John 5:19–30

5:19–23 The Son Does What the Father Does. This passage is bracketed in verses 19 and 30 by statements of what the Son of God cannot do. Jesus asserts, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing” (v. 19). These “Truly, truly” statements guide us to the flow of thought in the passage. Jesus will explain himself in verses 19–23, make a “Truly, truly” statement in verse 24 and another in verse 25, and then explain himself in verses 25–29 before restating verse 19 in verse 30.

Jesus speaks of himself in the third person in verse 19, “The Son is not able to do anything of himself” (AT), and then makes the same statement in the first person in verse 30, “I am not able to do anything of myself” (AT). In verse 19 Jesus comments on what he sees the Father doing. In verse 30 he comments on what he hears.

The theology here is so exalted and profound we could get dizzy, but what Jesus says is really quite simple and easy to understand. The simple truth here is that sons learn life from their fathers. A son learns to walk by watching his dad walk: how to carry his shoulders, how to point his toes, how to angle his head—all of this comes straight from his dad. Fathers are profoundly important to their children. And this truth applies more broadly to those whose examples we follow in other areas of life. We for the most part do not blaze new trails. We do what we see that other people have done; we say what we have heard others say; we desire what we have seen others value or benefit from. This is the simple truth that Jesus is stating here. He is not a maverick, doing whatever he pleases. He does what he has seen his Father do.

In asserting that “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing” (v. 19), the eternal second person of the Trinity, the preexistent Son of God, the one through whom all things were made, declares that he has learned everything from the first person of the Trinity. The Son does what the Father does and nothing else.

Helping us in our weakness and insufficiency, Jesus continues to explain these incredible truths: “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel” (v. 20). In the first part of this statement, Jesus explains that the Father’s instructional relationship with the Son springs from the Father’s love for the Son. The Father discloses everything he does to the Son because he loves him. This is a unique love that the Bible indicates exists only between Father and Son, for only the Son can be worthy of such love, and only the Son can sustain such love. The infinite being of the Son and his infinite intelligence and capacity make him uniquely able to enjoy this relationship with the Father.

Because the Father loves the Son, and because the Son is capable of receiving the disclosure, the Father “shows him all that he himself is doing.” The second part of verse 20 tells us what else the Father will do for the Son, and why: “Greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.” The work referred to is the healing on the Sabbath in verses 1–18. The greater work Jesus will go on to describe is the resurrection of the dead, and the healing in chapter 5 and the statements Jesus makes in this passage seem to anticipate the raising of Lazarus from the dead in chapter 11.

Why does the Father show Jesus what he does? Why does the Father authorize Jesus to heal on the Sabbath? Why will the Father show Jesus greater things? Why will the Father authorize Jesus to raise the dead? The answer is at the end of 5:20: “So that you may marvel.” There is no one like Jesus, and God wants all to know it. God desires this so much that he will show Jesus even greater things so that all will be awed by his incomparable majesty.

What Jesus says in verses 21–23 shows that the greater things Jesus has just mentioned the Father showing him in verse 20 pertain to resurrection and judgment. Jesus explains in verse 21, “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” There is a connection in the Gospel of John between spiritual life and resurrection life, the one being a foretaste of the other. Jesus will assert in 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” To know Jesus and God is to have eternal life. But Jesus is talking here about resurrection life. Eternity will be an embodied eternity. Man is not destined for wispy existence in the clouds but for resurrected bodies that will be perfectly fitted either to enjoy the new heavens and new earth or to endure the eternal and almighty wrath of God. After the fall, man does not live this life for this life. He lives this life for that life.

Jesus asserts in 5:21 that the Father and the Son raise the dead. Moreover, they give life to whomever they please. Life is God’s gift. Jesus exercises a prerogative given to him by the Father in the exercise of his will in giving life “to whom he will.” This last phrase of verse 21, concerning the Son giving life to whom he pleases, is similar to the statement Jesus makes in Matthew 11:27: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” God does not owe himself to anyone. If men, women, and children know God, it is because God has mercifully revealed himself to them. John 17:6 indicates that Jesus gives life to those whom the Father has given to him.

The Father has given Jesus the ability to raise the dead, and he has also given him authority to judge, as Jesus states in 5:22: “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” These statements about resurrection and judgment in verses 21–22 will be elaborated on in the matching section of verses 25–26, but the purpose statement is clear: “that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” (v. 23). God gave Jesus the ability to raise the dead and entrusted all judgment to him so that all would honor Jesus. In verse 20, we learn that the Father will show Jesus greater works “so that you may marvel.” In verse 23, Jesus declares that the Father gives him all judgment so “that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.” God the Father wants people to honor God the Son. God the Father wants people to marvel at Jesus.

God is not selfish to seek his own glory. The Father shares his glory with the Son. Further, it is not selfish to give people the most satisfying thing they could possibly enjoy. There is nothing more marvelous than Jesus, so to have people marvel at anything else would be to give them something less than the absolute best. There is no one more honorable than the Father and the Son, so to have humans honor someone else would be for the Father to put some other god before his people. God is not an idolater. God is a satisfier. God will have his people satisfied. God will have man’s thirst for glory, for splendor, for variety, for beauty, for satisfaction, quenched as believers enjoy the all-sufficient goodness of the Lord Jesus.

Some people think it possible to be rightly related to God the Father apart from conscious faith in Jesus. Jesus rejects that possibility in the last words of verse 23: “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” Verse 20 states that the Father loves the Son. To reject the Son is to reject the Father’s beloved, which will not please him.

5:24 The One Who Hears and Believes Has Life. How are people to please the Father? What must one do in order to avoid the Father’s wrath (3:36)? How can anyone avoid the judgment the Father has entrusted to the Son (5:22)? John provides the answer to these questions in the words of Jesus in 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

The solemn phrase “Truly, truly” means “in truth, really, indeed.” Jesus is giving his solemn oath to this. The statement that he is about to make is prefaced by a formula, this “Truly, truly,” asserting the absolute reliability of these words. This is no idle declaration, and it is addressed to “whoever hears my word.” All who are exposed to the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John are among those who hear his word.

Then follows an astonishing declaration: “. . . and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” What does it mean to “believe him who sent” Jesus? Jesus is presenting the truth about reality. He is describing the real world. If anyone accepts the version of reality that Jesus presents—his claims that God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, sent his Son, Jesus, and that God the Father has given to Jesus the ability to do what he himself does—then he believes the one who sent Jesus.

Look at what follows: those who hear the words of Jesus and believe the God who sent Jesus have eternal life (v. 24). This is similar to 17:3—to know God and Christ is eternal life. If anyone believes, he does not have to wait for eternal life. He can enjoy its effects in the present, in the midst of afflictions and sorrows, diseases, distresses, and the deaths of babies and parents and spouses and dear friends. We have eternal life if we hear the words of Jesus and believe the one who sent him.

Jesus develops the implications of this in the final statement of 5:24: “He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Anyone who believes in the God who sent Jesus will not be condemned, will not stand trial, will not “come into judgment.” Death has no claim on him. God’s justice does not threaten him. The curse of the law is removed from him. The almighty and everlasting wrath of God does not hang over him.

5:25–29 The Son Will Raise the Dead. Jesus had spoken of giving life to the dead and exercising judgment in verses 20–23, and he elaborates on resurrection and judgment in verses 25–29. It is hard not to think of the resurrection of Lazarus (ch. 11) when Jesus says that the hour is “now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (5:25).

In addition to the particular resurrection of Lazarus about to take place, Jesus references the general resurrection at the end of all things when he says that the “hour is coming” (v. 25) when this will happen. That this is the end-time resurrection prior to judgment can be seen in verses 28–29: “an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”

Once again we see the connection between spiritual life upon hearing Christ’s word (v. 24) and resurrection upon hearing Christ’s word (vv. 25, 28). Verse 26 shows why Jesus has this ability, as he himself explains: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” This statement elaborates on John 1:4: “In him was life.” If the Word “was in the beginning with God” (1:1–2), then there never was a time when this gift was not being given.¹ The Father has always been granting the Son “to have life in himself” (5:26), and the Father has always loved the Son and shown him what “he himself is doing” (v. 20). If this were not so, there would have been a time when Jesus did not have life in himself, when he was therefore less than the Father. If that were so, Hebrews 13:8 could not say that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” Paul could not speak of Jesus being “in the form of God” (Phil. 2:6), and Jesus would have no business saying things like “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). This is often described theologically as the eternal generation of the Son. The Son receives the gift of life in himself from the Father, but it is an eternal gift, with the result that the Son has always been equal with the Father.

Jesus has the power to raise the dead because the Father gave him life in himself (5:25–26), and Jesus will judge because he is the Daniel 7:13 Son of Man, as John 5:27 makes clear: “he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.” In the Daniel 7 throne room scene, “The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened” (Dan. 7:10), then “one like a son of man” received dominion and a kingdom (Dan. 7:13–14). In that scene there is no separation of powers. The head of state is the supreme court. The king is the judge, as we see in Isaiah 11, where the shoot from the stump of Jesse will judge (Isa. 11:1–5). Isaiah 33:22 similarly declares, “The Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king; he will save us.” The prophet declares that “the Lord,” Yahweh, is the executive, legislative, and judicial authority. He is the supreme monarch of the universe, the world’s true King, the commander in chief of the triumphant armies of heaven. That Jesus is the Daniel 7:13 Son of Man means that Jesus is the King who will receive dominion and execute judgment. No court stands over the Lord.

The allusion to Daniel 7:13 in John 5:27 is accompanied by an allusion to Daniel 12:2 in John 5:29, where the fate of the resurrected righteous and unrighteous is stated: “those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” There is clearly a connection here between doing good and avoiding judgment, but Jesus has just stated in 5:24 that the one who believes God does not enter judgment. Therefore, resurrection of life comes to those who are justified by faith. The ground of their justification is the work of Christ on the cross, by which they are saved through faith. The evidence that they are saved, justified, born again, adopted children of God is that they do good works—their works are wrought in God (3:21).

5:30 The Son Does the Father’s Will. In the whole of this passage Jesus has been explaining to his opponents why it was right for him to heal on the Sabbath. He asserted that the Father is working, so he works (5:17). They wanted to kill him for what they viewed as blasphemy (v. 18), but Jesus stood up and explained reality to them. He has outlined how he does only what he sees the Father doing, how he raises the dead because he has life in himself, how he will judge because he is the Son of Man, and how those who believe the one who sent him have eternal life and do not come into judgment, while those who do the evil of rejecting him face resurrection unto judgment.

How will the opponents of Jesus respond? They did not like it that Jesus was “calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (v. 18), and Jesus exacerbated the problem by asserting himself to be the eternally generated Son of the Father through whom God will raise the dead and judge the wicked. Jesus has also informed his adversaries that the only way for them to honor the Father, which they think they are already doing, is to honor the Son, Jesus (v. 23), whom they are ready to kill (v. 18).

Jesus’ opponents probably thought he was delusional or demon-possessed (cf. Mark 3:21–22). At any rate, from what John narrates in his Gospel it is clear that the opponents of Jesus continue to reject him. As if anticipating this, Jesus asserts that he is not acting of his own accord: “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30).

The opponents of Jesus thought he was impudently transgressing the Sabbath. The claim that he was authorized to work on the Sabbath because God the Father works on the Sabbath would have only increased their tightly wound indignation at what they perceived to be blasphemy. They would have thought him a self-willed, self-exalting blasphemer. This is precisely what Jesus denies as he asserts that he seeks not his own will but the will of him who sent him. He further asserts that, as he exercises judgment, he judges as he hears, not on his own but justly. The implication in verse 30, as in verse 19, is that the judgment Jesus executes is the judgment willed by the Father.