And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. 21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 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.
25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, 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. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
The Son Gives Life
One of the predominant themes of our passage today is the theme of the Son giving life to the dead. So the main focus of our time today will be on what that life is that the Son gives, it’s various characteristics, and its significance.
It is a Spiritual Life
The first thing to note about the life that the Son gives is that it is a Spiritual life. That is the type of resurrection life that we are talking about today.
In verse 19-29, the dead coming to life is mentioned several times. However, not every reference to resurrection in this section is a reference to the same resurrection. There are two different resurrections. One, is a spiritual resurrection, that we will look at today. The other is the general resurrection at the end of history, that we will look at next week. I will now make the case that verse 20-26 has the spiritual resurrection in view.
- Verse 21, “the Son gives life to whom he will.” Not all receive this resurrection; only those whom “he wills.” Thus it cannot be the general resurrection.
- Verse 24, whoever believes, “has passed from death to life.” The resurrection in view is a present reality. The resurrection of the dead at the end of history has not happened yet.
- Time indicators in verse 25, “an hour is…now here…” When Jesus spoke these words, the hour was now there, when the dead shall rise. It certainly was not the end of the world. Thus, it is spiritual resurrection – the new birth – that was taking place.
- Time indicator in verse 28, it is only future.
- Verse 28, all are resurrected, those who have done good to life, those who have done evil to judgment – not simply those “whom he will.”
Having established that this is spiritual resurrection Jesus speaks of in our verses of consideration today, let us dwell upon what it means to be given spiritual life.
We are dead in sins. Why? In Genesis, when God created Adam and Eve, he told them that they may eat of every tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that they ate of it, they would surely die. Well what happens? They disobey God, they eat from the tree that they were not to eat from, but they don’t die…not physically anyway, for hundreds of years. But they did die that very day. They died spiritually. In Adam all died. We are born in iniquity, dead in our trespasses and sins. In sin did my mother conceive me, the Psalm says. The wages of sin is death, Romans tells us.
Being spiritually dead in our sins, it is thus necessary that if we are to love and obey God, that we must be brought back from the dead, spiritually. We must be given life to God in Christ, raised from our sins to the righteousness of Christ. It is a life only Jesus can give. It is a work of the Spirit as Jesus explained to Nicodemus in chapter 3 concerning the new birth. Indeed, it is a miracle and nothing less; a miracle of divine grace.
The life that the Son gives is a Greater Work
Jesus raised a lame man to walk, next he will raise dead people to life. If the Jews had a problem with Jesus healing on the Sabbath, they are really going to have a problem when dead people start hearing the Voice of God and come out of the grave. And they did. One of the things we see in the book of Acts, as people are converted to Christ is the persecution they received from the Jews. In fact, Saul, who himself persecuted Christians, was converted, and brought to life, and then he himself at one point has to escape in a basket out of a window because the Jews wanted to kill him. It’s interesting that Jesus says they will marvel at His greater work. And I can’t help but think that at least part of it is a marveling of judgment – to marvel and yet be hardened all the more in sin and rejection of the Son of God sent from Heaven.
Salvation is a greater miracle than healing the lame, turning water into wine, and giving sight to the blind. Indeed, those things are signs that point to the greater work of spiritual resurrection. In fact, without new life in Christ, all other miracles are but vanity. We love to marvel at the miracles and long for God to do such things, but do we marvel at the greater work that He is doing right in front of us when sinners comes to Christ and the spiritually dead are raised to new life in Christ?
The life that the Son gives is a Sovereign Work (v. 21, he gives life “to whom he will.”)
In talking about the Son giving life, Jesus hasn’t totally switched topics. He is still endeavoring to show His deity and authority. The Old Testament, the terms in which the Jews would have been thinking, presupposed that the raising of the dead belonged to God alone to do. We won’t get into the story, but just one example of this presupposed belief we see in 2 Kings 5:7 where it says, “…when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?’” So you see the presupposed belief is that life and death, and indeed health and healing, belongs for God to do. Now you may think of how Elijah raised a boy from the dead, but of course that was rightly seen as an instrument used by God. But here, Jesus goes beyond that of Elijah, saying, “the Son gives life to whom he will.” This is no mere instrumentality. It is divine sovereignty. The Jews certainly would’ve caught the weight of this – for only God can give life to whom He will!
This is certainly a great statement of the sovereignty of God in salvation and the doctrines of grace, but I see the main intent and offense to the original hearers, was that this sovereignty belonged exclusively to God. So you can see the claim that Jesus is making. In this, we can see that the Bible assumes God’s sovereign right to save whom He will. In reality, if we believe that Jesus is God, then that means we ought to believe that He sovereignly gives life to whom He will, because that’s what the Bible teaches about God.
Just as Jesus chose one man out of the crowd at Bethesda, so Jesus gives life to whom he will.
As A. W. Pink reminds us, “He does not quicken the worthy, for there are none. He does not quicken those who seek quickening, for being dead in sin, none begin to seek until they are quickened. The Son quickeneth whom he will…”
The life that the Son gives is Eternal Life (v. 24)
Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What we lost in the garden due to sin, we gain in Christ. Upon sin we earn death, but upon Christ we are given eternal life. Jesus does not give merely a physical or temporary life, but He gives eternal life – life forever, thus restoring us to the purpose for which we were created – to be with God forever.
The life that the Son gives is Present Reality (v. 24, “has eternal life,” “has passed from death to life.”)
So not only do we have eternal waiting for us in the future, but we currently possess it. It is a present reality in Christ. We are not waiting for the general resurrection to given eternal life at the end of history and consummation of all things. The true believer has life already, and already has eternal life, and already has passed from death to life, even before they experience the resurrection of the dead at the second coming.
One of the amazing things about the life that the Son gives, that we often don’t appreciate as we ought, is that it doesn’t keep us waiting till the end. We are justified now. We are raised to life now. Eternal life starts now – at conversion. We cannot die. Though we die, we are yet alive. We already have eternal life in Christ, even though we have yet to die and resurrect again physically. This is how we “do not come into judgment.”
One theologian, Herman Ridderbos says this, “…for one who hears his word and believes God who sent him eternal life has already begun, the judgment of God has lost its fearsomeness, and death has been superseded. What makes this pronouncement special is, of course, that the final decision that determines the life and future of human beings and that is spoken of here and in what follows in eschatological language is transferred from the future to the present, in accordance with the word that Jesus speaks as the one sent by the Father and with the answer people give to it. The distinction between present and future is not thereby canceled out, but eternal life does begin qualitatively in the present. Death also gains a different content than what it usually has for humans: already in this life it is experienced as a passage to true eternal life and thus loses its all-threatening, ultimately critical character for the future. It is no longer ahead of a person but behind him or her.”
I wonder in what ways it would affect the way we live here and now, if we grasped all the more the present reality our eternal life is.
The life that the Son gives Comes from the Son (v. 26)
Verse 26 shows us why and how the Son is able to give life to whom He will – because He has life in Himself. Humans are creatures who derive their life from somewhere outside of themselves – namely, God. Again we see the Jews hatred for Jesus because in saying that He has life in Himself, He of course is calling Himself God, making Himself equal with God, for God is the only source of life. Again recall back to the beginning of John’s gospel, John 1:4, speaking of the eternal Word of God, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
This life that we derive from the Son is both physical and spiritual. Just as in creation, as creatures, we derive our physical life from God because He is the creator of all, so our spiritual life comes from Him alone, for in Him is life, and His life is the light of men.
Conclusion
I find the emphasis on hearing compelling. Verse 24, “…whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life…” Verse 25, “…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.”
We know Romans 10:17, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing the Word of Christ.”
It is interesting to me that God uses the means of hearing the Word to bring about Faith and to bring about the dead to life. For in one sense, it was by hearing that man fell and sinned entered the word. Of course hearing, not the word of Christ, but the word of the dragon. When the ancient serpent of old entered the garden where our first parents dwelt, he hissed lies and falsehood into their ears. Eve, heard him out, and allowed the lies to have life in her mind. Adam should’ve never gave the serpent a hearing. Upon discovering the entrance of the dragon into the garden, Adam should have exercised his dominion authority by slaying the dragon and defending his wife and land. Yet he did not. He let the dragon speak, and he spoke lies that brought down the paradise built for man, bringing death – spiritual and physical – into the world. Because of their sin, all mankind fell in Adam, and is born locked in the tombs of spiritual death. But the Gospel message is that Christ, the Last Adam, the truer and better Adam, comes into the world, as the Word Incarnate – He is the incarnate speech of God! He came into a world that was chained in darkness, lies, and death; and He came speaking. He came with a voice. He came with a voice that spoke life, and those who lay dead in unbroken chains of death, had their chains unbroken by the Word of Life and resurrected from the dead. Since that time about 2,000 years ago, many more millions, if not billions, have come to life, as The Light has come into the world and the darkness has not, and cannot, overcome The Light. The voice of the Son of God goes forth still today, and will continue to go forth, giving Life to the dead. By a false word we died, but by The Better and Truer Word we live.
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