John 5:24-30
“Notice what you notice.” Continuing with Jesus back in Jerusalem in John’s Gospel and the healing at the pool of Bethesda… Today’s first verse is one of those verses that David alludes to when he says that we can know that we are saved: 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. (v. 24) David is correct – the verse is clear, especially the present tense: “has eternal life”.
For the next few verses Jesus speaks of Himself in the third person, which is hard enough to follow for those of us reading it today – it must have been even more confusing to His first-century hearers. And if the Jewish leaders are already marveling (and angry) at Jesus equating Himself with His Father, they must be boiling at His claims of the dead hearing His voice and living again: …an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live (v. 25) and …an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out (vv. 28,29a). I wonder if these last words refer forward to His own crucifixion: And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:51-53)
Jesus in John’s Gospel appears much more cognizant of Who He is than in the Synoptics. My thoughts.
Slava Bohu!