the unity of the father and the son
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: John 5: 17-30 New Revised Standard
Jesus’ divinity sermon
The truth that changes the world
Today, our text is among the most potent and challenging texts in all the Bible. It is sometimes referred to as Jesus’ “Divinity Sermon” because he proclaims the unity of the Father and the Son. This idea proved impossible for the Jewish leaders to accept, and this is no surprise, for it was beyond them to conceive. The truth is this idea of the unity between God the Father and God the Son has challenged the world ever since. What is more, we owe our modern world to this text and texts like it; without it, we would not be where we are today. Jesus changes everything.
one will or two?
The Son is obedient to the Father
Jesus’ sermon responds to the accusation that he has made himself equal to God, which is not what he does. But he does call God “MY Father” and not just “The Father” or “Our Father.” Furthermore, he associates his miracles with the work of his Father—most recently, the healing of the paralytic who had been at the Bethesda pool for 38 years. Jesus clarifies that what he does, he does only in connection with his Father. This unique connection—the direct line to God by which he works—offends the Jewish leaders who view themselves as above him in the spiritual hierarchy. Jesus’ sermon is an elegant response to their objections.
Verse 19: Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.”
Jesus claims the Son has no plan of his own but is obedient to the will of God. Could Jesus possibly disobey? Does he have a will of his own other than the Father’s will, or do the Father and the Son share one will? This one verse launched centuries of discussions and arguments—I mean, into the 8th-century, people lost their heads and had tongues removed over these issues. It was of utmost importance, and the best brains in the world—which were every bit as good as ours—struggled to define this mystery of Jesus being both human and divine—Son of God and Son of Man.
Jesus was perfectly obedient to the Father, but did he have a will of his own—a human will? From what we read, his will was identical to the will of the Father; hence one will, the same will. But if that is true, how could he possibly be tempted as we are (and as Scripture says he was)? He must have had a human will by which he obeyed the divine will of God, right? It’s a big question, for sure.
Those who argued for one will we call Monothelitists. Jesus had the same will as the Father. Those who argued for two wills—a divine will and a human will—were called Dyothelitists. This discussion split the Church into factions and found no resolution until the late 700s.
power over death
The only power that really matters
Verse 21: Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes.
The word here for life is Zoé which means deep life—spiritual and eternal life. So just as the Father gives life to the cosmos, the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. This is the ultimate power. The other Greek word for life is bios, as in biology. That is merely physical, worldly life. The one thing that is certain—sure and absolute in the observable cosmos is death. All creatures, all biological things, die—even the cosmos itself is dying as it spreads and cools. The only power that matters is a power stronger than death if you can find it. Of course, we believe that God is above and beyond death, proven by the resurrection of Jesus. Yet Jesus has that same resurrection power as the Father and gives it to whomever he pleases.
God won’t judge
All judgment is delegated to the Son
Verse 22: The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son.
Let that sink in for a moment—the Father judges no one. This is a change of role. All of those problematic and harsh Old Testament narratives wherein the sinners of the world encounter the fierce justice of all-holy and almighty God is now over? Does the Father judge no one? Apparently not, because the Father is totally delegating all judgment to Christ.
Hundreds of years of Christian art got this right [5 examples], so why have so many contemporary Christians and non-Christians gotten it wrong? Furthermore, this text clarifies that Jesus is to be honored in the same way that the Father is.
Verse 23: so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
Jesus is our judge and Lord. Jesus is worthy not only of honor but of worship. We can offer worship to Jesus the same way we do to the Father.
The next verse is another of the “Amen, amen, I tell you” sayings, conveying the nature of our salvation:
Verse 24: Amen, amen, I tell you, anyone, who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.
All judgment has been turned over to Jesus, and Jesus spares all who trust in him from the judgment. So all judgment has been handed over to Jesus, but Jesus will not judge those who belong to him. Here’s a picture we can all live with and take comfort in.
The imagery of the final judgment is ancient and pictured in a worldly way. The ancient city-states of Mesopotamia were local kingdoms. They were ruled by kings who sat on thrones in their courts. There were seats on the right and left hands—the right hand was the seat of authority, the left was a favored friend—and others made up the king’s court. The king solved problems. Subjects were brought in, and a prosecuting attorney (called the Accuser) would bring to the king’s awareness the crime of the accused. The king would judge. This worldly picture also described Heaven to the ancients, including Israel. God sat on the throne of Heaven, with a heavenly court filled with angels. In the final judgment, humankind is raised and presented to the Judge and King. The Accuser (Satan) has the job of bringing to the Lord’s memory the sins of each individual, after which God pronounces sentence to life or condemnation.
So what is different? Jesus says not only that God has turned over all judgment to him but that those who belong to him won’t even be judged! It’s like this: the moment we appear in the courtroom, the Accuser will have nothing to say—nothing to hold against us. We show up, and Jesus says, “Nope—nevermind this one—she’s mine,” and on we pass into eternal glory. That’s the image. That’s the good news of the gospel.
the xn big bang
Christian theology gave us the modern world
Now I want to discuss the larger effect of this text, for as we’ve seen, it raises questions that have challenged humankind for the past two millennia. What we get in this text is a profound mystery—the reality that Jesus is both human and divine. He is the Son of God and Son of Man; the Logos made flesh. How can we make sense of this? It is certainly not easy.
We’ve noted that John’s gospel was written a bit later than Mark, Matthew, and Luke, and even in the late first century, John saw ideas about Jesus going off the rails. John comes right out and says many things to which the other gospels merely point.
Have you ever heard a joke that you didn’t get and had to have someone explain to you? John is the gospel that explains the gospel to all those who may have heard from Matthew, Mark, or Luke but didn’t get it. John clarifies who Jesus is: Son of God, Son of Man, 2nd person of the Holy Trinity. He writes to set the Church on the right path.
Why was the early church so susceptible to heresy? Because what Jesus reveals is challenging to understand, and the most standard human reaction to complexity is to oversimplify things.
The revelation of Jesus as being both human and divine created a Big Bang of thinking and theology that continues today. First of all, John answers to the 1st-century Jews who could not accept that Jesus was divine. Today, our text is a direct affront to the idea that Jesus was merely human. This way of thinking about Jesus has continued to crop up in nearly every century since.
In the 2nd-century, it came up as Adoptionism, which held that Jesus wasn’t essentially God but was adopted by the Father as Messiah at his baptism. Theologians argued this for decades before it was declared heresy.
In the 3rd-century came Arianism, which denied that Jesus was pre-existent with the Father but was non-existent until his birth as Jesus. In Arianism, Jesus is a creature of God—God created Jesus—and there was a time when the Son did not exist. Arianism was condemned as heresy at the council of Nicea in 325.
On the other side, we have Docetism, which said that Jesus wasn’t entirely human but only appeared to be human. This was common among the Greeks, especially the Gnostics, who were so amazed by the idea that the Logos could become flesh because the flesh was evil.
I’m giving you the tip of the iceberg here, but the idea is that the gospel has been challenging from the very beginning, and Christian thinkers have fought and struggled to make sense of what the gospels reveal. And unlike other world religions, Christianity is founded upon self-criticism. Every theological idea is subject to the criticism and review of all other Christians and judged against Scripture and the Apostles’ teachings.
The Trinity is tough stuff! The dual nature of Christ—today’s text—was disputed and argued for centuries. Some argued that Jesus had one nature, which was divine. They were called Monophysites. Others argued that he had two natures—one human and one divine—these were the Dyophysites. The Monophysites said that the human nature of Jesus was dissolved into the divine will like a drop of ink in the sea. The Dyophysites argued that the two natures resided side-by-side in one person like two eggs together in a single bird’s nest. Again, centuries of argument, disputation, and deep thinking. Islam emerged out of this controversy, in part, as a way to make things easier, but painstaking theologians kept the balance. The Eastern Orthodox and western Roman church eventually split, in part over this disagreement about the nature of Christ—all from our text and one’s like it. There were critics and corrections for every wrong-headed idea that came along and gathered widespread support. Orthodoxy—or basic Christianity—came to hold that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. Not 50% one and 50% another, but 100% God and 100% human without another way of talking about it.
That kind of difficulty sparked deep thinking. It is doubtful the world would have ever had a deeply developed philosophical or scientific world without Christianity. The Scientific world emerged from the deep thinking that theologians patterned. That right-thinking should be verifiable, provable, and above criticism was chiefly the result of hundreds of years of theological struggle.
There is a reasonably famous quote by American astronomer and planetary physicist Robert Jastrow, who said:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” [rom God and the Astronomers]
So for two-thousand years, the theologians have been protecting the doctrine of Christ’s dual nature—fully God and fully human being—without another way of explaining it. Examples have all fallen short until quantum science.
Consider the wave-particle duality. Once scientists got to the point where they could observe the tiniest pieces of matter, they found an utter mystery. Every particle or quantum entity can be described as either a particle or a wave. A photon is a particle. A photon is a wave. It is 100% particle and 100% wave—not 50/50—and there isn’t some third way of describing it.
It is just like, well, what theologians wrestled with for 19 centuries. Nature has given us the perfect example of what Christ’s dual nature is like, and it was there all along waiting to be revealed. The idea wasn’t crazy at all—there was no need to dispute it—it just took us a while to make total sense of it.
We can trust in faith that all the promises of God will be revealed in time and make perfect sense once we are face-to-face with Jesus. †