Clough John Lesson 27

Doctrine of Christology – John 5:24-30

John 5 is one of the central passages on Christology in the New Testament. Christology is the doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ and it can be analyzed as having every one of the twenty basic doctrines that we are studying. When we get through with the family training program in a year or two we will have everyone trained in the twenty basic doctrines of Scripture. Now the doctrine of Christology takes all of these twenty basic doctrines and ties them together in one Person. For example, the doctrine of God. Jesus Christ is God and He most intimately reveals God’s character. Jesus Christ is THE perfect revelation of God’s nature and for this reason He becomes the perfect source of the doctrine of divine essence. Take the doctrine of man; Jesus Christ is the perfect man as we will see from the particularly study before us tonight and not only is He the perfect man but He leads man to man’s destined goal, and that is to subdue all nature. The doctrine of nature is seen in the Lord Jesus Christ in that Jesus Christ rules over nature. He rules it perfectly. He has command over it, the waves and so on of the Sea of Galilee.

The doctrine of suffering, Jesus Christ is connected with the doctrine of suffering because no creature on the face of the earth has ever suffered as much as the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, when He died on the cross suffered more than you will ever suffer, regardless of how you die, regardless of what kind of sickness you may acquire, regardless of any kind of suffering you will never come close to the suffering that the Lord Jesus Christ experienced on the cross.

In the doctrine of judgment/salvation Jesus Christ is both judge and Savior and combines in His own person those two great doctrines and those two acts. The doctrine of substitutionary blood atonement, illustrated by propitiation, redemption and reconciliation, is the doctrine that Jesus Christ is most intimately connected with because those doctrines were the doctrines that describe His work on the cross, His substitutionary blood atonement for the sins of all men.

The doctrine of election, Jesus Christ is connected with the doctrine of election because the human race or those members of the human race are called the elect are elect in Him, Ephesians 1. Jesus Christ is the elect head of all the creation. Jesus Christ is connected with the doctrine of justification because He is the only creature justified on the basis of works. All other creatures in their humanity, all other creatures are justified on the basis of Christ’s justification, so He is the leader in the field of justification.

In the area of faith, Jesus Christ perfectly applied the faith technique. Not once did Christ ever fail; not once did Christ doubt the Father, and therefore He is the perfect model of the faith technique. Jesus Christ illustrates the doctrine of revelations because Jesus Christ is the One who is the content and the center of all revelation. The Father is not the center of revelation as we’ll see tonight, nor is the Holy Spirit the center of revelation as we will also see tonight, but it is only the Son who is the head or who is the center of revelation. God the Holy Spirit does not glorify God the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit, whenever He works in history, will always glorify Jesus Christ. Christ will be the attention, not the Holy Spirit.

Then Jesus Christ is connected with the doctrine of inspiration; the inspiration of Scripture because Jesus Christ is the author of Scripture. Jesus Christ is the One who speaks the New Testament into existence through His apostles; Jesus Christ is the One who, as the angel of the Lord, spoke the Old Testament into existence. Jesus Christ, then, is the author of the inspiration. The canonicity, Jesus Christ planned the canon; Jesus Christ preserved the canon, so therefore Jesus Christ is also the center of the doctrine of canonicity.

In the field of sanctification Jesus Christ is the One who in His humanity was perfectly sanctified, He is the perfect model, Jesus Christ was perfectly loyal to the Father in all things and so He becomes the model. And not only is He the model of sanctification but He is the high priest who by His prayers accelerates our sanctification, taught in Romans 8. In the doctrine of perseverance Jesus Christ never erred from His mission. He kept going and going and going and going and as high priest keeps us going and going and going and going. Jesus Christ in the area of prayer is the model and the basis of prayer. He exemplifies in His prayers the perfect prayer, John 17, and He also taught the disciples prayer in Matthew 6, often called in a mistaken way the Lord’s Prayer but it really isn’t.

Jesus Christ, then, is the model in His personal prayer life, but also in our prayers we depend upon His intermediate step, therefore our prayers are offered to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Prayers are not made to Jesus, they are made to the Father. And then in the area of the Church, Jesus Christ’s body is the Church, and by the way, some speak of Christ as the spiritual body of Christ; no need to, we are the body of Christ, because the physical bodies that we have are an extrapolation of Jesus Christ’s body. The proof of it is that whenever you touch the physical body of a Christian by way of persecution you are touching the body of Christ, and that’s how He takes it. You cannot physically assault a Christian without personally assaulting the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Paul was asked on the Damascus Road, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me, and it included touching Christians physically. So we are just the body of Christ, no need to qualify it by the word spiritual. And then the doctrine of the angelic conflict, the fact that there in history vast powers unseen by man, oh they’re seen occasionally but most of the time they’re not recognized when they are seen, the angelic conflict, Jesus Christ is the commander of the elect angels and the winner in the angelic conflict. Finally, in the area of eschatology Jesus Christ’s story is told in completion when history is completed. Jesus is the final judge of history.

Now we’ve just given a brief, brief, very brief survey of 20 doctrines and shown how they all tie in to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is why we say over and over and over and over again that you cannot love Jesus unless you love doctrine, because there’s no way of understanding the character and content of Jesus Christ unless you understand the content of His message. It is a false thing to say on the one hand, well, we don’t go in for this doctrine business, but we’ll go in we’ll love Jesus. It’s impossible because doctrine is the word of Christ and you cannot turn down His Word and then turn around and say you love Him.

John 5, continuing this section that deals with Christ’s nature and His link with the Father. Remember this message started in verse 17 when Christ attempted to defend Himself from the charge that He had violated the Sabbath. “But Jesus answered them, My Father works so far, and I work.” Now only God worked on the Sabbath in the sense that He was sustaining the universe, and when Jesus Christ claimed to be working also in like fashion as the Father, He too then claims to be sustaining the universe. The Jews caught on very quickly, even if modern critics can’t, and the end of verse 18 obviously says Jesus Christ was making Himself equal with God. Now it’s obvious in this passage that Christ was claiming to be God. The next time you encounter some sidewalk idiot that says to you that nowhere in the Bible does Jesus ever claim to be God, just take him to John 5:18. Now the Jews knew what they were doing, that’s why they were picking up rocks and Jesus Christ definitely claimed to be God on many occasions. The problem is, of course, you have to read and this is beyond some people so obviously they come up with these asinine remarks.

Now at the end of this verse and verse 19 when He had made this statement, the Jews had reacted, He went on to clarify what kind of equality He was claiming and there were two things about this equality: Something good and something bad; something true, something false. What ws good about the equality was the fact that yes, He was claiming that He was doing works that only God could do in that He was equal with the Father, in that they were correct. But where Christ was very, very cautious in qualifying this word “equality,” He wanted to get away from what would tend to polytheism. He was afraid that what they were saying, patterned after the Jewish apprenticeship, when a son would be in apprenticeship with his father, he may be working in the shop for a while and he finally figures he doesn’t have to pay any attention to his father, his father doesn’t know anything as all children pass through that stage somewhere along the line, and he decides that he is going to break out of the picture and become equal with his father. In other words, he’s going to proceed in the craft whether it’s carpentry or house building or something, he’s going to proceed in that craft making his own decisions. And that is the way being equal with the father, that’s the connotation it would carry. Now Jesus does not want that connotation. He does not want to be conceived as the Father here, the Son here, the Father has His plan and the Son has His plan because the moment you have that kind of equality you’ve got polytheism; that is the belief in many gods. And that violates a cardinal doctrine of Scripture.

So Christ is very cautious to say I work within My Father’s will; I work within it, and I can do nothing of Myself except the Father tell me. So He was trying to teach submission to the moral will of the Father but the way He defends it, keep in mind, the way He avoids this bad thing just enforces the good thing. When He defends Himself He admits that He is actually doing things that God alone can do. And this is an important point that leads, finally as we saw last time, to verse 23. What a very, very inflammatory statement that “all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father, who has sent Him.” Here Christ claims to be the recipient of worship in the same way as the Father. And here again Christ is claiming to be God; here again He makes that statement and here again if you do not accept the Bible you are going to have to conclude that Jesus Christ is insane. There is one conclusion that is not possible and that is that Jesus was a good moral teacher. Every once in a while we have groups, social groups get together, certain clubs, fraternities and so on, and they talk about the brotherhood of man and we accept Buddha and Confucius and Jesus, they’re all good people. Those kinds of brother hoods that are grounded on that kind of thing are satanic because they’re an attempt to destroy the uniqueness of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So watch out when you get around those kinds of groups.

John 5:24, “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.” In verses 24-25 Jesus Christ is clarifying what those works are that He does. He’s claimed that He’s doing works that only God can do. Now in these two verses He’s going to tell us some of those works that He is doing on the Sabbath day that only God can do. He prefaces His remark with “Verily, verily,” or “truly, truly,” this is a signal always that Christ has something extremely important to say and He wants people to pay attention. “Truly, truly I say to you, He that hears My word and believes,” now in the King James they’ve made a mistake here and it misses the whole point.

All through John there’s a Greek word to believe, pisteuo, now whenever that word occurs for salvation it is always followed very carefully in the Greek by this preposition, eis, and it’s usually translated by the word “on” or “into.” It’s a dynamic preposition which means it conveys a sense of motion and it is the Apostle John’s way of conceiving of Christ as One to whom we move by faith; it is not just passively believing. There’s a dynamic activity conveyed by eis, pisteuo eis or “believe into Christ.” Now that is consistently followed in this Gospel. John is a fanatic about the precision of his Greek and now in this verse you’ll notice “Him that sent Me,” can’t be the Son, “Him that sent Me” is the Father. Now the word “believe” when it is used with the Father does not have eis and should not be translated “believeth on Him that sent me.” That’s wrong. The word “Father,” or the pronoun, autou, is in the dative, and that should be translated, “believes with respect to the Father.”

Now why do we make such a big moral rigmarole out of a little preposition? Because here you have demonstrated for you the precision of New Testament authors when they deal with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are always precise, they are not sloppy people when it comes to describing God’s character. And this is a lesson we all ought to follow; when is work not work? When it’s the Lord’s work. And very often in Christian groups we have sloppiness that is occurring and it is a detriment to the character of our God. One of the things I enjoy about sitting in my office Sunday evenings and listening to [?] work the choir over and every once in a while we have a few choir members that come vibrating to me, oh, he was so hard, and I don’t pay any attention to them because his object is to produce quality. And he’ll produce quality before he’ll produce anything and that’s a unique thing in Christian circles and I can understand why some believers can’t understand it. But this is the way it ought to be.

And here we have the authors of the New Testament in the very use of language extremely precise, extremely so, and very consistently. Now what’s the point of John. He records something that Christ is saying; notice how this fits together, “He that hears,” let’s write it out so we can see it, “He that hears,” present tense, “My voice,” that’s the Son, and it’s used parallel with “He that believes with reference to the Father.” Now since those two are in parallel, put the two together and what do you have taught by those two sentences? Just think a moment; what has Christ just said? He’s said another one of His bombshells, and if people would just look carefully at those words, it take a while to click but let’s see if we can go through the process. He is saying that I am teaching, now I appear just to be like a normal Jewish rabbi, and “He that hears My words,” and remember in the Old Testament and to a degree in the New Testament the word “hear” means to obey… you know when a kid disobeys, did you hear me! Now you obviously are not asking whether he’s have eardrum problems, you’re asking why it is that he doesn’t obey, why there hasn’t been a response, so you ask “did you hear me?” Well, that’s the same way the word “hear” is used in the New Testament. So this isn’t talking about just hearing, it’s talking about hearing and responding to. So “He that hears My voice,” that is He who submits to what I am teaching, “is believing with respect to the Father.” And what this is saying is that “My voice” is the Father’s voice; that’s how close the Father and the Son are, so close that when Christ says what I teach is what the Father teaches and when you submit to My word you’ve believed with respect to the Father. That’s how close the Father and the Son are. And this is why the Church has been very, very cautious down through history to guard, to protect the doctrine of the Trinity.

Occasionally you will have people knock on your door with some literature or something and they can’t understand the Trinity, like one of the ladies who said to me I don’t understand why God made it so difficult to understand if the Trinity is true. I just responded well lady, don’t you think that God is a little complicated. You’re not going to understand His character in a five minute lesson; God’s character is very, very detailed, but there are several things that we have to be very careful about and that is that we must no matter what we do or how we say it, we have got to protect the deity of Christ. Why? Why do we have to preserve this identity that He has here? Because our salvation presupposes that Christ is a divine Savior, not just a human sacrifice for sin but a divine Savior. And Athanasius, who was instrumental in the history of the Church to insist that this point be made, got up in a church conference and he said this, and in one sentence this capsulizes hours and hours of theological discussion. Said Athanasius: if Jesus Christ is not God then we are not saved. If Jesus Christ is not God then we are not saved because then our personal relationship is with something less than God Himself. It’s as simple as that and that’s why every heresy against the Christian faith always attacks the person of Christ, regardless of the cult, the thing that unifies all of the cult against orthodox Christianity is their assault on the character of Christ. In this they are all one voice.

So Jesus says, “He that hears My voice,” or “My word, and believes,” the two are synonymous, “on Him that sent Me, has everlasting life, and will not come into condemnation but has passed from death into life.” The first verb, “has” is present, the second verb, “is not coming” is present, and the third verb, “passed” is perfect tense, has passed in time past with results which continue, there’s your perfect tense. So your modus then, in verse 24, that Christ has said when you trust in Him you occupy a position, that is positional truth. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have done certain things for you. Now you may go through life and never know most of these; it doesn’t make any difference, they are still valid if you have trusted in Christ. You may be the kind of person that becomes a Christian, you don’t know this and because you don’t know how precious these things are, you have no respect for them, you will become a sucker for these deeper life groups and all the rest that look for some added little kick or thrill to salvation. The reason people look around for this kind of thing is because they don’t understand. God the Father has personally predestinated, He has foreknown, He has called, He has justified and He has glorified. All those are listed in Romans 8:29 so you have this entire program of the Father, plus the fact he disciplines, Hebrews 12. Now those are at least six things that you can give thanks for, what God the Father has done; regardless of whether you’re up or whether you’re down, whether things are gone bad or things are gone good, it doesn’t make any difference, these are things that remain the same; these are stable. This is the place where your character can stabilize because if your soul has these truths in it and they become a real part of your soul your character will gain stability, you won’t be up and down, up and down, up and down because of these things.

Now God the Son does several things. God the Son rose from the dead for us, He died for our sins, He lived a perfect life securing righteousness, and He makes intercession for us, He prays for us and so on, He is at the Father’s right hand, He is the leader of the body of Christ. These are things that we have by virtue of the Son. The Holy Spirit regenerates, indwells, baptizes, seals and gives one spiritual gift at least. Now those are things you can be thankful for. Now one of these, which is regeneration, is what gives us eternal life. What did we say John said eternal life was? It is the life that is suitable for the eternal state. So we actually possess, at the time we become Christians, something in our souls that will be there forever and ever and ever, its absolutely indestructible, can never be destroyed or removed. “Who has,” Jesus says, “eternal life, and has passed,” perfect tense, “from death into life.”

Now in John 5:25 he goes on; the reason He goes on is because He has covered in verse 24 one of the works that He does and one of those works is life-giving. You recall back in verses 21-22 He said there were two things that God the Father does that He does; one is the Father quickens and the other is judge. All right, verse 24 is the quickening ministry that He does, and now verse 25 he goes on to the judging ministry. “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.” The word or phrase, “coming and now is,” looks forward to a shift in the way God works that began during the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This refers to something that started with Christ’s incarnation and continues throughout the Church Age. What is it? “The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.” Now who are “the dead?” The dead are those who are under the curse of Genesis 3.

Let’s look at death for a moment; now we have to be careful that we don’t divide physical and spiritual death too far. We have to be careful, they are all part and parcel of the same thing. What is death? Just from common experience? Genesis says that you have the spirit plus the body equals life, or as the Bible says, “soul.” In that situation you gain death, according to James 2, when the spirit leaves the body and there is no more life; you have the separation of the spirit from the body. The body without the spirit, says James, is dead. Now in a very simple way, what is the spirit? The spirit is breath; the Jewish people did not distinguish some platonic soul from the simple act of breathing. When they conceived by God’s revelation the creation, they would have God coming down and whooo, blowing into the nostrils of Adam; that’s how physical it was.

So the human spirit enters a person at the time the baby takes its first breath. If a baby is stillborn and doctors today in hospitals have a simple test by which they determine whether an infant has ever lived, in the autopsy they cut the lungs out and put them in a dish of water, and if the lungs float they know that there’s trapped air inside the lungs, residual air and that residual air is evidence that that infant did start to live and so therefore we have an actual death; if the lungs sink in the water there never was any air in the baby’s lungs. And you say wait a minute, that’s not a test because obviously when the baby died all the air went out of the lungs. Wrong! There is always residual volume in the lungs once the first breath is taken. It is impossible for you even at death to lose all the air out of your lungs; eventually, of course, it leaks out after death. But you can stop and hold your breath and squeeze all you want to, you’ll never get out the residual air that’s there, and as long as that residual air is there it is the Biblical view that life is there. Several implications come out of this; number one is that the unborn baby in the mother’s womb is not living according to Scripture. And there are several other implications in euthanasia and so on which we won’t go into. But we have residual volume, then, and that is what life is; that’s breath and life.

Now death is when you have the body deactivated. Let’s just look at the gross overall picture; the body is deactivated. You say somebody is dying, they lose their ability to work their limbs, you look at their complexion and you can see death written all over them. So there’s changes in the physical body and you sense that that’s death, something has happened, there’s just no life there. All right, now the Bible says that just as this occurs so it starts to occur in the soul; on the inside, in the immaterial things we again have the human spirit; that human spirit has control over our bodies but with the entrance of sin the human spirit is seriously weakened, such that control over our body is lost, in particular, therefore, we have the body unable to respond in perfect loyalty to God, the lust of the flesh of Romans 7. The human spirit is, as it were, contracts, and two things happen to it at spiritual death, at least two things; we know these two things because we know what Christ has to do to get us out of the problem. One thing is that the human spirit is said to be defiled. Total depravity extends not just to body but also spirit.

The human spirit is said to be defiled. Now what does that mean? It means that the human spirit is in violation of the Word of God and is legally called defiled. We don’t know what this defilement looks like, man has never made a machine that can spot the human spirit, leave alone measure its condition. But the Bible says that unseen part of us is defiled at the point of sin; when Adam fell and Eve fell and so on. That defilement is expressed in our senses as guilt. So we experience a defiled spirit by a deep sense of guilt before God. That’s the only part, it may be an iceberg, it may be only one tenth of what it’s like but we do have some readout in our own empirical senses of the defilement of the spirit and its guilt.

Now in addition to that the spiritually dead person also has an impotency. They have an impotency to perform what they know is right. And so the second empirical thing we experience about physical death is like… well, it’s basically like a person’s paralyzed and they have this limb here and they just can’t work it. They’ve tried but they just can’t. Well in a very similar way we know what God’s will is like but we can’t get our bodies and minds to function to do it. That loss of control, that experienced impotence is the second feature of spiritual death. So spiritual death has two things; it has this defilement or guilt and it has impotence.

Now, Jesus says “the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.” “The dead” in verse 25 do not refer to those yet in the grave, those in the grave, verse 28. So he’s talking about those who are walking around spiritually dead and that includes every member of the human race before regeneration. So we have this particular person spiritually dead, they know of guilt, and they have a spiritual impotence. Now, such a person hears the voice of the Son of God… the voice of the Son of God, notice it doesn’t say “words,” it says “voice.” Now in the Greek there’s a different word here and what that means is it emphasizes not the content, it emphasizes the sound; they actually hear the sound of the Son of God, because you see in the Old Testament, before the hour is come, men heard the Word of the Son of God through the Old Testament revelation. So that wasn’t what was new; what was new is that they actually heard the sound of the Son of God. Today do we still hear the sound of the Son of God? Well, not really but the closest approximation is the New Testament, when Christ authorized this. So whenever you read the New Testament you are hearing, in a way, at least the word of the Son of God. “…and they that hear shall live,” “they that hear” means they that submit to the spoken word of the Son of God. “they that … live,” it’s a word for regeneration. He uses the same word, life and death, we separate it theologically but as I say, we’d better be careful and not separate these too violently; they’re all related. “He who responds to My voice,” says this apparent Jewish rabbi, “he will live.”

Now He explains why, John 5:26, “For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself,” and this is a favorite theme of John the Apostle. Augustine when he commented on this passage had a very interesting illustration he used to preach in North Africa, it was taking a light. He said God has the light within Himself; men do not have light within themselves because we always need to get the light, of course they used the candle, you always need fire or a source of the light somewhere else to light your candle. You can’t light it by yourself. And so the whole point is that we are dependent upon external light and so here as Augustine would argue, we are dependent on something outside of ourselves. We do not have it within ourselves to give ourselves light. Jesus Christ does. In His humanity as God-man, as he walked the face of the earth, Jesus Christ could give life, and this is exactly what He did to this man in the beginning of John 5, the cripple. He gave life, He didn’t divide the spiritual from the physical that much, in this case He gave the man life over his limbs. So He dispenses life.

Now in John 5:27 we have the other side of the story. “And hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.” “He has given Him authority to judge,” so here are the two functions, life and judging. And I want you to notice something, it’s all tied in to that last clause at the end of verse 27, “because He is the Son of man.” Now we have to stop here and check ourselves. We’ve already talked on previous classes about the Son, what that means. We’ve related it back to Psalm 2, 2 Samuel 7, to show that that concept originally came to be the king who rules; the son under the father. And Jesus Christ, because of His character, always was the Son and the Son of God is the title that refers to relationship and position.

Now what about the Son of man? Turn to Daniel 7, here is where the “Son of man” picture got started. In Daniel 7 Daniel sees a vision of the moral character of the kingdom. You remember, verse 3, four great beasts came up from the sea. What was the sea? What did it mean? It meant doctrine-less humanity because water assumes the shape of the container and men and women who do not have Bible doctrine are always assuming the shape of the social container they happen to be in. Daniel 7:3, “Four beasts came up out of the sea….” [4] The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings; I beheld till its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand upon its feet as a man; and a man’s heart was given to it. [5] And, behold, another beast, a second, like a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between its teeth, and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh. [6] And this I beheld, and, lo another, like a leopard….” And then in verse 7, “After this I … beheld a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong,” it stamped it’s feet and so on. Verse 8, “I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before which there were three of the first horns,” this is the beast.

Now those four kingdoms refer to the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, the Medo-Persian kingdom, the Grecian kingdom, and the Roman kingdom, on down till its revived form, prior to the second return of the Lord Jesus Christ in which we have the beast or the antichrist ruling a world government. That last form of government will be the worst thing that the human race has ever experienced. It will be brought about, undoubtedly by very sincere people who think they’re doing everyone a favor and yet it unleashes a horrible thing on the face of the earth. Now just as this is about to destroy the human race, verse 9, “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool,” there’s the Father, [His throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. [10] A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him; a thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times then thousand stood before Him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened.]”

Daniel 7:11, “I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spoke; I beheld till the beast was slain, and its body destroyed, and given to the burning flame.” So we have the termination in history of man’s government. [12] “Concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away, yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time,” that’s referring to the fact that they extend on down to the last time period.

But now in Daniel 7:13, “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. [14] And there was given unto him a dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom is that which shall not be destroyed.”

Now notice what he has done; the first kingdom is pictured by an animal; second by an animal; third by an animal; last by an animal that’s partly human, he has human-made features, and then the last one is a man. Now what do you suppose those symbols are talking about? It’s talking about the character and the nature of history in the various dispensations. The kinds of social organizations and governments up until the return of Christ are subhuman. Only when Christ returns and sets up His government and His society do we have a civilization that is fully human. And by fully human we mean without the violence, without the crime, without those things that detract from the human character, without the suffering and the sorrow and the heartache.

Now “the Son of man” then, is a symbol of mankind fulfilled. Do you know what this term literally says? “Son of Adam,” in other words, the Son of Adam does what was promised His Father. Said God to Adam, Go, be fruitful, multiply and subdue the earth. And the Son of Adam fulfills the original creation mandate. Now it turns out “Son of man” is the Messiah or Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ focusing in on His humanity and emphasizing that in His humanity Christ fulfilled man’s creation ordinance climactically at the end of history.

Turn back to John and see how Jesus the word then. He says in John 5:27, [“And hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.”] God the Father gives Him judgment because He is the Son of man. By the way, when you read the Bible try to pick up a little thing that will improve your Bible reading. When you hit a title like this there ought to be a little alarm go off in your mind, something like this: oh-oh, Son of man, why isn’t the word Son of God here. Be curious toward the text; ask the text questions. Why at this point is not the Son of God used; it’s used everywhere else in this text, why not here. Special point: Jesus Christ being perfect humanity as well as deity is the qualified judge. Why is that so important? Because in the final analysis, in the day of judgment people are going to have many, many different excuses. Oh Lord, you see, it wasn’t my sin, it was the environment, it wasn’t my sin it was my mother who dropped me on my head when I was a baby and Sigmund Freud said that was my problem. Or it wasn’t this, it was my social conditioning and B. F. Skinner said so. And so there will always be these excuses given as to why I couldn’t possibly obey the Word of God. Now the basis of the judgment, Christ is going to basically this, and we can know because this is the thrust of Scripture, I am a man too, and I lived and I walked the face of this earth and I deny that excuse. I faced the same testings that you face; I faced in My body the same weaknesses you face in your body; I saw suffering like you see suffering; I was maltreated by people far more so that you ever were; and by the way, Jesus did not die of an ulcer on the cross. So Jesus Christ was maltreated but He didn’t die from it because He handled those kind of things Biblically. If that’s the case, why then is He given judgment? He is perfectly qualified as a man, not just as God but as the God-man He is qualified to be judge.

Now John 5:28, He extends His judgment, “Don’t marvel at this…,” “Don’t marvel at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,” Notice He says “the hour is coming” but He doesn’t add “and now is.” Notice the lack of that; there is no “and now is,” in verse 28 because it hasn’t happened yet. That’s future, that’s the future judgment of Christ. Those “that are in the graves shall hear His voice, [29] And shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” Now it looks like He’s going to judge on the basis of works, and indeed He does. Now how do we square this with salvation by grace? If He talks about those who have done good and those who have done evil, is this a violation, do we at last go back to works and abandon the grace platform? Not at all. What are the two means of sanctification? Grace and Law, and what did we say grace does? It enables us to fulfill the Law. So those people who are the truly elect people are those people who will have qualified, at last partially, to have operationally done God’s will. Those who have rejected Jesus Christ have in no way lived up to God’s standards, so though it appears in verse 29 that the judgment is based just on works it’s not so. The works are the outer marker or the outer indicator or the clothing on the person who is the elect and who is the one who has rejected Christ.

So those “that have done good” are those who have trusted in Jesus Christ and therefore have been the recipients of enabling grace to fulfill His will. Those “that have done evil,” those have turned against Christ and have therefore cut themselves off from enabling grace and therefore have done evil.

Now finally in John 5:30 He concludes this section of His talk, “I can of Mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and My judgment is just; because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me.” So again we conclude this portion with this identity; what Christ does is what the Father does. What the Father does is what Christ does. It is this picture, one laid over the other so that as far as actual operation in history, they can’t be distinguished, they fit perfectly. And that’s Christ’s answer to those who have accused Him of being equal in the wrong sense. From this point on He then demonstrates the evidences for faith. But before He does that He has finished this task of defining His character like He does nowhere else in all the Gospels.

Shall we bow for prayer.