John 5:23

Ver. 23. And what is the Father's will in transferring to Jesus the two highest attributes of divinity, making alive, judging? He wills that the homage of adoration which humanity renders to Him should be extended to the Son Himself. “The Father loveth the Son” (John 3:35); this is the reason why He wishes to see the world at the feet of the Son, even as at His own. “The equality of honor,” says Weiss, “must correspond with the equality of action.” The word τιμᾷν, to honor, does not directly express the act of adoration, as Reuss remarks. But in the context (καθώς as), it certainly denotes the religious respect of which the act of adoration is the expression. And in claiming for His person this sentiment, in the same sense in which it is due to the Father, Jesus authorizes, as related to Himself, worship properly so called, comp. John 20:28; Philippians 2:10 “that every knee should bow at the name of Jesus;” and the Apocalypse throughout.

The Father is not jealous of such homage. For it is He whom the creature honors in honoring the Son because of His divine character; as also it is to God that honor is refused, when it is refused to the Son. There is a terrible warning for the accusers of Jesus in these last words of the verse. Jesus throws back upon them the charge of blasphemy; they must learn these zealous defenders of the glory of God that when they accuse Him, Jesus, as they are doing, because of the miracle which He has performed in the midst of them, it is God to whom the outrage which they inflict upon Him is addressed, and that the treatment to which they subject this weak and poor man touches the Father Himself, who places Himself in closest union with Him. This menacing close of John 5:23 is an anticipation of the severe application which is to terminate the discourse (John 5:41-47).

The second cycle John 5:21-23 was a still very general development of the abridged cycle John 5:19-20. In the third cycle, John 5:24-29, Jesus now shows the progressive historical realization of these two works of making alive and judging, which the Father has conferred upon Him. Until this point (John 5:21-23) He has attributed them to Himself only under the abstract form of mere competency. Now we behold this twofold power of saving and judging really in exercise, first in the spiritual sphere, John 5:24-27; then, in the outward domain, John 5:28-29.