John 5:24–27
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life. 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. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgement, because he is the Son of Man. [p 141]
Reading and believing
Perhaps it is clear enough by now what I meant at the beginning of this book when I said that John’s Gospel is intended to lead us personally to faith in Christ. That much we can see from the stories we have considered. We have not, of course, considered them all. There are a great many more and, especially if you have never done so, I encourage you to continue reading the entire Gospel for yourself and listen as God speaks his living word to you.
But how shall we know that the Gospel of John really is the word of God? Well, at least one thing is certain—you should not wait until you know it’s the word of God before you read it, or you’ll be like the man who said he would never go into the water until he learned to swim! If you want to know that it is the word of God, read it carefully and patiently, allowing God to do his life-giving work in your heart.
We should remember as well that the Gospel of John comes to us with the authority of Jesus Christ. If what it says is true, here is God our Creator trying to communicate with us, trying to talk to us personally, trying to reveal himself to us, so that through Jesus Christ we may enter into a personal relationship of faith and love with him. Not to be interested in discovering whether it is true or not; not to be interested in the possibility of hearing our Creator speak to us, might seem to indicate a strange, irrational predisposition on our part.
Of course I am not asking you to believe it before you start reading it. But I am asking you to read it, and then make up your mind whether it’s true or not. After all, that’s how you treat the news, isn’t it? You know before you start that some of the things your chosen news sources contain will be true, and some not. You certainly do not decide, before you read, to believe whatever they say. But that doesn’t stop you reading them. You have confidence enough in your own judgment to read what they say, to reflect on it and to make up your own mind whether it’s true or not. I’m asking you to do the same with the Gospel of John.
And if you do, Jesus Christ himself guarantees that, provided you are prepared to fulfil one condition, God will show you personally whether his claims are true or not. And the condition is this: ‘If anyone is willing to do God’s will’—that is, when he discovers what it is—‘he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or[p 142] whether I speak on my own’ (John 7:17 own trans.). He will find out, because, as he reads and studies and thinks about what Jesus taught, God will speak to his heart, and show him beyond shadow of doubt that what Jesus says is true.
The trouble lies, I suspect, with the condition: ‘If anyone is willing to do God’s will’. We sense before we start, that if God did show us the truth, it would carry profound implications for our way of life that we might not wish to face. So we would prefer to approach the whole thing impersonally, like we approach experiments in physics, without committing ourselves in advance to any practical implications. But we cannot treat God like that. We cannot come to the Almighty and say: ‘Yes, I would like to know whether you are there or not, and whether Jesus Christ is your Son or not. Please show me. But I would like you to understand that if you reveal yourself to me, I still am not necessarily prepared to do anything you might tell me to do.’ God has no time for spiritual dilettantes.
But if you are serious, and willing to do God’s will when you know it, then make the experiment. Read the Gospel of John seriously with an open mind, and Jesus Christ guarantees that God will show you what the truth is.
The story of the man who was born blind
Someone will be saying, perhaps, ‘My trouble is this: I don’t even know whether God exists. If I made the experiment you suggest, would I not be in danger of imagining I heard God speak to me, when it was only auto-suggestion? How would I recognize God, even if he did speak to me?’
Well, let me finish with one last story from John’s Gospel. You can find it in chapter 9. It is about a miracle Jesus did when he came across a man who had been born blind, and asked him if he would like to be given sight.
I don’t know if you have ever tried to explain to someone born blind what sight is, or what colour is like, or even to convince them that there are such things as light and colour, but it is mighty difficult! We could have well understood it, therefore, if the blind man had replied to Jesus, that he didn’t know what sight was, and considered all claims that there was such a thing as sight to be nonsense. That, at least, is how many people react these days when they hear Jesus[p 143] Christ say that he can give them spiritual sight; that he can give them eternal life, which is the faculty of knowing God personally (17:3).
Fortunately, however, the blind man said that if there was such a thing as sight he would like to have it. So Jesus Christ suggested to the man that there was an experiment he could perform, if he was willing to; and he guaranteed that if he performed it, he would receive sight.
Now the experiment Christ laid down seemed a strange experiment, as you will discover if you read the story. But the blind man was not one who was deliberately opposed to discovering the truth. He reasoned that Jesus Christ was no charlatan, nor lunatic either. If he said there was a thing called sight and that he could give it to anyone who wanted it, then it was worth making the experiment. There was nothing to lose. There was everything to gain. So he made the experiment, found by personal experience that it worked, and returned from the experiment seeing.
I recommend a similar experiment to you. Read John’s Gospel. As you read, say: ‘God, I’m not sure if you exist. But if you do, and if Jesus is your Son and he can give me, as he claims, eternal life, whatever that is, speak to me, reveal yourself to me, show me that Jesus is your Son.
And if you show me, I am prepared to do your will, whatever it turns out to be.’ And Christ guarantees that God will show you.
English (US) · 