John 5:25-27 - the dead will hear

5:25

We now get yet another “truly, truly”. Jesus tells us that a time is coming, and is indeed now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and live. I think we have to take this as referring to the spiritually dead, which includes everyone! Jesus did raise some people from the dead, most notably Lazarus, but he was only raised back to his normal life and died again later. And the resurrection will happen at the end of time. Conversely, spiritually dead people did hear and respond to the words of Jesus and began a new life. Zacheus is one example. They heard, believed and were changed. And this has been going on throughout the globe ever since.

We need to listen to the voice of the Son of God. Remember also that at the transfiguration God told them listen to Jesus (Matt 17:5). John’s gospel is different in form from the synoptic gospels, but its content is entirely consistent with the other gospels.

5:26

Scientists have studied the origin of life. You may have heard of the “primordial soup”. It is now widely recognised that we haven’t got a clue how life began. Periodically we hear of reports on the news of a planet or planets having been discovered that are similar to earth, with the implication that they may contain life. These reports actually just show how desperate we are. We do not know how life began, we do not know what the probability of life being created is. So the notion that if a planet is similar to earth then it might contain life is nothing more than hopeful guesswork.

There is One who is the source of life, the giver of life, and that is God Himself. The Father has life in Himself. He is the starting point, the fundamental truth. All the verses we have had so far have expressed how the Father has shared all things with the Son, and so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself. That is why if we listen and believe Him we receive life. Remember that in Genesis God created by His word. The word of God is powerful.

5:27

As well as giving the Son the right to give life the Father has also given Him the right to judge. Too often we take a purely one dimensional view of Jesus, the world when it talks about Jesus focuses purely on His love and compassion. But Jesus is also about judgement. This is not just found in John’s gospel, Jesus talked a lot about judgement and hell in the synoptic gospels.

Here Jesus says that the reason the Father gave Him authority to judge was because He is the Son of Man. This is pointing back to Daniel 7:13,14. Prior to these verses in Daniel there has been the dream of the four beasts. These various beasts represent rebellion against God. Then Daniel sees a vision of a son of man “coming in the clouds from heaven”. The “Ancient of Days” (ie God) gave Him authority, glory and sovereign power. His kingdom was everlasting and is eternal. Jesus is this Son of Man.

As an aside, notice that the Father is always giving authority and power to others. He gives it to the Son, He also gave man authority over the earth. We rebelled and so lost authority, but we will reign with Jesus. The world speaks of God as being one holding onto power for His own sake, this is a lie of the devil, the truth is that God is a giving God.