Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent, April 3, 2025
John 5, 31-47
Jesus said to the Jews: “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true. But there is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he gives on my behalf is true. You sent emissaries to John, and he testified to the truth. I do not accept human testimony, but I say this so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light. But I have testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf. But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you, because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life. I do not accept human praise; moreover, I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I came in the name of my Father, but you do not accept me; yet if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
“I say this so that you may be saved.”
During the Lord’s second visit to Jerusalem during the Passover he healed a man, on the Sabbath, who had suffered from being lame for thirty-eight years. Jesus seems to have singled him out to cure because the man had lain in wait of healing longer than the others around him at the Pool near the Sheep Gate, famed for its curative powers. The man, in his helplessness, appeared as the most pathetic of his neighbors. Jesus came, unasked, and healed him. The man repaid the Lord’s gracious gift of health to him by informing on him to the Jewish leaders who had made obvious to him their enmity towards Jesus.
The confrontation with the Jews that followed the cure, part of which is recounted in today’s Gospel Reading, shows the episode’s true meaning. First, he shows that he has two witnesses establishing his right to cure on the Sabbath. First, John the Baptist, the bright and shining lamp for whom even they, the Jewish leaders, had a certain amount of respect: “You were content to rejoice in his light.” Second, and far more importantly, the Father, who validated the claims of Jesus through his miracles, for no one could perform miracles unless the Father granted him the power to do so: “These works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.” The fact that the Jewish leaders reject these miracles, which point to Jesus as having been sent by the Father, proves that they reject the Father himself: “But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you.” The Lord even adds a third witness, Moses, who wrote about him in Deuteronomy 18, 15.
Unasked, the Son of God came down from heaven and addressed fallen humanity, asking if it wished to get well. Humanity admitted that it could not help itself. The Son commanded humanity to rise from its misery and shame, and to walk. It did so and went off without offering thanks. Later, humanity, complacent in its new-found health, showed its ingratitude, aiding those who persecuted the Son. Even so, the Son does not take back his gift of health nor does he turn vengeful on those who persecuted him. Instead, he showed the intensity of his love for them through engaging with him and trying to convince them of the salvation he held out to them. It is as though the Son was arguing with the lame man to get up so that he could walk, and the lame man resolutely asserting that he would rather lie in his filth than to receive anything from Jesus.
Many well-meaning folks discard the belief in an eternal hell as an artifact of primitive times which humanity has outgrown, or that a most merciful God and the existence of hell are incompatible. But those who follow Christ should beware the pride and the false sentiment in these notions, as we can see for ourselves that not everyone will want to receive the Lord’s mercy, and that God will not force it upon anyone who rejects it. There is a hell and, to go by the Lord’s own words, “many there are who enter in” (Matthew 7: 13).