Four Witnesses

Jesus has just claimed the work of God Himself: to give life and to judge (John 5:21-22). Any man can make a claim. In a Jewish court, a man’s word about himself did not settle a case (Deuteronomy 19:15). So Jesus does not ask His hearers to take His word alone. He calls His witnesses.

John 5:30 — A judge who seeks another’s will

He begins where He began before. He tells them again that He acts by no independent initiative, and that His judging follows what the Father gives Him (John 5:30, 19). His judgment is just for one reason: He is not after His own will but the will of the One who sent Him.

Every human judge carries some private interest into the courtroom. Christ carries none. He came down to do the Father’s will, not His own (John 6:38). That is why the man in Christ can trust the verdict of the last day. The Judge will not be bribed, flattered, or moved by anything but righteousness (Acts 17:31).

John 5:31-35 — John, the lamp

Jesus grants the legal point: if He were the only one testifying about Himself, the testimony would not stand (John 5:31). He is not admitting He lies. He is meeting them on the ground of their own law. But there is Another bearing witness about Him, and Jesus is certain that witness holds (John 5:32).

First He reminds them of John the Baptist. They had sent men to him, and John had told the truth about Christ (John 5:33, 1:19-27). Jesus does not need a man’s endorsement, but He mentions John so that they might be saved (John 5:34). Even His arguments are mercy.

Jesus calls John a lamp, and He says they were glad to bask in its light for a season (John 5:35). A lamp is not the sun. Its light is borrowed (John 1:8-9). John’s ministry was already behind them, and they had liked the glow without following where it pointed. Plenty of men still do the same with a good preacher.

John 5:36 — The works

Jesus has a greater witness than John: the works the Father gave Him to finish (John 5:36). The lame man walking at Bethesda was not a publicity stunt. It was the Father’s own testimony that He sent the Son (John 5:8-9, 10:25, 37-38). And the work He came to finish would be finished (John 17:4, 19:30).

John 5:37-38 — The Father

The Father who sent Him has borne witness too (John 5:37). Yet Jesus tells them plainly that they have no firsthand knowledge of the Father at all, and that what He has spoken has found no home in them. The proof is simple: they refuse to trust the One He sent (John 5:38).

Notice what Jesus does here. These men were the most religious in Jerusalem. They would have said they knew God well. Jesus says they did not know Him. There is no knowing the Father apart from the Son (John 14:6-7) (Matthew 11:27).

John 5:39-40 — The Scriptures

Then the witness they handled every day. Jesus tells them they pore over the Scriptures expecting to find life there, yet the whole of those writings is a witness to Him (John 5:39). And still they will not come to Him to have life (John 5:40).

They had the right book and missed its point. The Bible is not a ladder of rules to climb into life. It is a witness pointing to a Person (Luke 24:27, 44). A man can memorize every page and die in his sins if he will not come to Christ.

And they would not come. Jesus does not say they could not find the way. He says they were unwilling. Man’s will, left to itself, refuses Christ every time (John 6:44) (Romans 3:10-11). Only the Father’s drawing turns a refusing heart into a coming one.

John 5:41-44 — Glory from one another

Jesus has no interest in men’s applause (John 5:41). But He sees through them, and He knows they do not actually love God (John 5:42). He arrived bearing the Father’s authority, and they turned Him away. A man who shows up on his own authority, they will gladly embrace (John 5:43).

Then He asks how faith could ever take root in men who trade praise among themselves and never go after the honor God alone gives (John 5:44). This is the root. They were not short on evidence. They were addicted to approval.

That addiction did not die in the first century. A man who needs the nod of his peers, his coworkers, or his online crowd will find faith in Christ costly, because Christ is not popular with any crowd that wants glory for itself (John 12:42-43) (Galatians 1:10).

John 5:45-47 — Moses

Last, Jesus turns their hero against them. He tells them He will not be the one accusing them before the Father. Their accuser is Moses, the very man they had set their hope on (John 5:45).

Jesus says that real faith in Moses would have led them straight to Him, since Moses had written about Him (John 5:46). Moses promised Israel a coming Prophet like himself, one the people would be bound to heed (Deuteronomy 18:15) (Acts 3:22). Men who would not trust Moses’ writings were never going to trust Jesus’ spoken word (John 5:47).

The whole Old Testament is on Christ’s side. The man who rejects Him does not get to keep Moses as a friend.