John 5

Posted on Apr 12, 2017 in Bible (NT) in a Year |

Wednesday

Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath and gets the Jews all worked up and not only because of that, but Jesus also claims to be equal with God, by calling God his own Father.

  Jesus has authority over all things – even Sabbaths. This is hard for the Jews to comprehend and even more so is Jesus’ saying God is my Father. So as a Pharisee you have a choice to make. Believe what Jesus is saying, that God and He are equals – or disagree and accuse Jesus of blasphemy. Guess which one they chose? But here is what Jesus is saying, God and He are one. Because of this unity, Jesus could live no other way than the way God wanted Him to live. Because of our unity with Jesus, we should live no other way that the way Jesus wants us to live, there is this connection between us.

Jesus also says in verse 23, “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.” There is significant meaning in this verse. We cannot try to put all religions together and say that we are all worshipping the same God, when in fact if we are not worshipping Jesus, we are not worshipping the same God. The two are inseparable.

You may worship Buddha and say that he is God, but he just has a different name. Well, the truth is there is nothing the same about Buddha, first because he is not Jesus. If he is not Jesus, he is not our God. Buddha does not have the same attributes as our God does. The same is for any other “god” that people worship.

There is no other way to eternal salvation than through God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus has the authority give eternal life to be the source of life and to judge sin. All these things are attributes of the One True God.

Then there are those who decide that there is no God at all. That they can just live their life, ignore God and when they die, they will just go into nothingness (vs 29). Well, Jesus makes it plain in this chapter, that this isn’t what happens. And people who believe this will be greatly surprised when they are brought before Him.

The good news is that there are witnesses to the truths that Jesus speaks and we have also been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, who will help us understand all of this – we don’t have to figure it out on our own, we don’t have to rely on our own understanding.

Praising God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son and The Holy Spirit

Pastor Kathy