Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life

 

 Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.  For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.  For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.  For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father.  He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.  Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.  For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.  Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth -- those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation."

 

- John 5:19–29 

 

On Saturday we read that there was a feast of the Jews [considered to be the Feast of Weeks, or Old Testament Pentecost], and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.  In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.  For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.  Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, "Do you want to be made well?"  The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me."  Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your bed and walk."  And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.  And that day was the Sabbath.  The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, "It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed."  He answered them, "He who made me well said to me, 'Take up your bed and walk.'"  Then they asked him, "Who is the Man who said to you, 'Take up your bed and walk'?"  But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place.  Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "See, you have been made well.  Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you."  The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.  For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.  But Jesus answered them, "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working."  Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.   

 Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.  For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.  For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.  For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father.  He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him."  My study bible comments on Christ's statement that the Son can do nothing of Himself.  It proves that His every act and word is in complete unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  In other words, Jesus is teaching that the Father and the Son are completely united in nature, will, and action.  So Christ the Son shares the divine attributes both of giving life and of executing judgment. 

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.  Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.  For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.  Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth -- those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation."   That the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God has two references, my study bible comments.  It refers both to the spiritually dead, who will find life in Christ; and it also refers to the physically dead, who will rise in the general resurrection.  Christ confirms this statement, it further explains, by raising Lazarus from the dead (11:38-44), before going to His won death.  These verses (vv. 24-30) are read at the funeral service of the Orthodox Church.  It confirms the same reward for those who fall asleep in faith.  Christ's judgment is based on both faith (he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me) and works (those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation).

Since so much depends upon faith in Christ's statements, perhaps it is a good idea to review the whole concept of what faith or belief is.  Jesus says, in verse 24, "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life."   This word, believes, translates a word in Greek that is derived from the word for "trust."   It's also given in an active form in the text, indicating a present active state of a person, "believing in the One who sent Me."  If we understand the verb "to trust," it gives us a different sense of what this faith is that Jesus is seeking than simply an intellectual acceptance of a premise or a set of statements or values.  He is not talking about a simple intellectual concept with which one either agrees or disagrees.  This word for "believe" is one that indicates that Jesus is talking about relationship.  If a spouse or loved one tells you something incredible, hard to believe, that has never occurred to yourself as possibility, where does one go in terms of belief or credibility?  Moreover, the statement is one made as witness -- it is a statement, in Christ's case, of something Christ has witnessed and knows as Son that we don't.  It's not a theory and it's not a strange idea He heard somewhere.  Again, going back to the idea of friend or spouse or loved one telling you a strange thing that person knows or has witnessed -- how do you believe or not?  It all goes back to trust.  It goes to a basic sense of the person who is revealing something to you that might be hard to conceive.  Do you trust that person?  How credible do you find them based on your relationship to them?  And this is what faith is with Christ, and the Greek word for "believe" used here.  How do you find trust in a person?  What sense within oneself is activated deep in the heart for trust?  This reveals not simply an intellectual assent to a set of ideas.  It is rather a question of depth of relationship, something coming from an inner place we don't always understand at all, but will sometimes make itself known and present to us.  This is where real faith comes from:  it is a connection deep in the soul.  Many times one might speak of a relationship to spouse or loved one on this basis:  there are people one knows one can trust, and there are others one does not.  This sense of trust comes from a depth that can feel almost instinctual, but is strongly linked to love, to a sense of what is intrinsically or deeply good.  In this sense, we understand faith to be that which draws us into trust in a Person (in this case, with a capital P).  It doesn't mean we already understand all things; it means that we are drawn, and will be drawn more deeply into the truth He offers.  It implies a sort of relationship that is always in the process of fulfillment and deeper reconciliation, in the same way that deep and significant human person-to-person relationships work.  Christ has spoken of Himself as a door, in John 10:9, "I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture."  To be actively believing is to enter through that door and to continue into that journey of faith it opens to us.  This is a continual process, one in which we might struggle with doubt, we might backslide, and which will always involve ongoing encounters with repentance.  But that is just part of what the "good fight of faith" is all about (1 Timothy 6:12).

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living

 The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying:  "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.  Now there were with us seven brothers.  The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother.  Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh.  Last of all the woman died also.  Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?  For they all had her."  Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.  For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.  But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?  God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."  And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.  Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"  Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'   This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

- Matthew 22:23-40

The readings this week are the ones that tell us what originally happened during what we commemorate as Holy Week.  Jesus is in the temple now, disputing with various authorities who pose Him questions.  Yesterday, we read that the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk.  And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men.  Tell us, therefore, what do You think?  Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"  But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, "Why do you test Me, you hypocrites?  Show Me the tax money."  So they brought Him a denarius.  And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?"  They said to Him, "Caesar's."  And He said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."  When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left Him and went their way.

  The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying:  "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.  Now there were with us seven brothers.  The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother.  Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh.  Last of all the woman died also.  Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?  For they all had her."  Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.  For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.  But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?  God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."  And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.  Here, my study bible says that when Jesus tells them "you are mistaken," He confirms that there will in fact be a resurrection, but not of the sort the Sadducees are thinking.  They simply consider that the resurrection will be a mere continuation of earthly life (with means an earthly kind of marriage), and therefore they mock the doctrine of resurrection with an absurd type of scenario here.  But really, they show their ignorance of the Scriptures, "which reveal a complete transfiguration of life in the resurrection, making such earthly questions irrelevant," says mys study bible.  Moreover, they fail to understand how Abraham and his sons can be alive in God even when they are physically dead.  My study bible adds that, "It is the clear teaching of Christ that the souls of the faithful who have departed this life are sustained before the face of God in anticipation of the final joy of the resurrection."

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.  Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"  Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'   This is the first and great commandment.   My study bible says, "The Pharisees had found 613 commandments in the Scriptures and debated about which one was central.  Jesus sets forth the first and the second, which constitute the grand summary of the Law.  Though the lawyer has come with malice to test the Lord, we know from St. Mark's account that this man is converted by Christ's answer (Mark 12:28-34)."

And the second is like it:  'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."   My study bible says that the second commandment should be understood as it is written:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself, or more clearly, "as being yourself."   Often it is misinterpreted to read, "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself," which actually destroys the force of the statement.  How much we love ourselves is not Christ's standard here by which He's calling us to love others.  "Rather," says my study bible, "we are called to love our neighbor as being of the same nature as we ourselves are, as being created in God's image and likeness just as we are.  As the Fathers teach, we find our true self in loving our neighbor."

Christ's answers come to both Sadducees and Pharisees, pulling these groups outside of their defined "territories," so to speak.  The Sadducees are a landowning class, a type of aristocracy, who will disappear after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.  The Pharisees as pointed out by my study bible, focus on the Scriptures and are experts of the Law and its commands -- this question they pose (Which is the great commandment of the Law?) is therefore a natural one for them to ask.  Even so, the Sadducees, presumably concerned with affairs of ownership, inheritance, property, ask a question that makes sense from their worldly point of view -- in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?   But in both of these cases, Jesus takes these questioners, and the point of view of the respective parties to which they belong, and turns them, or changes them.  More accurately in these two cases, He expands them.  The ways in which He does that exemplify the doctrine of love in the Kingdom of heaven -- more specifically, also linked to the eternal life of this Kingdom.  In the power of Resurrection, based in God's love for us, is also the power of life itself, concepts beyond the life we understand, adding power and potency to the meaning of life.  As He indicates, the answers to each question are already contained in the Scriptures, but they lack the imagination, and spiritual creativity, to see the things contained in Scripture that are really there, hidden in the words and awaiting the true interpreter.  (The references to the eternal life in God are found in Exodus 3, verses 6 and 14-15. The first and second commands are found at Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.)  Resurrection, although not entirely obvious, is already to be found as the keystone to the new doctrine of the Kingdom of heaven.  This is Resurrection in its varied and potent forms:  to change life, to transform it, to heal all manner of ailments, to re-think old solutions and find new answers, to escape from old dilemmas into new thinking (see yesterday's reading), and to focus on the love of God -- because of which Christ came into the world so that we may have eternal life (John 3:16).  Resurrection is therefore found in the very concepts of love and mercy that Christ brings to the picture, to expand on what was already there, to truly "fulfill" the Law, every jot and tittle, as He taught in the Sermon on the Mount.  Hidden in plain sight, in the Gospel of the Kingdom, is Resurrection; the road on which we are progressing, with Him.