Clough John Lesson 26
Jesus Claims Equality with the Father – John 5:17-23
John 5, this is the second
What was this first basic charge against Jesus Christ by the authorities? That He appeared to demean the temple. In John 2 He said destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up, and He was haunted by that charge for years afterwards. That was the beginning of the animosity between Jesus and the authorities. And now the conclusion of the portion that we’ve studied so far in John 5 we’ve now seen that Jesus Christ is facing a second charge against Him. Not only has He desecrated the temple in the opinion of the people but now He has desecrated the Sabbath by working on the Sabbath. And so He has violated their laws; charge number two.
Now we come to His response to the second charge and before He gets through responding He’s going to be charged with a third charge, and so the battle increase and the hostility mounts between Christ and the authorities, showing once again that man is not neutral, he is religiously committed before he ever heard of the word Jesus, and there’s no such thing as a person who is open-minded, a person who is willing to view all facts in an unbiased way, and precisely for this reason, therefore, do we rely upon the Holy Spirit to open the mind as we present the factual data.
Bishop [can’t understand name], one of the great outstanding students in the 19th century said this of this particular answer that begins in verse 17: “Nowhere else in the Gospels do we find our Lord making such a formal systematic orderly regular statement of His own unity with the Father, His divine commission and authority, and the proofs of His Messiahship as we find in this discourse.” In other words, what we are about to enter is one of the most complicated passages on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in the entire New Testament. Very, very few places will be as clear as this passage on the relationship of the Father and the Son. It calls for attention, it calls for focusing in, laying aside the things which distract us and concentrate on the argument that Christ is about to give to His accusers. The argument is not easy to follow; it demands some effort, but the argument is well worth following because when you finish you’ll see what Jesus means when He calls Himself the Son of God. You’ll also see what He doesn’t mean.
John 5:17, He answered to the second charge, you have desecrated the Sabbath by working on the Sabbath, “But Jesus answered them, My Father works hitherto, and I work.” A short little sentence given to a very serious charge but a sentence which would create instantly a third charge against Him. What is Jesus point? Let’s think; the second charge involved desecration of the Sabbath…desecration of the Sabbath. Now if we’re going to examine the Sabbath we have to go back to where the Sabbath first started. Where did the Sabbath first begin. Turn to Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments passage. Here is the origin of the Sabbath; Exodus 20:8-11. By the way, the present application of the Sabbath principle, everyone is looking at the Sabbath, I want you to watch a modern labor problem, to show you how much human viewpoint Christians and labor movements have today. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. [9] Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; [10] But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.” And now why, [11] “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
First, in verses 8-10 we see the principle; the Biblical position is a six-day work week, not a five day one, and wherever men have tried to reduce the number of hours per week they work they always wind up having to take a second job to any way, and wind up working precisely as many hours as they did before. Obviously man cannot get away from a six-day work week and he never can. A six-day work week is godly, that is the godly pattern of labor and management, with all due respect to modern day union and management leaders, who do not have the authority of the Word of God. The Word of God gives us the authoritative pattern; it is given by the One who invented labor, Jesus Christ.
Now it says in this passage that set forth
the original Sabbath provision, in verse 11, “In six days God created the
heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is,” now Moses wrote
verse 11 and I presume that Moses knew very how to interpret his own book
called Genesis. And it’s precisely because
of verse 11’s authorship and Moses writing that we interpret the days of
Genesis 1 literally. They are not ages,
never were intended to be ages and cannot be ages because in this passage,
right here in verse 11, when God dictates from the top of
So this passage is a control of our interpretation of Genesis and tells us very clearly it is six literal days. So what, what does this have to do with it? It tells us that the Sabbath was established, modeled after creation, for six days God created and on the seventh day God rested. Now the crux of Jesus’ argument is going to be: and what kind of a rest did God rest on the seventh day.
We have to look at two passages in the New Testament, Matthew 25:34, we’re looking at two passages in the New Testament to show us how God rested; if we can tell this then we can tell how God continues to work on His own Sabbath. Either God works or He doesn’t; how, then, can it be said that God rests and then at the same time say that God works? In Matthew 25:34 it says, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” So this passage teaches us that when the end of those six days was reached in Genesis that the basic outlines of all history had already been established. It says, “the kingdom was prepared from the foundation of the world,” and it was not necessary for God to keep founding the kingdom and keep founding the kingdom and keep founding the kingdom and keep founding the kingdom all down through history because it says it was founded from the creation of the world.
Similarly, Hebrews 4:3, a central passage on God’s rest, “For we who have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in My wrath, if they shall enter into My rest; although…” the last part of verse 3 is the critical point of Hebrews 4, “although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.” So how does God rest? It appears that from the end of that sixth day of creation God had established the basic framework for history and from that point on it would just be a matter of filling in details on a day by day basis within that framework, such a, four illustrations:
One illustration is the problem of physical death; physical death wasn’t there at the end of the six days because creation was perfect, but when the curse came in, what did the curse do? It dismantled creation back down to the first day’s condition, and sin always has that effect. So within the first six days there was given enough flexibility to tolerate that curse that would then be added to the system. The curse did not change the order of creation, just worked within the order of creation.
Second illustration: the flood. The flood came and destroyed the surface of this planet; it disrupted this planet geophysically in a very severe way. In 2 Peter 3:5-6 tells us that it did so by mechanisms that were built into the oceans and the continents from the end of the six days. So you have a second illustration of things that were finished from the end of that period of time.
A third illustration: the coming fiery dismantling of the surface of the planet, accompanying the second return of the Lord Jesus Christ; this is due to built in mechanisms that are operating right now in the crust of the earth, taught in 2 Peter 3:5-6.
Finally, a fourth illustration of the fact that subsequent events in history still operate within the old original framework is our resurrection body. Your resurrection body will look like you do, it’s not going to be utterly different, it’s not going to be something with horns on it, it’s going to be something that has human form and where did human form come from? Original creation.
So from these examples plus many more we could cite we see that God had founded the overall framework for history by the end of the six days. So we say then, what did God do? God rested from His creative work… rest from creative work, but God did not rest from His sustaining work. No rest from His sustaining work. Two kinds of work; one God rested from, one He did not rest from. God continues to sustain His creation and two particular functions of this sustaining, the giving of life and the judging of His creation. The moral government, providence if you will, all those words, that’s what we’re talking about by God’s continuing work.
Let’s follow the argument so far because now we come to the final step. Jesus has been just charged with violation of the Sabbath. On that Sabbath no one was to do any work. However we know that the origin of the Sabbath is patterned after God’s rest, and as we look back at God’s rest we find that God does not rest in one sense, in that He sustains His creation. So now with that in mind let’s look at John 5:17.
“Jesus answered them and said, My Father is working hitherto, and I am working,” present tense, My Father continually is working. What does He mean by that? My Father continually upholds the creation, and He’s busy upholding it on the Sabbath day. That’s what Jesus is saying, do you think God goes to sleep at sundown? God sustains His creation all through the Sabbath, and so He says “My Father is working hitherto,” My Father is working on the day of the Sabbath, He always has, up until this point My Father has always been working on the Sabbath. And then He adds those little, those few three words that really pack the people listening to the argument, “and I work.” “…and I work,” do you see what He’s just said. What is the work that Jesus had done on the Sabbath; it wasn’t carrying a cushion around. What was it? It was healing someone. What is that? The work of God sustaining His creation. My Father is working and I am working. Jesus’ argument is very simple against the second charge; Jesus is arguing I have a right to work on the Sabbath because the work that I do on the Sabbath that you charge Me with is precisely the work that God does on the Sabbath, namely He upholds creation. And if it’s all right for the Father to uphold creation on the Sabbath it’s all right for Me to uphold creation on the Sabbath.
Now that’s jumping from the frying pan into the fire if there ever was something because before He had just been accused of arguing that He violated something on the Sabbath; not to defend Himself He says I have a right to violate the Law on the Sabbath because I’m doing God’s work. And it didn’t mean in the sense of a minister doing God’s work, it meant literally doing God’s work, doing God’s work to sustain the creation. So now He’s open to the third charge and the Jews catch on very, very quickly, verse 18.
John 5:18, “Therefore the Jews were seeking the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.” Now there is your text; next time some idiot comes to you and says well Jesus never claimed to be God… strange thing, the Jews who knew a lot more than you do about this particular issue caught it very quickly and verse 18 is the proof that Jesus did claim to be God. Jesus very definitely did claim to be God and He did so by clearly saying I work God’s work; I sustain creation on the Sabbath, so does He.
Now, the Jews argue that in so doing He had made Himself equal with God, but like John always treats us, there is a yes and there’s a no about this particular charge. There’s one sense in which they’re right, Jesus did make Himself with equal with God, but there’s one sense that they’re wrong, Jesus did not make Himself equal with God. And the subsequent few verses are Jesus ironing out what is true about their charge and what is wrong about their charge. Something is right and something is wrong about the same charge and it all hinges on the word “equal.” What does it mean, “make Himself equal with God?”
Now there’s a way in which Jesus did claim that He was equal with God, namely He claimed that He was doing the kind of work that only God Himself could do, sustain the creation. And in that, yes He did claim to make Himself equal with God. I want you to notice this because this again is a proof text for you, use it. There’s no way a critic can get around this proof text. You can to everybody that wants to demean the deity of Jesus Christ but no one is going to… because if you deny that He’s done so you’ve denied His answer to the charge. The whole logic of the argument hinges on this equality. The whole logic of the context argues He is. So yes, he is making Himself equal with God in that Jesus claims to do work that only God can do. And all men are not doing this work and therefore the Sabbath law doesn’t apply to this kind of work because this is God’s sustaining work, sustaining His creation. So yes, it is true, Jesus is making Himself equal with God. But it’s also true He’s not making Himself equal with God in the bad sense of the word and here’s what I mean by the bad sense of the word and He corrects this, this false concept, and everybody looks at verse 20, 21, 22 and they say ha-ha, see, Jesus is denying that He ever intended to teach that He was equal with God. Yes He did, it’s HOW he is equal with God, that’s the point, not whether He is equal with God but how is He equal with God.
What is the wrong way of taking the word “equal?” Let’s take the figure of a father-son in an apprentice situation. Take Joseph, a carpenter, Jesus, his son; the father goes out in his shop and he works with his hand tools and he builds things in his shop. A little boy, as he grows up, his father takes him into his shop to teach him a trade. And so the little boy becomes an apprentice to his father, and so as he gets up he helps his father hold the lumber, and then the father teaches him how to use a few of the hand tools, and then the father teaches him the more sophisticated kind of cuts and joints and the details of workmanship. Now all during that time the son is an apprentice to the father. And there was an expression in the ancient world that when the son rebelled against his father in the shop, well, I’m not going to do this, I know how to do it, the expression would be raised, he made himself equal with his father. In that sense it’s a bad sense, making himself equal with his father means humph, that concept, the concept that he will do his will independently of the father’s will, that sense.
So now faced with the end of verse 18, “making Himself equal with God,” has two ways you can take it. He made Himself equal with God in that He does the work that only God can do and Jesus says, yes, I meant to teach that. But if you mean that I am going to act independently of My Father and do whatever I please, you’re wrong. And so therefore the next few verses we’ll discuss, verses 19, 20, on down to the end of verse 23, all have to do with the denial of that false form of equality.
Now with his usual efficiency the Lord Jesus Christ, by the time He gets through denying the falsity of the false part of the charge, winds up affirming the truthfulness of the true part of the charge. So you might say, doesn’t Jesus say hey, yeah, I meant to say I was equal. He’s going to do that but He’s going to do it at the same time He’s saying yes, I did not mean that I was equal in the bad sense of the word. So Jesus defends Himself that He doesn’t mean to imply that He’s going in this direction, the Father is going in this direction and both of them are equal and opposite. He’s trying to deny that, but when He shows this He’s going to wind up saying I am equal with My Father in the other good sense, I do the works that only My Father can do.
Let’s watch the argument and see how it develops. John 5:19, “Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do: for what things soever He does,” that is the Father, “these also doeth the Son likewise.” Now how does this fit? Verse 19 starts off “Truly, truly,” that’s the signal in John for a very important dogmatic statement that’s coming up, a very important statement. He said, “I say unto you that the Son can do nothing of Himself,” “He can do nothing of Himself.” That means that the Son does not initiate His own plans but like the child in his father’s shop he follows his father’s will in teaching his son the trade, the skill. He doesn’t head off and use the tools the way he wants to, cut the wood the way he wants to, put it together the way he wants to. He follows his father’s will; in this case Jesus would say I do what My Father teaches Me. And this is why He says what he sees the father doing, just like the child in the craftsman shop, whatever he sees his daddy do, that he does; he mimics his father. And so Jesus says it’s the same principle here, just as the son in an apprentice situation sees what his daddy is doing and he does it, so I see what My Father is doing and I do it. In this case, instead of building furniture in the carpentry shop we happen to be sustaining the universe, a slightly different order of events but nevertheless the principle is the same. Whatever I see the Father do I also do.
Now we have to understand the word “Son”
and the word “Father.” Let’s get some
background on this word, “the Son of God.”
Where did all this get started in history? What is the background behind the Son? Without going into a big detailed analysis,
let’s go back to the Old Testament where this first comes to clear expression;
it’s there all the way from the beginning but for clear expression turn back to
2 Samuel 7. This is the famous chapter
of the covenant with David the king. And
in 2 Samuel
Another passage parallel with this one is Psalm 2:1, we want to get the flavor of how this word is used and then we’ll see that when Jesus claims to be the Son of God He has a lot on His mind most Christians don’t think about. “Why do the heathen rage, and the peoples imagine vainly? [2] The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against His Meshach,” or “His anointed one,” or translated in the Greek, Christos, “His Christ.” So when you sing this in Handel, he translates as Christ I believe, against the Lord and against His Christ. So this passage is talking about the anointed king or the Christ of the Old Testament. And notice what it says down further, verse 7, here’s the king, the anointed, the Christ speaking, “I will declare the decree: The LORD has said unto Me, Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee.” “This day have I begotten Thee.” What day? The day that the king received his crown was the day that he would be begotten, according to this passage. Why? Because in the ancient world you have the case of God adopting the human king, he was adopted on the day of his coronation. He was adopted into a particular relationship with the father so that as went the king, so went the nation. And so at that point, “This day have I begotten Thee,” He says I declared the decree, “the LORD said unto Me, Thou art My son; today have I begotten you,” today have I adopted you into a relationship. Now what does verse 8 say, “Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession. [9] Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Conquest, subduing the earth, and the King, the Son, has the right to ask His Father this.
So the word “Son” came out of ancient history of the Old Testament to refer to the reign of the human king; that human king and his relationship of reigning for God over creation was the first case of the son. He became “son” when he became king. Now as time went on in the progress of revelation it became obvious there wasn’t any qualified king to sit on the throne. David failed, Solomon failed, Rehoboam failed, Jeroboam failed, Asaph failed, all the kings failed. And out of this the Holy Spirit began to teach people that there has to be an ideal king, but no man in the present era of history can fill his shoes, but there must be some day an ideal king. So there were two Psalms written about the ideal Son of God, the ideal king.
One is Psalm 45, the other is Psalm 110 but let’s turn to Psalm 45. Here’s one of the complex themes but you must follow it, it demands attention, yes, but God treats us as mature people. Some of these advanced themes we touch on in the pulpit are going to be difficult for some of you because some of you have little background or very poor background in Scriptures. That’s not my fault and maybe to some degree it’s not your fault but the point is that we can’t penalize the other people that are interested in training. I was just talking to someone before the service who was saying they walked in here right in the middle of Hebrews and that was the first time they’d been in here and we were talking about believer priests and Melchizedek and angels and so on, it just weird, and so the point was that this person couldn’t take it that point, so they started where everybody else starts, just taking what you can. And the basics is the place to start taking in and then finally you develop the capacity. See, your capacity to love God is proportional to your capacity to understand the Word of God. These people that go around, “Honk if you love Jesus” don’t have the foggiest notion of what loving Jesus means. You cannot love someone unless you first know them and you cannot know Jesus Christ unless you understand Scripture because that’s the only place you’re ever going to meet the incarnate Word. Some people believe they have their personal encounters; we do not. We accept that only do you meet Christ in the pages of the historic Scripture and nowhere else. You do not meet Him in the feelings of your own heart, you meet Him only here.
So as we concentrate on Psalm 45 and Psalm 110, remember yes these are difficult passages and yes, they demand some background. So this should be motivation to gain that background by concentrated study on a daily basis of the Word of God. Now this Psalm looks forward in time to the ideal king and in Psalm 45:6 that ideal king is spoken of: “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of Thy kingdom is a right scepter.” Now that sounds like it’s easy to follow until you hit verse 7 and that’s when the mud really hits the fan. [7] Thou lovest righteousness, and hateth wickedness, therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” Now what is that talking about?
The speaker of the Psalm is talking to God but then he says… and notice he’s talking to God in terms of kingship, verse 6, “thy scepter,” so the God he’s talking to in verse 6 is the King, he says God and your throne and your scepter. But then he says God, your God, and he goes on. So he’s talking to the king, addressing the king as God, but insists that the King who is God has a God. God, thy God, and this is the Trinity showing up in the pages of the Old Testament, the Father and the Son because as these men through the Holy Spirit began to think, how, how Lord is this world going to be ruled, they came, as the Holy Spirit unraveled their thinking they came to realize there’s got to be an ideal perfect king, but who would be the ideal perfect king except God Himself. So you have the figure of the ideal king merge with the figure of God Himself, here and in Psalm 110.
Turn to Psalm 110. Here again is the same kind of language and it’s in the same kind of passage, it deals with the king again. What does Psalm 110:1 say, “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” “The LORD said unto my Lord,” now who’s the author of the Psalm? David. The word “Lord,” the second word, is Adonai, “The LORD said to my Lord,” if you have the King James you’ll notice it’s Jehovah, so Jehovah says to Adonai who is the Lord of David, now the question is, did David have any human authority higher than himself when he was kind of Israel? He did not, no human authority higher than himself, so the Adonai in that chain of command must be God Himself, “The LORD said to my Lord,” but Jehovah is God, so again we’ve got the same phenomenon as in Psalm 45, we’ve got two Gods; we’ve got the God who is somehow king and yet we’ve got the God who is over Him. In this case Jehovah is over the Adonai and notice what it says, Jehovah says to Adonai, and Adonai is the same mysterious king figure, “Sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” Isn’t that describing royalty and kingship? You bet! So Psalm 45 and Psalm 110 carry forward the expanding body of revelation to consideration of this ideal king.
Now what Jesus does is come into history,
pick up the Old Testament terms, Son of God, and apply them to Himself, and He
does so to reveal something. I, Jesus
says, am the ideal King. And you know if
you study perceptively Psalm 45 and 110 what that means? It means I’m God, that’s what it means, but
it means I’m also King, and I’m also David’s son, so in effect the Son of God
means I am God and I am man. I am man
because I am in David’s royalty but I am God because I am perfect, I am the
God-man in one person without confusion forever, in the words of
“Son” denotes kingship and it doesn’t denote just deity; it denotes both deity and humanity united in one King who rules the universe. So when Christ claims to be the Son He’s not just talking about the Trinity, He’s talking about the Son in the sense that I am also God’s ordained King over all creation; I perfectly fulfill the destiny for which man was made, that is to subdue the earth. So Jesus Christ takes the word “Son” upon Himself.
We’re still in the Old Testament so on the way back to the New Testament let’s stop in the book of Amos; we want to get some information out of there that also will be useful in John 5. Amos 3:7 because here is another theme besides this business of the Son. Verse 7 is certain language that Jesus will use, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He reveals His secret unto His servants, the prophets.” “He reveals His secrets to” whom? “His servants the prophets,” just remember that. Now turn to John 5 and we’re ready to finish the passage.
So Jesus starts out in verse 19 amplifying His answer of verse 17. “The Son can do nothing of Himself,” and in this case when Jesus talks about Son in just the limited Old Testament sense I gave you, “king,” God-man, He’s just done something else with it. He said “I am God.” He is not using the Son as a metaphor, He means it literally, I am the Son of God. So He says, “The Son can do nothing of Himself,” just like the ideal king doesn’t do anything of himself but whatever the father does, “but what he sees the Father do; for whatsoever things he does, these doeth the Son likewise.” Now notice the balanced statement in verse 19, let’s take that apart; 19a, 19b, they are very carefully balanced. In the first clause, the Son can only do what the Father does. Jesus protects against the false equality. This is protection against the false equality, that is where He and the Father are joint partners and one’s going this way and one’s going that way, it’s a false concept, they’re kind of equal and opposite, or they’re independent of each other, just kind of like two gods, Zeus and Apollo, polytheism. Now that protects against that because he says that’s not the concept of equality I’m talking about. I can do nothing except what the Father does, the initiative lies with Him and I do what He does.
But now John 5:19b, “…whatever things the Father does do, I do,” and that’s the other side and that is the assertion of the true equality, that whatever things the Father does, that is He sustains the universe, I also sustain the universe. So there’s two balanced statements. Now do you see why C. S. Lewis wrote in his writings that anyone who says that makes the claim that Jesus made is either an imposter or a man on the level who says he’s a poached egg, it’s just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, how any man could walk the face of the earth and say the Father is holding up the universe and I am too, and not be who He claimed to be. That’s absurd. Jesus doesn’t allow you the option to call Him a good man. I believe Jesus is a good man, taught a lot of good things Jesus did, but I just can’t buy this God bit. What do you do about this passage then? Does a good man go around saying he holds up the universe? Well obviously Jesus’ claims don’t give us much room to react, we either have to blaspheme and call Him a blasphemer Himself or we have to submit to what He says.
Let’s go on, John
Now John 5:21, “For as the Father raises up the dead, and quickens them; even so the Son quickens whom he will. [22] For the Father judges no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: [23] That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father which hath sent him.” Now what’s this all about? All right, in verse 20 He talks about the works. Again let’s make sure we understand Jesus’ argument; the true and the false equality. He says “yes” to the true equality, I do God’s kind of works. False equality, no, I do only the Father’s will. So He’s carefully teaching where He’s equal and where He’s not equal. But now watch, since He’s talked about the works, obviously the passage is going to give us an illustration of what these works are. So that’s what these verses are talking about, the works.
“For
as the Father raises up the dead, and quickens them;” He gives life to His
creation, “even so the Son quickens whom He will.” Now at the end of verse 21 you’ll notice
“whom He will.” “He will,” you mean, it’s not left to human initiative who will
and who will not receive eternal life. That appears to be what it says, the Son
only quickens whom He wills. Well who is it the Son wills; you mean some
He wills to quicken and some men He does not will to quicken. That’s right and it’s explained in the next
verse, verse 22. “For the Father judges
no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son,” now here He’s doing a
work for the Father and the Father is no longer doing because “hath committed”
is perfect tense, a point in time, results continue into the present and on
into the future, that’s the perfect tense in the Greek. “He has committed, in time past with results
which continue, all judgment unto the Son.”
So he is saying that the Son makes alive whom He will because He has
invested Jesus Christ as the decider, Jesus decides who will be regenerated and
who will not be. That is His
decision. Now you can imagine how this
one went over with these people who just made the accusation that He healed
somebody on the Sabbath; they’re about ready to drop their teeth after all this
is said; they thought that was bad, now He’s telling them that the Great White
Throne judgment is going to be done by Him.
“That all men,” now here in verse 23 is the solution to the “He will” of
verse 21. Who does Jesus regenerate and
who does He refuse to regenerate. He has
the power of choice given to Him in verse 22.
Verse 23 is the answer. “That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father” so what has Jesus said? Here’s how I choose, whoever honors Me like you honor God, I’ll regenerate and if you don’t honor Me like you honor God you’re not going to get regenerated. How do you suppose that set with the people that were upset before about the Sabbath healing. See what it says? I don’t think some of you see the force of what He’s saying here in verse 23. “All men should honor the Son as they honor the Father,” now how do you honor the Father? You worship Him, in a monotheistic society you worship Him and He becomes the ground of everything you do….everything you do, including the Sabbath law. And what Jesus is now saying, I want that kind of devotion. I want the same kind of devotion that you build the temples to, I want the same kind of devotion that you keep the Sabbath for, I want the same kind of devotion that you tithe for, to those people of that time. I want the same kind of devotion that you’re willing to die for and if you don’t have that, I’m not interested because you’re not honoring Me. And if you don’t honor Me you don’t honor My Father.
This is the basis of choice and Jesus puts us back again at the end of verse 23 to where John began, “He that receiveth him receive the authority to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.”
Shall we bow for a word of prayer.