John 5:25

Ver. 25. “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is,when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. ”

A new affirmation, which Christ draws from the depths of His consciousness. An immense perspective opens before Him. The great act of the spiritual resurrection of humanity dead in its sins, dead to God, is to begin at this hour, and it is through Him that it will be wholly accomplished! The identity of the formula which begins these two verses, John 5:24-25, “ verily, verily, I say unto you ” as well as the asyndeton, which makes the second the energetic reaffirmation of the first, would suffice to prove that John 5:25 cannot refer to a fact essentially different from the preceding, and how wrong it is for Keil to find included here at once the physical and the spiritual resurrection. Jesus has passed, at John 5:24, from the general idea of resurrection to that of the spiritual resurrection in particular; He does not return backward.

Only in order to make a picture, He borrows from the physical resurrection the images by which He wished to depict the spiritual work which is to prepare the way for it. He seems to allude to the magnificent vision of Ezekiel,in which the prophet, standing in the midst of a plain covered with dry bones, calls them to life, first, by his word, and then, by the breath of Jehovah. Thus Jesus abides here below the only living one in the midst of humanity plunged in the death of sin, and the hour is approaching in which He is going to accomplish with reference to it a work like that which God entrusted to the prophet with regard to Israel in captivity. There is here a feeling analogous to that which leads Him to say in the Synoptics: “ Let the dead bury their dead. ” The expression: The hour cometh, and is now come, is intended (comp. John 4:23) to open the eyes of all to the grandeur of this epoch which is passing and of that which is in preparation. Jesus says: the hour cometh; what He means is the sending of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37-39). But he adds: and is now come; for His word, which is spirit and life (John 6:63), is already preparing the hearts to receive the Spirit. Comp. John 14:17. For the expression: my word, Jesus substitutes: the voice of the Son of God. The teaching of Christ is thus presented as the personal voice of Him who calls sinners to life. The article οἱ before ἀκούσαντες (those who have heard), distinctly separates the spiritually dead into two classes: those who hear the voice without understanding it (comp. John 12:40), and those who, when hearing it, have ears to hear, hear it inwardly. Only these last are made alive by it. It is the function of judging which is accomplished under this form.

Those who apply this verse to the resurrection of the dead in the strict sense, are obliged to refer the words: and now is, to a few miraculous resurrections wrought by Jesus in the course of His ministry, and to explain the words οἱ ἀκούσαντες in this sense: and after having heard...But all Hengstenberg's efforts have not succeeded in justifying this grammatically impossible interpretation of οἱ ἀκούσαντεις. According to Olshausen, John 5:24 refers to the spiritual resurrection, and John 5:25 to the first bodily resurrection that of believers at the Parousia (1 Corinthians 15:23). John 5:28-29, finally, designate the final, universal resurrection. The words: and now is, must, in that case, refer to the resurrection of the few believers who appeared after the resurrection of Christ (Matthew 27:52-53). Undoubtedly, Jesus admits a distinction between the first resurrection and the universal resurrection (Luke 14:14: to the resurrection of the just; comp. Rev 20:6); but the explanation which Olshausen gives of the words: and now is, is not open to discussion. Nothing in the text authorizes us to see here the indication of a resurrection different from that of John 5:24. The following verse explains the secret of the power which the voice of Christ will display in the hour which is about to strike for the earth.