Saturday, March 6: John 5-

The case for Jesus continues to build.  Through a long statement, closing the chapter, Jesus clarifies that God the Father has sent Him and to believe in Him [Jesus] is to have eternal life. Jesus speaking to Pharisees, men who study the scriptures, makes it clear that if a person believes the scriptures, then they will believe in Jesus because the scriptures point to Him.

It was a comment inserted by John at the beginning of Jesus’ monologue that caught my attention. Verse 18: For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Who is Jesus? Is he merely a good man, an influential teacher and miracle worker? No he is God. John made this astounding claim with his gospel opening, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God… the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us… (John 1:1 &14). Here in chapter 5 John tells us that the Jews understood that Jesus was equating himself with God, thus they would naturally seek to kill him since it was blasphemy to equate oneself with God.

A person cannot read the NT and come to a conclusion other than it points to Jesus being God.

As a Christian I take Jesus’ divinity for granted, it is my faith starting point. To my surprise and delight reading that Jesus was equal with God, i.e. Jesus was God, caused me to play out that equation in my mind…

·       If Jesus is God then every word he spoke was true…

·       If Jesus is God then I honestly can put my faith in him…

·       If Jesus is God then what he says he will do, he can and will do…

·       And so my thoughts tumbled with the enormity of the statement Jesus is God.

God, for the Jews, was not some super-human who had faults and weaknesses like Greek gods. Not at all. For Jews God was absolutely supreme, creator of everything… the heavens and the earth and anything else that there might be. For the Jews there is God and then there is everything else which God created.

Jesus is claiming to be that God. And for a few minutes this morning I pondered the ramifications of the truth that Jesus is God… it was manna for my soul.

O, Jesu,s I worship You. O,Jesus, I adore You. O, Jesus, one person of the revealed God head, I pledge to follow You. To whom else could I go? Who compares with You?  No one, no where. You alone will I follow and worship. Amen.