John 5:20

Ver. 20. The relation of the Father to the Son: For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that he himself doeth, and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. ”

The co-operation of the Son in the divine work rests (for) upon the infinite love of the Father, which conceals nothing from the Son. The term φιλεῖν expresses tenderness (to cherish), and suits perfectly the intimacy of the relation here described. It was otherwise in John 3:35, where the word ἀγαπᾶν, which indicates the love of approbation and, in some sort, of admiration (ἄγαμαι), was found; because the question there was of the communication of omnipotence. The showing of the Father corresponds to the seeing of the Son (John 5:19), and is, at once, its condition and consequence; the condition: for the Father unveils His work to the Son, to the end that He may be able to know it and co-operate in it; the consequence: for it is this constant and faithful co-operation of the Son which causes this revelation incessantly to renew itself.

But the initiation and co-operation of the Son in the Father's work are subjected to a law of progress, as is suitable to the truly human state of this latter. This is what the end of the verse expresses: And he will show him greater works than these. The expression: whatsoever things, in John 5:19, gave a hint already of that gradual extension of the domain of the works which the Father entrusts to the Son. Reuss thinks that the question is of two different kinds of works, those of the Father appertaining to the outward domain, and those of the Son to the spiritual domain, and that the term greater refers to the superiority of the second to the first. But the bodily resurrection is also the work of the Son (John 5:28-29), and Jesus could not, in any case, say that the Son's works are greater than the Father's. The word ὁμοίως, in like manner, would suffice to refute this explanation. Τούτων, than these, evidently refers to the healing of the impotent man and to the miracles of the same sort which Jesus had performed and of which the Jews were then witnesses. This is only the beginning. In proportion as the work of Jesus grows in extent and force, the Father's work will pass more completely into it; and thus will the saying of Isaiah be realized: “ The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. ” The word will show declares that the Father will give Him at once the signal and the power to accomplish these greater and still greater works. Comp. Revelation 1:1: “the revelation which the Father gave to Him.”

The words which close the verse: to the end that ye may marvel, are carefully weighed. Jesus refrains from saying: to the end that ye may believe. He knows too well to whom He is speaking at this moment. The question here, as Weiss says, is of a surprise of confusion. We might paraphrase thus: “And then there will truly be something at which you may be astonished.” The Jews opened their eyes widely as they saw an impotent man healed: How will it be when they shall one day, at the word of this same Jesus, see mankind recovering spiritual, and even corporeal life! One cure astonishes them: What will they say of a Pentecost and a resurrection of the dead! This somewhat disdainful manner of speaking of miracles would be strange enough on the part of an evangelist who was in the whole course of his narrative playing the part of an inventor of miracles. ῞Ινα, in order that, expresses not only a result (ὥστε), but a purpose. This astonishment is willed by God; for it is from it that the conversion of Israel will issue at the end of time. In view of the wonders produced by the Gospel among mankind, Israel will finally render to the Son that homage, equal to what it renders to the Father, of which John 5:23 speaks.

These two verses are one of the most remarkable passages of the New Testament in the Christological point of view. De Wette finds in the expression, of Himself (John 5:19), an exclusive and scarcely clear reference to the human side of the person of Jesus; for, after all, if Jesus is the Logos, His will is as divine as that of the Father, and there can be no contrast between the one and the other, as the expression, of Himself, would imply. This defect in logic is found, according to his view, again in the words of John 16:13, where this same expression, of Himself, is hypothetically applied to the Holy Spirit. According to Lucke, it is only a popular way of presenting the human appearance of Jesus, excluding the divine element. Reuss (t. II., pp. 438ff.) brings out in this passage heresy upon heresy, if the Logos theory, as it has been presented in the Prologue, is taken as the norm of the Johannean thought. According to him, indeed, God is conceived, in the Prologue, as a purely abstract being, who does not act in space and time except through the intermediation of the Logos, who is perfectly equal to the Father, “the essence of God reproduced, so to speak, a second time and by itself.” According to our passage, on the contrary, the Father does a work for Himself (ἃ αὐτὸς ποιεῖ), which He reveals to the Son, and in which He gives Him a share, which is entirely contradictory. According to this latter view indeed, the Father acts directly in the world without making use of the Logos, and the Son is relatively to the Father in a condition of subordination, which is incompatible with “the equality of the two divine persons” taught in the Prologue.

The judgment of Lucke and de Wette undoubtedly strikes against the conception of the person of Jesus which is called orthodox, but not that of the New Testament and of John in particular. John does not know this Jesus, now divine, now human, to which the traditional exegesis has recourse. He knows a Logos who, once deprived of the divine state, entered fully into the human state, and, after having been revealed to Himself at the baptism as a divine subject, continued His human development, and only through the ascension recovered the divine state. By His human existence and His earthly activity, He realized in the form of becoming, the same filial relation which He realized in His divine existence in the form of being. This is the reason why all the terms employed by Jesus the showing of the Father, the seeing of the Son, the expressions “ cannot ” and “ of Himself ” apply to the different phases of His divine and human existence, to each one according to its nature and its measure. To understand the “ of Himself,” in our passage and John 16:13, it is only necessary to take in earnest, as the Scripture does, the distinction of persons in the divine being; if each one of them has His own life, from which He may draw at will, there is no inconsequence between the passages cited.

As to the judgment of Reuss, the idea, which he finds in the Prologue, of an abstract divinity, purely transcendental and without any possible relation to the world, is not that of John; it is only that of Philo. On the contrary, God is, in the Prologue, a Father full of love both for His Son (John 5:18) and for the children whom He Himself begets by communicating to them His own life (ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννηθησαν, were begotten of God, John 5:13). He can thus act directly in the world and, consequently, associate His Son, made man, in His work on the earth. John 5:19-20 are in contradiction to the theory of Philo, but not to the conception of the evangelist. It is exactly the same with regard to the subordination of the Son. The true thought of the Prologue is exactly that of our two verses, 19, 20; the dependence, and free dependence, of the Son (ἧν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, John 5:1). This conception of the Logos undoubtedly, also, contradicts that of Philo, a fact which only proves one thing: that it is an error to make the evangelist the disciple of that strange philosopher, while he is simply the disciple of Jesus Christ. (Introd., pp. 127ff.)

If we wish to form a lively idea of the relation of the work of Jesus to that of the Father, as it is presented here, the best way is to enter ourselves into a similar relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall then have this experience: that the more the faithful servant heartily participates in the work of his Master, the more also does the latter give him understanding in respect to the totality and the details, and the more does He make him capable of realizing it. The agent grows with the work, as the work grows with the agent. The following are well-known examples of each of the two things: Oberlin, his eyes fixed upon Christ as Christ had His eyes fixed upon the Father, discerning the point which the divine work has reached among the inhabitants of Ban-de-la-Roche and what the continuation of this work demands; John Bost, contemplating so many sufferings unrelieved on the soil of France; Felix Neff, shocked at the sight of the deserted Churches of the High Alps; Wilberforce, feeling the chains of his enslaved brethren weigh upon his heart; Antoine Court, weeping over the ruins of the Reformed Church of France; Zinzendorf, finding himself suddenly in the presence of the persecuted Moravian emigrants who arrive in troops in his own lands...; in all these cases, the faithful workman applies his ear to the heart of his Master, discerns its beating, and then, rising up, acts. Christ's work, that work which He wishes to do, passes then, in a certain portion of it, into the hands of His servant. Thus it is, no doubt, that Christ gradually entered into possession of the divine work, even till it became His own in its totality (John 3:35). And having come to this point He gradually gives His own a part in it, who become the free sharers in His working, and He makes real to them that promise which is not without analogy to the saying which we are explaining: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that he who believeth in me, he also shall do the works which I do; he shall do even greater works than these (μείζονα τούτων), because I go to my Father” (John 14:12).

Jesus has just spoken of works, greater than His present miracles, which He will one day accomplish at the signal of His Father. He now explains what these works are; they are the resurrection and the judgment of mankind, John 5:21-29. This difficult passage has been very differently understood. I. Several Fathers, Tertullian, Chrysostom, later Erasmus, Grotius, Bengel, finally in recent times Schott, Kuinoel, Hengstenberg, etc., have applied the whole of the passage (except John 5:24) to the resurrection of the dead, in the strict sense, and to the last judgment. II. A diametrically opposite interpretation was held already by the Gnostics, then, among the moderns, by Ammon, Schweizer, B. Crusius, it is that which refers the whole passage, even John 5:28-29, to the spiritual resurrection and the moral judgment which the Gospel effects; (see also Reuss, in some sort). III. Finally, a third group of interpreters unite these two views in this sense, that they refer John 5:21-27 to the moral action of the Gospel, and John 5:28-29 to the resurrection of the dead in the proper sense. These are, Calvin, Lampe, and most of the moderns, Lucke, Tholuck, Meyer, de Wette, etc. IV. By taking account, with greatest care, of the shades of expression, we arrive at the opinion that the true progress of ideas is the following: In a first cycle, the thought of John 5:17 has been quite summarily developed (John 5:19-20). Then, the works of the Father which the Son is to accomplish are precisely stated in a second cycle (John 5:21-23); those of making alive and judging. Finally, in a third cycle (John 5:24-29) the thought makes a final advance, which brings it to its end, in the sense that John 5:24-27 apply to the resurrection and the spiritual judgment, and John 5:27-29 to the final judgment and the resurrection of the dead. This last view is, as it seems to me, nearly that of several modern commentators, such as Luthardt, Weiss and Keil.