The Point is the Point (John 5:19-30)
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jeremy_1_05-27-2025_123539: [00:00:00] Have you had a meal today? Now, my apologies in advance if you are going through this right before lunchtime. But hang with me. This won't be long. If you've had a meal today, chances are it was either a plant or an animal. Now, it could have been something manufactured, and there's obviously plenty of those, but at its essence, you may have eaten something that was either grown or living in some regard.
But in order for you to eat it today, it had to die. Now, that's kind of a weird thought, but the fruit or the vegetable had to be harvested. The animal had to be butchered. All this had to take place in order for you to have a meal. As Rob Bell has put it, your life is dependent on something else's death.
Now keep this in mind as we're gonna see this later as we get to our passage today. Now today I want to explore a rather long passage. This is John five verses [00:01:00] 19 through 30. But I'm gonna do something a little bit different than I normally do. I'm not going to read all these verses because I wanna suggest that John is using a literary trick here.
He's setting up this section of verses in a way that is certainly not obvious to most of us reading, but to Bible scholars and people who study this, they have noticed that John seems to be using a certain technique here called a chiasm or a chiastic structure. Now this is gonna be a new idea for most of you, but we're all going to be Bible scholars today.
Now, here's an illustration of what a chiasm looks like. And you can see, it's kind of an interesting design. It's how you set up an idea, you get to the center of it, and then you back out and you alternate on either side of that arrow.
Now you can google more examples of castic structures and you can find all sorts of these. But the point of a [00:02:00] chiasm is to emphasize the center of it or a way, of understanding chiasm if you ever want to just know it. An easy trick is the phrase, the point is the point where is this castic structure pointing us to?
That's the point of this entire section in. Scholars have suggested that this is what John is doing in this section. So our chiasm today looks like this, where you can see that verses 24 and 25 become the point of all of this section. So those are what I'm gonna read today. And if you want, I would encourage you go back and read the verses before and after and you can see for yourself.
If you think this castic structure makes sense, but with this in mind, let's look at the point of these verses. What is Jesus saying here in verse 24? It says, I tell you the truth. Those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. [00:03:00] They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.
I assure you that the time is coming. Indeed. It's here now. When the dead will hear my voice, the voice of the son of God, and those who listen will live. Now, one of the themes we're seeing here, this is a theme all throughout the book of John, is that life is found in the person of Jesus. You see this throughout the entire gospel.
One theologian named Maryanne May Thompson says it like this. John does not write knowing or that knowing God leads to eternal life as if it were the rewards for faith, but that knowing God to be in communion with God is life because God is the source of all life. If you think that eternal life only happens once you die, you are going to miss one of the most powerful aspects of following [00:04:00] Jesus.
Now notice some of the phrases we just read. They will never be condemned. They have already passed from death to life. Those who listen will live. What I think we're seeing here is that Jesus wants to speak life into the deadness around you, not just when you die, but right now that this is what it means to experience eternal life.
It's not just some get outta jail free card for when. You die. Now, this is a challenge that we often confuse as Christians. We think, oh no, eternal life only kicks in once I'm dead. And so someday this will be awesome. And we totally neglect what the gift is right in front of us. And we think, well, evidently, I just gotta finish out this life.
Just make it to the end somehow, and then I'll get to experience eternal life. The scholar Michael j Gorman has said, many [00:05:00] people naturally interpret the phrase eternal life as a reference to a future heavenly everlasting life, but something more is going on Life in John means participation in the life and love of God.
I love the way he puts it there. It is a way of participating in what God is doing. So then the question for you and I becomes, how much are we participating in what Jesus is doing? How much are we tapping into this eternal life? Now you might think, well, how, how would I do that? I don't even know what that means.
Well, and another passage, there's something that the Apostle Paul suggests, and I think this is a helpful way of thinking about this. In two Corinthians four, 11 and 12, Paul writes this, yes, we live under constant danger of death. Because we serve Jesus so that the life of Jesus will be evident [00:06:00] in our dying bodies.
So we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you. Again, you see the Apostle Paul now playing with this image of eternal life, of experiencing life in the midst of death, but now, not just someday when we die. This goes back to the analogy of food that I began with for, for someone to receive something, someone else has to give something.
If someone is inspired, it means that life has been breathed into them, which also means that someone else had to breathe out in order for that to happen. If someone somewhere benefits it is because someone somewhere has paid for that. To happen now, one of the ways that I love explaining what it means to follow the gospel is that we are to give ourselves, to [00:07:00] make the gospel good news for others.
That as we give of something, it translates into life for others, and this is the image Paul is talking about. This is how we participate. In the eternal life right now by choosing these, these momentary deaths, I give up something of myself so that someone else can benefit, and in the process they experience eternal life.
But the kicker is so do we, that as we tap into the gospel, we are participating in the life of Jesus, and this is how we get to experience eternal life right now. So the question then becomes, how are you doing this? How much of a difference are you making because of the way you're participating in giving yourself for the gospel to be good news for other people?
Would your coworkers or your neighbors feel a tangible loss if you were to move away [00:08:00] because of the way that you have loved them and sacrificed for them? Or when was the last time you chose something inconvenient for you? In order to benefit someone else, you see each and every moment is an opportunity to participate in life with Jesus.
I'll close with something that Jurgen Moltmann has written. It says, Christian faith isn't just a conviction, a feeling, and a decision. It invades life so deeply that we have to talk about dying and being born again, which is what corresponds to the death and resurrection of Christ as we give ourselves to make the gospel good news for others, we both get to experience eternal life in the here and now, and that is an incredible invitation for you and I.
I'll see you next [00:09:00] week on Rebuilding Faith.
Hey everybody. If you're looking for ways to grow in your faith, to challenge yourself, to learn from other people who are going through similar questions to you, I wanna encourage you to check out our online community where we do book studies. There's discussion guides available for each of these messages.
And you can interact with other people. You can see how other people are processing these same ideas and it's a lot less scary following Jesus in a community of other people who are going the same direction as you. You can check out the link in the show notes to find out more.
