The Persecuted Jesus part III
“The Persecuted Jesus”- Part III
Introduction:
I have had opportunity over the years to engage in several debates. I have had opportunity to debate Pelagians, Roman Catholics, Ruckmenites, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hebrew Pentecostal’s, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. Some of the people that I have debated I would not say are Christians (such as Roman Catholics or Jehovah’s Witnesses), but there have been some that I have debated that I would consider brother’s in Christ (Ruckmentites and some Pelagians).In any good debate that needs to be a sense Christian behavior and gentlemanly scholarship. It is never a good thing, during the course of a debated to engage in name calling and resort to character attacks upon your opponent.
I remember very well two such debates; the one was with a Hebrew Pentecostal. If you are not familiar with these guys is because they are not the “mainstream” of religions; however they are a cross of Pentecostals and Sabbatarians. Now during the debate, this guy (whose is Ken) was dead wrong in his interpretation of the Scripture, but I will give him the fact that he was an absolute gentleman.
The other debate was against a Ruckmanite; and during the course of this debate, I challenged his ascertains about the dating a certain text and, I can only assume that he did not have a rebuttal, he began to come at me with all kinds of personal attacks. Now, he later sent me an email apologizing for the outburst (so the insults were not my imagination) but never did answer my question.
One thing that debating has taught me is that when someone engages in personal attacks and resorts to a character debate, they know that they are losing the argument or do not have a response to your answer.
We debate with truth not with insults. Insults are not a good comeback against the truth. I tell you all of this to tell you that is where Jesus is going to begin to find himself with the Pharisees as we continue in John 5. They cannot beat Him or answer his questions, so they resort to character attacks upon Him; all classic examples of people who are losing the battle.
II. The Master Persecutes (vs. 10-17)
I love and appreciated verse 11 and this man’s response to the Pharisees. Two words that this man uses are of importance. “ἐκεῖνος” and it has been translated “same” in you KJV, and the literally means “that one”. The beauty of the Greek is the importance of small words, for linguistically this is what we call a “main clause emphasis”. The Main clause emphasis, in the Greek, brings words or phrases to the front in order to attract attention to them. The word that John chooses to bring emphasis to was the word “ἐκεῖνος” or “that one”. Listen, it is emphasized for this reason. John, again always wanted to present Christ as God, used the linguistic phrase to bring emphasis to the authority of Christ. Now, the man did not know His name, but the readers of John’s account would have known it and by John fronting that word he emphasizes it and bring out the authority of Christ. How so? Do you think that this man sitting by the pool of Bethesda knew all about the Sabbath Day law? Sure he did! But when Christ spoke it did not matter anymore, because their was a new authority in his life, Jesus Christ, not the Pharisees that, as we saw last time, spent so much time trying to get the allegiance of the people. Just think with me, this is why the historical things that I go over are important, of all the blood that had been shed and the power struggles that the Pharisees went through to try and get the allegiance of people, it was all destroyed with one word “ποιέω” “made me well”. The years of struggling that the Pharisees went through to get to the point that they were in the lives of the people, was shattered by one miracle in this man’s life. We know that it was just the one miracle because John uses the aorist tense in the Greek to signify a single action. The healed man tells the Pharisees that “that one made me whole and he told me to take up your bed and walk”. There was a new authority in this man’s life. Did it make the Pharisees mad, no, it made the furious.
Then the Pharisees, writhing in fury at this point ask the man, “Who is this man who said to you, ‘pick up and walk?’” Listen, there are couple of things that are going on here. First, notice the word “τίς” or “who” again I want you to notice that this word is put here in order to bring emphasis. John wants us to stop and draw attention to this small word. This word is brought to the front to emphasis that the Pharisees were so angry that they wanted to know exactly who it was that said this to this man. Then there is the phrase, “who said to you pick up and walk”. This is what is called an overspecification, and we use them all the time. For example, if I said “Don Fletcher, who has a beard, sits on the third row” Now, the over specified information is “who has a beard”, if you know Fletch, you know he has a beard, but it categorizes him, “one having a beard”. The Pharisees do the same thing. By using the over specified phrase, “take up your bed and walk”; this healed man would have known exactly who they were referring to without this information. But they are categorizing Jesus as a breaker of the law and we want to you know who he is. Let me give you another biblical example to maybe explain this better. "But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." (Luke 15:30, KJV). Can you find the overspecification? “Which hath devoured thy living with harlots”, the older brother wanted to categorize the prodigal and one who is wasteful and perverted. The same is true of the Pharisees, they wanted to categorize Jesus as a rebel and breaker of the law, that is only reason that they would restate the obvious.
Jesus had wrought a goodly number of such signs and had impressed many, 3:23. These Jews had no use for such signs; they deliberately refuse to ask this man about the great deed of healing. They inquired of him, Who is the man that said to thee, Take up and walk? Their minds are fixed only on the supposed transgression, on this violation of their all-important traditions. For these Jews Jesus is not the man who healed this great sufferer, who bestowed on him divine mercy, but a man who broke their traditions, who had to be punished. When they here inquire who it is that issued this unlawful command, we must not suppose that they did not from the start know that it was Jesus. They know only too well. They ask in order to secure legal testimony against Jesus. They want the man’s direct testimony, in order then to take legal action against Jesus. That, too, is why they quote only the verbs “take up and walk,” for these mark the crime in their eyes. The sign was before them, placed there by the master hand of Jesus, but these Jews neither read its meaning nor think of obeying its admonition.[1]
This finding may have occurred on the same day or on the following day. On Jesus’ part it is intentional, for he now means to complete what he began with the unexpected miracle. It was a good sign that Jesus found the man in the Temple, where the man evidently had gone in order to thank God for the great mercy he had found in the House of Mercy and to render due sacrifice.
The word Jesus addresses to the man is remarkable. First a vivid reminder of the priceless benefit, “Behold, thou art become well!” the perfect tense implying that he stands here as a well man this very moment. This is the lever whose motive power is to lift the man to a higher plane. For Jesus adds, “Sin no more!” and like a flash lays bare the man’s distant past (4:18), extending over more than thirty-eight years. He had sinned, sinned in a way which his conscience would at once painfully recall, sinned so as to wreck his life in consequence. The objection that Jesus here has in mind sinfulness in general, because in Luke 13:1–5 he will not let his disciples infer a special guilt from a special calamity, cannot hold, for certain sins do entail painful and dreadful results. And if Jesus here enjoins perfect sinlessness upon the healed man, how could he ever hope to escape the worse thing? No; the man had great sins on his conscience. The bodily suffering these sins had caused him Jesus had removed. Here lay the grace of pardon—by far the best thing in the miracle for the man personally. This Jesus now impresses upon the man’s soul. “Sin no more” involves that Jesus pardons the man’s past sins; for if the great sins of the past still stand against this man, what would abstinence from future open sins avail?
But, alas, even after thirty-eight years of suffering the root of the old evil remains, which may now shoot up again and spread its poisonous branches. Let every man who has by divine grace conquered some sinful propensity, some special “weakness,” some dangerous habit, remember that “Sin no more!” must ever ring in his ears in warning. “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,” Matt. 26:41. But now that Jesus has freed this man, the admonition to sin no more comes with an effectiveness, bestowing strength and help, such as the man had never experienced before. So it is in every case. Not by our own unaided strength are we to fight our foe and sin no more but in the strength which Jesus gives and is ready to renew and to increase daily.
“Lest something worse come to thee,” χεῖρόν τι (neuter comparative of κακός), by its very indefiniteness heightens the warning—something worse than thirty-eight years of suffering. We need not think only of the damnation of hell, although this, too, is meant. “Let no man, however miserable, count that he has exhausted the power of God’s wrath. The arrows that have pierced him may have been keen; but there are keener yet, if only he provoke them, in the quiver from which these were drawn.” Trench. On the one hand Jesus sets the benefit received, on the other hand the grace of warning, and between these two the admonition to sin no more. [2]
In verse 16, I want you to notice two words; first is “διώκω” or “persecuted” is I the “imperfect tense” and the word “ποιέω” or “had done” is also in the imperfect tense. The imperfect tense is the Greek tense that shows continuous action in the past. Why would John use a past tense to show present actions, action it goes back to what we discussed a couple of weeks ago, the usage of the Historical Present. John, you see, is writing this some 60 years after the events took place but is placing himself in the middle of the action.
The usage of the imperfect tense contains the inference of the Jews; for from the one act of healing and ordering the man to carry his bed on the Sabbath they rightly conclude that further acts such as this performed on the Sabbath will be regarded by Jesus as being perfectly in order. Whether Jesus thus performed more deeds of this kind on the following Sabbaths or not is immaterial. The Jews held Jesus liable not merely for once breaking the Sabbath by the one act (which would require the aorist) but for his general attitude regarding their traditional Sabbath observance. This also explains ταῦτα, “these things,” a plural not because of the miracle plus the order about the bed, but a plural to include all that Jesus deemed proper to do on the Sabbath in contradiction to the Jewish traditions. [3]
To these fanatical Jews their own hatred, persecution, and murderous intentions were virtues, and the mercy, the miracles of Jesus, and his showing them as signs and seals of his divine Sonship, mortal crimes. They broke the law in the most glaring way by their pseudo-vindication of the law against him who never broke it and could not break it.[4]
Part of the persecution venting itself upon Jesus consisted in charging him with violating the Sabbath. John is not concerned with the details of time, place, and other circumstances when these attacks occurred, but only with Jesus’ replies, filled as they are with the weightiest attestations concerning himself. As short and striking as is the first reply, so full and elaborate is the second (v. 19, etc.). But Jesus answered them, My father works till now. Also I myself work. That is all—not another word. But this brief word is like a shot into the center of the target, such as Jesus alone is able to deliver. It absolutely and completely refutes the Jewish authorities. This time Jesus uses no mashal, as in 2:19, with a hidden meaning that requires a key to unlock it, but a word that is as clear as crystal. He does not say “our Father” and thus place himself on a level with the Jews or with men generally but pointedly “my Father” (see 20:17). And the Jews at once grasp the meaning that Jesus declares God to be his Father in a sense in which no other man can call God Father, i.e., that in his person as the Son he is equal (ἴσον) with the Father. Hence also the emphatic ἐγώ which parallels ὁ πατήρ μου. Hence also the two identical verbs: “he works—I work.” The entire reply of Jesus centers in this equality of his as the Son with the Father.
The sense of this reply is so plain that the Jews could not and did not miss it. Do these Jews mean to accuse the Father, the very author and giver of the law, who, as every child knows, keeps on working (durative present tense) till this very day, stopping for no Sabbaths? Are they making God a lawbreaker? Well, Jesus says, this is my Father, I am his Son, we are equal. I work exactly as he does (again durative present). The point is that it is unthinkable that the Father and the Son or either of them, the very givers of the law, should ever break the law. When thus the Jews, as they do, charge Jesus with breaking the law, something must be radically wrong with their charge.[5]
III. The Murder Planned (vs. 18)
This verse is built exactly like v. 16, “On this account … because,” etc. But v. 18 is a strong advance upon v. 16. The cause is greater, also the resultant effect. Jesus’ word of defense and justification made matters much worse. In v. 16 the Jews charge only that Jesus was doing certain wrong things on the Sabbath; now they charge that he is breaking the Sabbath, ἔλυε, dissolving and annulling it, the imperfect meaning that he is making this his business, R. 884, not only by what he is doing on the Sabbath but by his entire claim. And not only is he busy destroying the Sabbath but on top of that he is calling (ἔλεγε, the same iterative imperfect) God his own Father, which these Jews define as “making himself equal with God.” This definition of what the Jews understood Jesus to mean by pointedly calling God “my Father” removes all doubt on the subject. All who claim that Jesus never called himself the Son of God, equal with the Father, must reject this entire Gospel as a piece of falsification. If Jesus did not mean what the Jews here understood him to say and to mean, Jesus should and could and would have said, “But this is not what I mean.” Instead Jesus accepts this as being in reality his meaning. He does this not once but again and again until his final trial and even on his cross. And that is the very reason why John records this altercation with the Jews. It embodies another clear and decisive attestation of Jesus regarding who he really is.
As it is with the cause, so it is with the result. While v. 16 has the more indefinite ἐδίωκον, “they were persecuting him,” we now have μᾶλλον ἐζήτουν ἀποκτεῖναι, “they were the more seeking to kill him.” What is only implied in v. 16 now comes out boldly; for μᾶλλον = magis not potius. The Jews are not seeking to kill rather than to persecute; but are seeking to kill even more than they sought this before. So early the fatal issue was drawn.[6]
Then as we get into verse 19, Jesus begins to really hammer hme the fact of His equality with the Father, but we will see that next time.
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[1]Lenski, R. C. H. (1961). The interpretation of St. John's gospel (368). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.
[2]Lenski, R. C. H. (1961). The interpretation of St. John's gospel (370). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.
[3]Lenski, R. C. H. (1961). The interpretation of St. John's gospel (373). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.
[4]Lenski, R. C. H. (1961). The interpretation of St. John's gospel (374). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.
[5]Lenski, R. C. H. (1961). The interpretation of St. John's gospel (374). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.
R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.
[6]Lenski, R. C. H. (1961). The interpretation of St. John's gospel (375). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.