The first two miracles of the Lord Jesus, recorded in John's Gospel, were performed in Galilee; the turning of water into wine, and the healing of the Nobleman's son (John 2 and John 4).
In John 5, the Lord healed the impotent man of Bethesda, and because this work of divine power was on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted Him. The answer of Jesus to His persecutors was: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." He would not allow the prejudice and persecution of the Jews to hinder Him in the work His Father had given Him to do. His Father's rest had been broken by the entry of sin into the world, and if the Father worked, the Son too would work; it was for this He had come into the world.
God was not working to repair the damage done to the old creation, for it had been irretrievably ruined with man in sin. He was working to bring into being an entirely new creation, into which defilement and sin could not come. It was to work for this new creation the Son of God had come: the only-begotten Son of the Father's bosom had become Man, and had entered into the place of obedience that was proper to Man, giving Himself over to arduous toil so that the will and counsels of the Father might be brought to fruition.
In speaking of the Father as He did, the Jews realised that He claimed equality with God, and for this also they persecuted Jesus; and in reply He said: "The Son can do nothing of Himself save whatever He sees the Father doing: for whatever things He does, these things also the Son does in like manner." The Son was so constituted in His being, nature and relationship with the Father, and in His great affection for Him, that even though found in Manhood, it was impossible for Him to act independently of the Father. All the activities and words of the Son were the expression of the thoughts and will of the Father. Even the manner in which the actions of the Son were expressed set forth the disposition of the Father.
Although the Son had not come to call attention to Himself, His Personal greatness could not be hidden. He had come to make the Father known in what He was, in the words He received from the Father, and in the works the Father had given Him to do. All that He said and wrought He attributed to the Father. But all being received from the Father spoke of the place He had in the Father's affections. So great was the Father's love for Him that He "shows Him all things which He Himself does." The Father had never shown such works to any other.
If the healing of the impotent man at Bethesda manifested that the Father was working in grace towards men, it also declared His thoughts of the One through whom the divine power had been expressed. The healing of a man who had been infirm for thirty-eight years was a notable sign of Jehovah's presence; but the Lord announced that there would yet be greater works to make the Jews wonder. No doubt the Lord was specially referring to the raising of Lazarus from the dead, as the following verse suggests: "For as the Father raises the dead … ": but these "greater works" may also include the feeding of the five thousand as recorded in the next chapter, and the opening of the eyes of the man who was born blind (John 9).
Having spoken of the "greater works," the Lord dwells on the three great subjects of resurrection, life and judgment. Opening these wonderful revelations the Lord says: "For even as the Father raises the dead and quickens them, thus the Son also quickens whom He will." The Father is presented as the source of resurrection and life; but He can say of Himself in John 11, when speaking to Martha: I am the resurrection and the life." What found its source in the Father was expressed Personally in the Son.
Resurrection, the raising of the dead, refers to the body, and quickening in this chapter to the communication of divine life to the soul. (There are Scriptures where quickening has another force. In 1 Peter 3:18 it is used in relation to the resurrection of the Lord; in 1 Corinthians 15:22 it may include both the raising of the dead and the changing of the living at the coming of the Lord; and in Romans 8:11 it refers to the changing of our mortal bodies into conformity to Christ's body of glory). Although the Lord speaks first of resurrection, He deals with the subjects of life and judgment before concluding with the resurrection of life and the resurrection of judgment in verse 29.
If the Son was manifesting the Father's grace before the Jews at that time, the time would come when He would sit upon the judgment seat, for all judgment had been committed to the Son that all might honour Him as they honour the Father. The Jews might pretend to honour the Father in claiming Him as their God, but their attitude to the Son exposed the hollowness of their pretence. Only those who honoured the Son truly honoured the Father who sent Him. Those who refused to honour the Son when He was on earth, and those who refuse to honour Him now, will assuredly honour Him when they stand before His judgment seat at the Great White Throne.
Those who heard the word spoken by the Son, and who believed on the Father who sent Him, honoured the Son; and they received eternal life, and would not come into judgment. If the works of the Son were works of power; His words were words of life. The Father had given Him a commandment as to what He should speak, and this commandment was life eternal. Such as Peter were drawn to the Lord by the Father through the words of eternal life that He spoke. Therefore did Peter say: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life." By nature man is in the realm of spiritual and moral death, but in receiving eternal life from the Son of God the believer passes out of the realm of death into the realm of life, in which are all the precious things of the Father and the Son.
The words of the Son were words of life, but the voice of the Son was a quickening voice, even as He said: "Verily, verily I say unto you, that an hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that have heard shall live" (verse 25). We are still in the hour of which the Lord then spoke, the hour of divine grace, when the powerful, heavenly voice of the Son of God communicates life to those who hear it. Before we heard that voice of love there was not a movement in our souls towards God; we were dead in sin; but on hearing His voice we were made to live in His own life, in a life in which we know Him, and in which we are alive to the Father, so as to be able to enter into His thoughts and respond to Him in praise and worship.
This divine life is communicated by the Son because He has life in Himself. He has life in Himself inherently, even as is written in John 1:4, "In Him was life," and this because of who He is in the greatness of His Person; but it is also His as having received it from the Father in the place of obedience into which He has come as Man. As receiving "life in Himself" from the Father, the Son exercises His life-giving power for the accomplishing of the Father's will.
But Jesus added: "And has given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is Son of Man." Men have taken the occasion of the Son's incarnation to deny His divine glory, but the Father has been careful to safeguard the honour and glory of the Son by putting all judgment into His hand. If the Son has become Man, it is before Man that men will bow in the judgment day. Those who heard those amazing words, revealing what had never before fallen on human ears, might well wonder. Every great moral and spiritual issue that could be raised was raised by the presence of the Son of God on earth; and all would be resolved by Him in whom they were raised. The final resolution of all would be before Him in judgment; the evil being committed to its own place for eternity; and what He secured for the Father's pleasure filling the new heavens and the new earth for evermore.
If the revelations concerning divine judgment made them wonder, the Jews heard words that would make them wonder more; "for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall go forth; those who have practised good, to the resurrection of life, and those that have done evil, to resurrection of judgment" (verses 28, 29). Those who have believed on the Son of God, who have heard His life-giving voice, will hear again His blessed voice, calling them to share in the resurrection of life. The Christian has now eternal life in his soul, and therefore can never perish; in the resurrection of life he will have eternal life in his body, when conformed to the image of Christ and brought to His likeness.
Before Felix, Paul said that the Jews believed in "a resurrection both of just and unjust" (Acts 24:15): they culled this from the Scriptures of the Old Testament. But the Lord, in Luke 14:14 indicated that the resurrection of the just was a separate resurrection. In John 5 the Lord not only reveals that He will raise all the dead, but that the portion of the just is a resurrection of life, while the resurrection of the unjust is a resurrection of judgment. From Revelation 20 we learn that there will be a thousand years between the first resurrection, the resurrection of life, and the resurrection of the wicked for judgment (Rev. 20:5-6).
If the Father raised the dead, the Son would also raise the dead; first manifesting His divine power in "greater works" at the resurrection of Lazarus; then rising Himself from among the dead, according to His announcement in John 2:19: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Soon He will come and raise His sleeping saints, and change the living ones, rapturing them to heaven to share His glory; and finally bringing all the wicked from their graves, or wherever they may be, to stand before Him at the Great White Throne of judgment.
How great is the work of the Son of God! Wherever we view Him, the glory, excellency and greatness of His Person are revealed: whether in displaying the Father's grace in His path of obedience, communicating that grace in power and love; or in raising the dead, declaring that He is Son of God with power; or in communicating eternal life to His own from the place of glory and exaltation the Father has now given Him; or in the solemn work of divine judgment that is necessary to close the history of man after the flesh, and of the old creation, before the introduction of the eternal scene where God is all in all.