SUNDAY 12th
John 5:18
NIV – ‘For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.’
ESV – ‘This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.’
You would have thought that to have had the Son of God in your midst would have been the most incredible thing to happen ever, but here the Jews were seeking to KILL Jesus, first because he dared to heal someone on the Sabbath, shame on them that legalistic Sabbath keeping was more important to them than seeing a sick man being made whole – secondly, because Jesus had declared that God was his Father, thus making himself equal with God.
Now, either the Jews were correct in their assumption, or Jesus was! Either God was his Father, meaning Jesus was his Son, or Jesus was deluded and was on a mission to con the people as to who he really was, and therefore on a crusade to present himself as someone he was not.
Which is it to be?
This takes us back to where we left off yesterday, when I stated, ‘The deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is an important part of our Christian faith, it is what marks true Christianity from the cults etc. For we need to have a correct theology of Jesus.’
The whole of John’s gospel, as we discovered from John 20:31 is to demonstrate or to show that Jesus really was who he claimed to be. (‘. . . so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God . . .’) So, what evidence does John give us? And how is his evidence backed up elsewhere in the Word of God?
This is intended to be a devotion, so we will only touch briefly on the answer, and this will be over two devotions as more will come up in later devotions, but I trust sufficiently enough to help us.
Firstly, we will see what God the Father himself had to say. In John’s gospel we have recorded for us what we call Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, (John 17) and Jesus commences the prayer by saying ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you . . .’ (v1) This is not the first time that Jesus had made this request in prayer, for he said something similar earlier in John 12:27, ‘Father, glorify your name’, and the response is a cry from heaven itself with the reply, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it’. What is happening is the Father is responding to the Son, thus verifying the Lord Jesus Christ as being his Son. The Fathers name had already been glorified through the Son and was yet going to be glorified through the Son, and this could only happen if the Son was as equally God as the Father was, for in the Old Testament God had declared that he would not give his glory to another. ‘I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols’. (Isaiah 42:8) Through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the glory of God was being revealed. (we will see this in point four)
John mentions the time when Jesus was baptised in John 1:32- 33, Luke, one of the other gospel writers mentions more, he noted that as Jesus came up from out of the water that an affirmation was made loud and clear as to who he was ‘Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’ Luke 3:21-22. Let us be completely honest here with a question, Would God have given such an audible acclamation concerning Jesus if the Jews were right and that he was a con man?
Secondly we will see what John had to say about Jesus throughout this gospel, and without going through all the detail, it is evident with what we have looked at already over the last few days that John believed that Jesus was the Son of God, he believed in the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, he believed that Jesus was fully God and fully man.
Thirdly, what did John the Baptist have to say about Jesus, seeing as he was the one who was sent as a forerunner to prepare the way of the Lord. We will end the devotion today with just a Scripture reminder of some of what the Baptist had to say about Jesus. John 3:30-36 ‘He must increase, but I must decrease. He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.’
The words within the statement of John ‘He who comes from heaven is above all’ is a loaded statement. Surely this cannot be made about anyone unless he were God! I am reminded of an older chorus we used to sin, ‘Far above all, far above all, God has exalted him, far above all, Crown him as Lord, at his feet humbly fall, Jesus, Christ Jesus, is far above all.’ This song is talking about his exaltation after his obedience in going to the cross, but prior to his death, prior to his coming to earth, he as God was above all.
We will continue tomorrow.