and largely for him they are spiritual terms,
I would say more so,
or at least more frequently than they are physical terms.
They're both in there. I want to be clear about that.
But John loves
the language of our spiritual condition,
because John believes that believing in
Christ is the foundation of our spiritual condition,
or not, believing in Christ is the the detriment of our spiritual condition.
And I think you have to keep that in mind as you encounter these kind of words.
When the word that sticks out to me as we come to the end of the study today,
is this idea of those who have done evil,
that that evil word is the thing I want to explore.
For just a moment.
I remember the story where Jesus comes in
and addresses that evil in no uncertain terms.
It's it's right away.
In the beginning of this book, we spent so much time talking about his
coming into the temple and his throwing over the money changers tables.
And in that study, remember what we talked about?
The thing in John that is so clear is that Jesus is doing this
because the evil being done, the injustice being perpetrated,
is that people are creating roadblocks for people to see the revelation of God,
the thing that they're doing is they are not only rejecting
God's revelation in Christ, but they're getting in the way of other people
being able to see it, to avail themselves, to be exposed to that revelation.
People's right worship is being interrupted.
And I think it's really evil, really evil,
really easy for us, I think, to insert lots of things into those sections.
But if we're reading John closely,
this idea of the deeds that are done that are evil,
you know, it's not just what we think of as rank evil.
The stuff that people do that's bad.
I think John has more specific ideas in mind for what's evil.
I think what's evil is the Antichrist.
It's the antithesis to what Christ has come to do.
And you have that in, in spades in like first and second John,
where a lot of time is spent talking about the opposite of Christ
and the character of a person that stands in opposition to Christ.
So I think evil here has to be read in a very specific way as well,
that if Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of God,
then belief will will lead one to good, because Christ is good,
and that will ultimately lead to resurrection in life.
But to the one who either stands against or is unable to participate
in seeing the revelation of Christ, that one, to
whatever extent they are, they are missing what God is doing in Christ.
They're missing an opportunity for what Christ has come to do.
Because John chapter three, remember, God's mission
and plan is for the whole world.
The question is that how does the whole world respond to that revelation?
Yeah, at the risk of oversimplifying it, I think John clearly sees that
if it is of God, it is good, and if it is not, it is bad.
If it is of God, if it is of Christ, it leads to life.
And if it is not, then it is evil and leads to death.
And so when one turns away from the truth, when one refuses to believe,
when one does not do good, which by definition is that which reflects
God, one participates in death, one
lacks good and therefore lacks life.
And I, I think, you know, again, is it more nuanced than that?
Certainly Bible scholars could help us at lots of different levels.
But I think if you want to paint with a big brush, that's essentially
what you would find at the bottom of it.
Let's not get lost, right?
Remember here that all of this is happening in the midst of conversations
related to, person being healed, breaking of Sabbath
law, Jesus arguing with the Jews, now teaching a contrary kind of teaching.
Let's just remember that what Jesus is offering is a different way, Clint,
to the to the many ways that we're sort of argued, debated,
presented in the midst of first century, Israel.
And and what Jesus is offering is not another religious idea.
He's offering the revelation of God and and his point here.
If you boil it down, is that there's only one way
to be connected to the eternal Triune God, and that's through him,
and that's going to be made more explicit.
But this is the theological framework that all connects and whines and bends
throughout this entire book.
This is all intertwined.
And and we're going to see more of it as we go.
I think one of the distinctiveness of John, it more so than the other gospels,
is that John, as all the Gospels do, make the case that Jesus is the Christ.
John does that
more than the others in Jesus's own voice.
The others tell stories and have side conversations and such.
John puts that theological question more often than the others
in the mouth of Jesus, and I think that that really does give it a distinctive.
It also gives it a certain challenge from the reader's perspective.
So that continues on.
Actually, when we continue the study on Monday, where we're going
to get into some even more depths of this teaching.
So we hope you'll join us for that.
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with our next study on Monday at 2:00 central to be blessed.
Thanks everybody.