5:23
Jesus does only what He sees the Father doing, but He is not a mere emissary. The Father has not delegated judgement to Him a mere task, it is so that “all may honour the Son, just as they honour the Father”. It is no wonder that the religious leaders accused Jesus of blasphemy, either He is the Son of God and we must believe in Him, or He was a blasphemer. The religious leaders rightly understood the magnitude of the claims that Jesus was making, but instead of believing in Him, they sought to crucify Him. “Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father”. Jesus Christ is not a religious option, it is absolutely essential that we honour Him. If we do not then any claim to be honouring God is bogus.
5:24
We now get another “Truly, truly”. If we hear Christ’s words and believe the One who sent Him then we have eternal life. This isn’t just something future, eternal life starts now, for the whole nature of our life changes. Notice that it says “Believe Him who sent Me”. Believing in Jesus is believing the Father. The Father sent the Son, the Father has declared that the Son is the only way to eternal life. The opinions of mere men count for nothing. Earlier Jesus had said that the Son of Man came not to condemn the world but to save it, yet He is the judge? How can this be? If we believe in the Son then we pass from death to life, and we do not come under judgement, for Christ has taken the judgement upon Himself on the cross. It is vital that we understand that “no condemnation” does not mean “no judgement at all”. There is judgement, the cross was God’s judgement on man’s sin. The wonder of the cross is that instead of the penalty of that judgement coming upon us, it was laid upon Jesus. So we can either believe in Christ and that He took the judgement in our place, or we trust in our own merits, which means we are under judgement.
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