Last time we studied the first 2 of the 3 “Truly, truly, I say to you…” declarations from Jesus. Today we will look at the third declaration and continue on to the 4-fold testimony of who Jesus is.

 

John 5:25-30:

²⁵“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

²⁶“For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself;

²⁷and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man.

²⁸“Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice,

²⁹and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.

³⁰“I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

 

This “Truly, truly” declaration is the culmination of the first two declarations. In the first declaration, Jesus is saying that He only works where He sees the Father working. This is tied directly to the “an hour is coming and now is” phrase. God the Father is already working to draw those to Himself…to Jesus. We see this in the 12 disciples (well, 11, if you exclude Judas who was not a believer) that continued to follow Him even when others left Him (as we shall see in John 6:66). Jesus was simply following the Father’s leading, gathering His sheep to Himself.

The second of Jesus’ declarations was to say that He was the only way to eternal life. Those who seek Him, listen to Him, and trust (believe) in Him will have eternal life. The third declaration says that those who are dead in their sins will hear Jesus’ voice and live. It is interesting that in this verse (v25) there are two mentions of the verb “hear”. The first “hear” is the main verb showing that all will hear Jesus’ voice. But the second “hear” is an aorist active (adverbial) participle, which is just a short way of saying that because they have already heard the voice of Jesus, the voice of Jesus has caused them to live. These are the people who actively hear the voice of Jesus and are eternally transformed by it.

In verses 26-27 Jesus tells us that the Father, who holds everlasting life, has given not only everlasting life to Jesus but the ability to grant this wonderful gift to whomever He judges even in spite of Jesus willfully setting aside His own deity to fully become a man. But did you notice that the reasoning for the Father giving Jesus this authority is that Jesus is the Son of Man (v27)? Now the title of Son of Man is complex in nature and more so when Jesus applied it to Himself; however, from this title we get a better understanding of why Jesus is given authority to judge. He is fully man. Of course Jesus is fully God too and that alone gives Him all authority in all judgements, but the fact that John (the Apostle) calls out Jesus’ humanity here shows that Jesus knows our own humanity in a very real way. He experienced life as we do. Only someone who knows intimately all of our experiences, joys, pains, sufferings, etc. will truly be able to judge us righteously and His righteousness is above reproach. As it says in Hebrews 4:15:

¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

In verses 28-29 Jesus switches to a coming time when Jesus will call out those who are dead and the dead will rise. This is even more clearly stated in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18:

¹³But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

¹⁴For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

¹⁵For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

¹⁶For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

¹⁷Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

¹⁸Therefore comfort one another with these words.

These are comforting words indeed, especially in this time of hatred and defiance of Jesus and His flock.

There are two types of resurrected dead here. The first are those that did good deeds. Now this does not mean that salvation is based on what we do (our works). In the original Greek, the word “deeds” is not explicitly there. In essence the Greek states “the one who produces the good [good is plural here]” and “the one who executes/practices/accomplishes the evils”. We are known for what we produce. If we produce good, that good comes from our heart. If we practice evil and accomplish uselessness, that too comes from our heart. For Matthew 15:18 says:

¹⁸“But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.

and Mark 7:21 says:

²¹“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,

and Luke 6:45 says:

⁴⁵“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

Understand that these are the outward signs of our inward heart. Jesus sees our hearts more clearly than even we do. Upon this we will be judged righteously by the only perfect judge, Jesus. How do we know that Jesus is the perfect judge? Well, He does not seek His own will in judgement. Rather, He seeks the Father’s will in all judgement. A human judge who seeks even a tiny bit of his/her own will is subject to bias in their judgement. However, consider the Judge (I’m thinking of Jesus here) who is able to perfectly and fully give up any and all of His own will in order to seek out the will of the righteous One. Any judgement from Jesus is not only directly from the Father but is also in perfect agreement and harmony with the Father. Therefore, if you consider God holy, righteous, perfect, and just then you will also know that Jesus’ judgements are likewise holy, righteous, perfect, and just. The religious elite knew this of God but denied Jesus.

John 5:31:

³¹“If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.

But Jesus does not just end His own testimony here. He goes a step farther and says don’t believe my words alone. He says to believe all that testifies about Him. Since others were not believing in Jesus’ testimony of Himself, He brought forth witnesses to testify for Him. The following three sections present a unique and truthful testimony of who Jesus is.

John 5:32–35:

³²“There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which he gives about Me is true.

³³“You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth.

³⁴“But the testimony which I receive is not from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved.

³⁵“He was the lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.

The first to take the witness stand is John the Baptist. John the Baptist gave authentic, truthful, first-hand testimony of who Jesus was…”Behold, the Lamb of God” as we studied in John 1. The religious elite even came to interrogate John the Baptist personally. John, no matter what, always gave faithful testimony of who Jesus was going so far as to even convince his own disciples to follow Jesus rather than himself.

John the Baptist’s testimony was widely received by the people and his disciples grew. (that is, until Jesus arrived and was authenticated as the true Messiah and Son of God by the Father Himself) Then when the religious elite came to interrogate John the Baptist, even they could not refute or silence him. John the Baptist’s testimony held up to scrutiny.

John 5:36:

³⁶“But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.

The second to take the witness stand are the mighty works that Jesus performed. To be certain, Jesus performed many miracles and signs, but Jesus did something even more mighty than that. He forgave sins as only God can do. He not only brought the physically dead to life but also (and more importantly) brought the spiritually dead to life. He brought people to an everlasting life through hearing His voice. The loving voice of the head Shepherd who calls His sheep to Himself.

This testimony is even greater than the testimony of John the Baptist. This was not just the testimony of words but of the omnipotent power of God Himself.

John 5:37–47:

³⁷“And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form.

³⁸“You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.

³⁹“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;

⁴⁰and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.

⁴¹“I do not receive glory from men;

⁴²but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves.

⁴³“I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him.

⁴⁴“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?

⁴⁵“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.

⁴⁶“For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.

⁴⁷“But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

 

The last witness to take the stand is the God-breathed Scriptures. God the Father who, through His Holy Spirit, enabled the writers of the OT to produce the Scriptures. These very words from God testify of Jesus.

To be sure, the Father did testify about Jesus when John the Baptist baptized Him, from Mark 1:11:

¹¹and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

However, God’s own word (the Scriptures) testify about Jesus throughout. And the Scriptures were available to the Jewish religious elite as well as the Jewish people. So there was no argument to be made that they could not have known who Jesus was.

Now you’re probably saying, “Wait one minute, Jesus just said that no one has heard God’s voice at any time.” How does that reconcile with Mark 1:11 that I just mentioned? The key to reconciling what seems to be an error in God’s infallible word is found in verses 38-47. These verses that follow verse 37 specifically focus on God’s word (the Scriptures). Overall, this section focuses on the written word of God, not actually seeing or hearing God. Verse 37 is a more general statement focused at the Jewish population in general. No one had heard or seen the Father, but they did have the very words of God to know Him.

Additionally, if we look up this word “heard” in a Bible dictionary we get some more understanding of the nuances of this word. From the Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon:

191 ἀκουστός, ἀκούω [akouo /ak·oo·o/] v. A root; TDNT 1:216; TDNTA 34; GK 200 and 201; 437 occurrences; AV translates as “hear” 418 times, “hearken” six times, “give audience” three times, “hearer” twice, and translated miscellaneously eight times. 1 to be endowed with the faculty of hearing, not deaf. 2 to hear. 2b to attend to, consider what is or has been said. 2c to understand, perceive the sense of what is said. 3 to hear something. 3a to perceive by the ear what is announced in one’s presence. 3b to get by hearing learn. 3c a thing comes to one’s ears, to find out, learn. 3e to give ear to a teaching or a teacher. 3f to comprehend, to understand.¹

¹ James Strong, Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon (Woodside Bible Fellowship, 1995).

From this we see that this Greek word for hearing can mean either to physically hear with the ears or to understand, comprehend, learn, and perceive. So in the context that follows (verses 38-47), we get the clear sense that the Jewish population was not comprehending/understanding the scriptures as they should. Their ears were (metaphorically) closed, and they could not perceive what the Scriptures spoke of Jesus. For how can anyone have God’s word abiding in them if they cannot even understand it?

The written word is all one needs to believe and have everlasting life. That is why we are to be given over to the preaching, teaching, and public reading of His word…this living word that produces real faith.