John 5 - CSB Tony Evans Study Bible

5:6 Jesus’s question suggests that some people have been stuck in their negative circumstances for so long that they have given up hope that things can ever change. God’s work occurs in cooperation with our will. Keep hoping.

5:7 The healing was so near and yet so far away. The man’s situation was hopeless, and he had no one to offer him aid.

5:8-9 Wherever your bed is, that’s where your home is. Thanks to Jesus, this man would no longer be sleeping in a place of despair. It was time to roll up his mat and find a new home.

5:10 The Jewish religious leaders considered picking up a mat to be work (!) and, therefore, prohibited on the Sabbath. They had taken a divine command that provided physical rest for God’s people and erroneously turned it into a human restriction on acts of mercy.

5:11 These words indicate that the healed man preferred to listen to the one with the miraculous power, not leaders who were just practicing religion! He had lain there for thirty-eight years, and the religious leaders had never aided in his healing.

5:14 The man had been stuck because of sin in his life. Sin carries long-term consequences.

5:15-16 While Jesus was changing lives, the leaders were playing religion. No matter how much religious activity you are engaged in, if you’re not in the life-changing business, then you’re not in the business of Jesus.

5:17-18 No matter which day of the week it was, God the Father was engaged in kingdom work; therefore, his Son was too. As John himself has already said, “The Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). But as far as the leaders were concerned, Jesus’s claims were blasphemy.

5:19 The point here is that healing the man on the Sabbath was not blasphemy but an act of God.

5:20-21 The Father loves the Son is a subtle warning to the religious leaders. The one whom they wanted to kill (5:18) was dearly loved by God the Father. And because of that, the Father would show him greater works than these so that they would be amazed (5:20); these works included raising the dead (5:21). So in a way, Jesus was telling them, “You think you’re upset now because I healed a paralytic? Wait until you see what I do with Lazarus!” (see 11:1-44).

5:22 Jesus Christ has been made the final Judge of all humankind. Whether or not one accepts Jesus, then, has eternal consequences.

5:23 To reject Jesus is to reject God altogether. There’s no true religion without Jesus Christ.

5:24 To believe in the Son is to pass from death (eternal separation from God) to life (eternal relationship with God). Faith in God’s promise through Jesus Christ guarantees eternal life to all who believe in him for it.

5:25-29 Whether people experience eternal life or condemnation after the resurrection will depend entirely on their response to Jesus in this life. If they believed in Jesus, they will have done good things because of the eternal life in them. If they did not believe in Jesus, they will have done wicked things because of the lack of life in them (5:29).

5:30 Everything Jesus did, he did at the initiative of his Father. He did not seek [his] own will but the Father’s. That, in fact, is what a life looks like when it is completely yielded to God.

5:36 The miraculous signs Jesus performed were evidence that he was the Messiah sent from the Father. So in essence, Jesus told them, “My deeds are my validation.” Everything had been done before their eyes.

5:39-40 A person can diligently study the Scriptures (the written Word) and still miss Jesus (the living Word). Knowing God’s written Word is absolutely essential, but if your knowledge of it doesn’t lead you to the living Word, then you have completely missed the point. This sad fact was illustrated when Jewish leaders told the wise men that Scripture foretold the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem, but they never bothered to make the trip to worship him (see Matt 2:1-6).

5:42-43 Jesus confronted the religious leaders with hard truth: You have no love for God within you (5:42). Why? Because Jesus had come in his Father’s name, but they wouldn’t accept him (5:43). They thought they loved God, claimed they loved God, boasted that they loved God. But they were unwilling to accept Jesus. Therefore, their professed love for God was a fraud. You simply can’t have the Father without the Son. You can’t have God without Jesus Christ.

5:44 Unconcerned with pleasing God, they sought to please each other.

5:45-47 Jesus told the religious leaders that Moses, the very person whose words they were reading in the Old Testament, would accuse them before God because they hadn’t learned from him (5:45). Moses, Jesus told them, wrote about me (5:46). For example, Moses (who authored the books of Genesis–Deuteronomy) wrote about the Passover lamb (see Exod 12:1-28), and John the Baptist had identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36). Moses also wrote that God would “raise up . . . a prophet” like him from among God’s people (Deut 18:15; see John 6:14; Acts 7:37). If they wouldn’t believe Moses, they certainly weren’t going to believe Jesus (John 5:47).