Fr. Stephen De Young: So he continues:

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”

So, he puts a finer point on it here. If you hear what I’m saying to you and you believe in Him who sent me, God the Father, as he just said, you’ll have everlasting life, you will not come into judgment, right? You will not be condemned when that judgment happens, but you’ll pass from death to life. When you die, you’ll still die on this earth, but when you die, you will pass into life, not into condemnation.

Interlocutor: They must have been looking at Him like, what are you talking about?

Fr. Stephen: Well, partially, I think they understood the thrust of it because they keep wanting to kill him. And as I said, if it wasn’t true, if Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, which he is, obviously, but if he wasn’t, then they would be right to think it was blasphemy. So the fact that they understand the fact that they say it’s blasphemy because they understand what he’s saying, they just don’t believe it. They just don’t believe it’s true. But they understand at least the thrust of what he’s saying and what he’s claiming.

Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.

Now, when he’s talking about the dead here, he’s talking about people who have actually died, but he’s also talking about the people who are listening to Him right now, because as St. Paul is going to say later, the wages of sin is death. And he uses the word wages for an important reason, right? You go and you work, and then when you’re done working, you get paid your wages, right? That’s what you’ve earned. That’s the consequence. When you get your paycheck, you don’t say thank you because you worked for it. It’s not a gift. It’s what you’ve earned. It’s what you’re entitled to. Well, when you sin, what you’re entitled to, what you’ve earned, what you get at the end is death.

And that’s where everyone on this earth is headed, because we’ve all sinned, starting with Adam, when he sinned and brought death into the world all the way down to us. We’re unfortunately our father’s children, and we sin just like he did. And so death is coming for us. And so remember what he just said, the one who hears what I say, will pass from death to life. That’s what he’s saying. Time is coming, and it’s now here. Those who hear Jesus’ voice, who are dead will live.

“For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself,”

And so this is… remember he said there’s no disconnect between Him and His Father, right? God the Father, God, one of the primary ways he’s referred to in the Old Testament is as the living God, the true and living God, as opposed to the idols that are a dead piece of wood or a dead piece of metal. There’s no life in them. It’s just an object. But God is alive, He’s the Living God. And so Jesus is saying, just as God has life in Himself, he is the living God, so also he’s given for the Son to have life in Himself. And so Jesus can give that life to them who are dead and dying.

“and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.”

So, Jesus is taking their expectation, God is going to come and he’s going to judge the earth, and he’s explaining it to them more and changing how they should see it, because the way they primarily saw it was God will come. And the Jews, particularly the Pharisees, who have been good Jews, will be redeemed and will become the kings of the earth, right? And these horrible, evil, rotten, no good, sinful Gentiles who have been oppressing them all these years will either be killed or become their slaves, and will be put down by God. And Jesus is saying, “No, no, no,” what’s going to happen is that Christ is going to return. God is going to return in Christ. And all those who have died, every human being who’s ever lived is going to come out of the tombs, every single one. Those who have been righteous to the resurrection of eternal life, they’re going to be those who have believed in what he has said and who have believed in the Father who are going to receive life. And there are those who are going to come forth who are going to receive condemnation because they have not believed what he has said and they have not believed in His Father.

So he’s saying, this is going to happen, but this judgment is going to be on a very different basis than the one you think you think it is.

Interlocutor: We’re going to have to get into that conversation about that later.

Fr. Stephen: Which?



Interlocutor: About the judgments, that has confused me for a long time.

Fr. Stephen: Well, the first thing to note though, is that remember, this whole discussion began with Jesus talking about his own resurrection. Because at Jesus’ own resurrection, he defeats death, right? And because he does it, with our humanity, he defeats death for everyone. This is why we sing on Pascha. “Not a single one remains in the graves.” Everyone is raised. You notice everyone here is raised, right? The righteous and the wicked. Everyone comes out of the tombs. Everyone is raised. But that precedes, then, the judgment.

So, it’s not a question of who’s going to be whose slave or who’s going to be destroyed. It’s a question of whether you’re going to have eternal life with the Son and the Father because you’ve loved them and believed in them or whether because you’ve hated them and despised them, you’re going to end up cut off from that life and that love.

And notice it’s not based on here who he loves more, who he picks. It’s based on whether you love Him or whether you hate Him. Either way, you’re going to be raised from the dead. Either way, you’re going to exist. But if you exist eternally hating God and despising Him, you’re cutting yourself off. This is one of the themes of the Bible… We tend to think, a lot of our view of hell is not based on the Bible. Like our days of the week, it’s based on Anglo-Saxon mythology. Think about fire and people being tortured and being punished and this kind of thing. And the reality is, and this is a swipe from C.S. Lewis, his reference was always that the doors to hell are locked from the inside. People aren’t locked. God doesn’t lock people in there. People lock themselves in there because they don’t want anything to do with Christ or with God or with life. As St John put it a little earlier in his Gospel that sin loved darkness rather than light. So when light came into the world, when Jesus came into the world, they rejected Him because they were wicked and loved darkness, and didn’t want anything to do with the light that he was bringing.

Interlocutor: Okay, He’s going to come again to judge the living. Oh, wait, I think it’s just registering now, but I’m saying that the living and the dead, and I’m thinking the dead already. I’m thinking physically dead, am I correct? Wait, am I thinking he’s going to judge the living and the dead? He’s talking on a spiritual death?

Fr. Stephen: Both. There’s actually a play on words there in the Creed where it means both. So in the sense that when Jesus returns, he’s going to judge everyone who has ever lived, whether they’re alive at the time or physically dead at the time. But also, that’s why the older translation says “the quick and the dead”. Quick doesn’t just mean alive, quick, or quickened means made alive. So it could also mean those who have been made alive and those who are dead, which refers to spiritual life and spiritual death.

Interlocutor: Okay. So we die. I thought, okay, “I’m going to die and then I’m going to be judged, and then I’m going to be judged again?”

Fr. Stephen: Well, when we die, there is a period between when we die and when Christ returns. The fancy theological word for that is the intermediate state, the state that we’re in the interim, in that middle time. And the scriptures tell us very little of exactly what that’s like, probably because we couldn’t really understand it, because all of our existence, we’ve existed as a soul or a spirit in our body. So us trying to think about existing apart from our body, we can’t really… but what the scriptures teach is that during that period, in that state, we experience a foretaste of what is to come.

Because, again, this isn’t judgment imposed from outside. It’s not that we’re going to come before Jesus and we’re going to think, “Oh, I think I did okay, like, I tried, confessed as much as I could”, and we’re going to get up there and he’s going to be like, “No, if you’ve gotten to confession maybe one more time, you didn’t make the cut.” That’s not how it works. The example we’re given in St. Matthew’s Gospel is that it’s like a shepherd separating sheep from goats. Sheep are sheep and goats are goats. They’re one or the other. It’s not ambiguous. You don’t look at one and go, “Is that a sheep or is that a goat? He’s acting a little like a sheep, but he has horns.” They’re two different things. And what happens at the judgment is just those two things are separated one from the other.

So right now, they’re all mixed together. Right now, people are all mixed together and we can’t tell… we’re horrible, me especially, at judging who is a sheep and who is a goat in this world. A lot of the people who we look at and we think, “Wow, that person is really faithful and spiritual and holy and stuff”, aren’t. And a lot of people we look at and judge are actually the really holy, spiritual people. But right now we’re all mixed together, and we’re going to separate…

So, by the time we get there, we’re one or the other. We’ve lived a life and we’ve become someone and we’ve become something over the course of this life, we’ve either become a person who loves God, we’ve either become a person who’s holy, we’ve either become a person who’s righteous, we become a person who is full of God’s love, or we haven’t. We’ve become one or the other. And so when we die and when we come to the judgment, there’s not going to be any haggling, there’s not going to be any defending, because you are who you are. And who you are is going to be apparent to Christ and to everyone else. So there’s not going to be any excuses. You are who you are. And then based on who you are, you’re either going to be a person who has lived a life following Christ in his love, and so you’re going to continue to receive life from Him as you have in this life, or you’re going to be a person who has followed after wickedness and cut yourself off from God. And that’s going to continue on into the next life as well.

That’s why we believe, repentance isn’t just, “You broke the rule, so God’s mad at you, so you pray and you say, ‘I’m sorry’. And so He says, ‘okay, I’ll let you slide’”. That’s not how sin works, right? Because sin does damage. It does damage to you as a person. It does damage to the people around you. And so repentance is you working with God to heal that damage in yourself and with the people around you. That’s what repentance is. It’s actually transforming and changing and healing.

The process of repentance and of healing, we continue on the trajectory that we start down in this life that I think is the best way to understand it. And it’s not sort of this legal thing that’s external to us. It’s about who we are and what we’ve done and who we’ve made out of ourselves, what we’ve done to ourselves, what we’ve done to others, and the consequences of that playing out.

That’s why in the story of Zacchaeus, Jesus comes because he loves Zacchaeus. He comes into Zacchaeus’ home. Even though Zacchaeus is a tax collector, he’s a horrible sinner. I mean, a horrible person, who has done horrible things. Jesus still loves him and Jesus still comes to eat with him. And it’s when Zacchaeus says, “I’m going to pay back everything I stole and I’m going to pay back five times what I took, I’m going to try and make it right, what I’ve done.” It’s after Zacchaeus says that that Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.” Because of Jesus’ love, Zacchaeus has changed. Because Jesus went into some people’s houses. There are several episodes, especially in St. Luke’s Gospel, where he goes to eat with a Pharisee and things go very bad and he ends up having a confrontation with his host because Jesus comes there and the person doesn’t change, doesn’t hear him and doesn’t repent.  But Zacchaeus, even though he’s a sinner, Jesus comes to his house and Zacchaeus is ready to change and ready to be healed and ready to work with God to heal what he’s damaged. So that’s sort of what’s going on.

Interlocutor: We have to always be ready.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and that’s why… we have this life for us to be able to repent and change and grow. That’s why we have this life here on earth.

Then Jesus says:

“I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.”

Again, Jesus has just said I’m going to be the one who judges. But he’s now coming back to the point. That doesn’t mean there’s some separation between him and God the Father. The judgment he’s rendering is the same as the Father’s judgment, even though he’s the one who’s rendering it. The two of them are not separate. The two of them are together.

“If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true.”

He’s going back to the law now. In the law, if you wanted to establish something in a court case, you had to have two witnesses who would tell the same story, right? The identical story. You have two people. They’d come in separately. What did you see? What did you see? And if they said the same thing, then you’d establish that’s what happened. And so Jesus is referring back to that. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. It’s not enough for you to just show up in court and say, “Well, this guy stole so much from me.” “Well, do you have another witness?” “No. I just say so.” Jesus is saying, “Look, if I just came here and told you this, that I just told you, and I’m the only person, you’d be right not to believe me. Somebody just shows up saying these things. You’re right to not believe them.” But he continues:

“There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true. You have sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.”

Which John? That’s referring to St. John the Forerunner. St. John the Baptist. Remember, we had very early on in St. John’s Gospel, we had all these episodes of St. John bearing witness to who Jesus was. So he says, “Look, I’m not the only witness”. And notice, he tells them that he’s aware of the fact that apparently some of these Pharisees sent people to St John the Forerunner to see what he thought about this Jesus person. And he knows what St. John told them. And so he says, “Look, you sent me, that’s two witnesses. That’s two witnesses telling you this is true, which means it’s true. Which means, according to the law that you care so much about, there’s two witnesses telling you the same thing. You should accept that this is true. You can’t reject it anymore.”

“Yet I do not receive testimony from man, but I say these things that you may be saved.”

So he’s saying, “This isn’t about me arguing with you about whether I should be stoned to death. That’s not my concern. It’s not that you’re threatening to stone me to death or you’re saying these bad things about me and I’m worried about my reputation.” “Oh, no, I don’t want them to say these bad things about me.” Or, “Oh, no. I don’t want them to try to hurt me.” He’s saying, “I’m saying these things that you may be saved.” Once again, this is not why he’s arguing with the Pharisees because He cares what they think, He cares about their opinion. He’s arguing with the Pharisees because he loves them and he wants them to come to salvation. He wants them to receive life. That’s his purpose in having this discussion.

“He was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing for a time to rejoice in his light.”

This is talking about St. John. He was sort of this lamp bringing light. For a little while, you were willing to go and hear him. Then you started saying some things that you didn’t like so much, but for a little while, you were willing to receive him.

“But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—”

Notice not “given me to do”, but “given me to finish”. Jesus is here to bring it to completion.

“the very works that I do bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.”

So he’s saying, Look, I just healed a paralyzed man. John and I aren’t enough? Well here’s more evidence, right? I’ll submit to the court.In addition to these two witnesses, here’s all this evidence, these things that I’ve been doing.

“And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form. But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”

So what does he say then? He says, “On top of that, I’ll call another witness. I’ll call God himself as a witness to who I am.” And he says to them, “You haven’t heard his voice or seen his form.” Meaning they weren’t at Mount Sinai, right? Remember, Moses on top of Mount Sinai, spoke to God face to face the way a man speaks to his friend. Well, these Pharisees, in the first century, they haven’t done that. They haven’t seen him. They haven’t they haven’t heard his voice. Now, Jesus has, but they haven’t.

Interlocutor: Did they believe that Moses actually spoke with God?

Fr. Stephen: They did. Yes. But so that’s the point he’s making. He’s saying “You weren’t there.” And when he says “The Father is my witness.” Well, it’s not like they could cross examine Him. You haven’t talked to Him. But what does he say? He says you search the Scriptures, right? You’re experts, on the Torah, spend all your time studying the Torah, He says. But what? But you don’t have His word abiding in you. But his word isn’t really living inside you. You know all about it here, but it’s not living inside you, because if it were, then you’d recognize me. Why would you recognize me? Because, he says, “These are they which testify of me. Those Scriptures you spend all this time studying are talking about me.”

So, if you were really living according to the Torah, if it was really in your heart and in your soul, and it was alive there, then when you met Jesus, remember? This is one of St. John’s themes too. The people for whom that’s true. The people who know God, the people who have his word, when they meet Jesus, they recognize him. So Jesus is here saying the negative part of that, the fact that you don’t recognize me, means it’s not alive in here. You’ve taken it and you’ve dissected it in your head. But by dissecting it, you’ve killed it.

And notice, he says, “You are not willing to come to me, that you may have life.” That’s the problem. The problem is not that he’s only offering life to some people and not others. He’s offering life to them too, but they’re not willing to come and receive it.

“I do not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.”

He says, “I’m not interested in your opinion of me. I’m not saying all this to you because I want followers, I want lackeys. I’m some kind of leader on this earth who’s trying to build something here. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God. The love of God in you.” And the verb know here we need to understand, especially since Jesus would have been originally saying this in Aramaic. In Hebrew and Aramaic, the verb “know” is a much more intimate word than the English word “know”, it’s just not like, “I know algebra”. We say, “I know something” that just means I’m aware of it. I agree with it. The verb to know is what’s used for example, in Genesis says Adam knew his wife Eve, and she brought forth a son. So that doesn’t just mean, “Oh, he knew who Eve was.” “Know” is a more intimate… So when Jesus says to them, “I know you”, he doesn’t just mean, “Oh, yeah, you’re Bob the Pharisee, and you’re Simon the Pharisee.” It’s not I know who you are, it’s I know you. I know who you are. That you do not have the love of God in you.

Now, is he just being mean? No, the point is, he’s offering the love of God to them. “I know you don’t have this. This is what I’m offering to you. You need to realize you don’t have it so that you can receive it.” That’s what he’s saying to them.

“I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.”

What’s he referring to that? Well, that’s a thinly veiled reference to some things that are going to happen coming up historically. After Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension into heaven, there are going to be a whole series of false messiahs that show up in Judea and start these rebellions against Rome and end up getting Judea destroyed, quite literally. The first one shows up in the 60s AD, and starts a revolt. That revolt goes on for five years. And then the Romans came in, and in 70 AD under the Roman general Titus destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, leveled it to the ground, and it’s never been rebuilt since. Leveled it to the ground completely. And in Rome to this day, there’s the arch that Titus built when he got back to Rome to celebrate this triumph. And you can see there’s one of the frescoes on it is a group of Roman soldiers carrying away the candlestand from the temple in Jerusalem, celebrating the fact that he’d wiped it out.

And then the even more major one comes around 132 AD. When a person named Simon Bar Kokhba, Bar Kokhba, means “son of a star” in Aramaic, showed up and presented himself as the Messiah and started another rebellion against the Romans in Judea. Judea became independent for about two years, and they were so sure he was the Messiah that there are coins that still exist this day that they made with Simon Bar Kokhba’s face on them that have the Year 1, because they considered that the beginning of the kingdom of God on earth. And then about the Year 2, the Romans came in and destroyed the city of Jerusalem. And for about 400 years, there was no city of Jerusalem. It was called Aelia Capitolina, the capital of the east, because the Romans bulldozed the city, essentially piled earth on top of it and built another city, built a new Roman city on top of it. And Jews were not even allowed to come into the city. The Romans let them come into the city one day a year. It was the anniversary of when they destroyed the temple. And the Jews could make a procession to where the temple used to be, which the Romans first turned into a temple of Zeus. They built a temple of Zeus right where the temple the god used to be. They let the Jews go there and weep and mourn over the fact that their temple was destroyed, that one day a year, and then they were forced back out of the city.

So Jesus is here referring to that. He says, “I come here saying that I’m doing the will of my Father and you want nothing to do with me. But I’m telling you, later on, people are going to come and they’re going to claim they’re the Messiah. They’re going to come in their own name, saying, ‘Here’s who I am, I’m the king’. You’ll receive them just fine and they’re going to lead you to destruction.” Again, why is Jesus telling them this? He’s trying to convince them, “Look, you’re going in the wrong direction. You should be receiving me. You should not be receiving those people.” And he’s going to say the same thing to his disciples, ultimately. He’s going to say, “After I’m gone, people are going to show up claiming to be the Christ. Don’t go chasing after them. Stay completely away from them. When I return, you’ll know it. This has nothing to do with these things.”

“How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?”

So he says, “You’re so concerned about what other people think of you being righteous in front of other people.” “I’m worried this other Pharisee is going to look at me and catch me doing something and decide I’m a sinner. I’m really concerned about my reputation and make sure I have a good reputation.” Well, he says, “Why aren’t you concerned about what God thinks of you? If God honors you, that has value. Who cares what these other humans think of you?”

“Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you trust.”

So Jesus is saying, “I’m not here to…” again, Jesus isn’t here to condemn them. Jesus isn’t here to point fingers. He’s trying to win them over. He’s not saying “I’m going to go… I have this special relationship with God and I’m going to go rat you out. I’m going to go tell God what you’re up to, and then you’ll be in big trouble, buddy.” He’s saying, “The person who’s going to accuse you is Moses in whom you trust.” Because they’re all concerned about the law of Moses and getting all that right. Moses is the one who’s going to stand up and accuse you of being a sinner.

“For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

So he’s saying, “It isn’t just that you don’t believe me. You spend all this time studying what Moses wrote, studying the Torah, studying these Commandments, and you don’t understand what he was talking about. You don’t understand what he was writing about. You don’t understand what he meant with these Commandments, what he meant with the law. You don’t understand that he was talking about me.” And so Jesus finally says here, “Look, if this, what you’ve devoted your whole life to, you don’t understand. You’re not going to understand what I’m coming and saying to you. If you really understood him, you’d understand me. You’d know what I’m talking about immediately.”

Okay, this is a little bit short but this is a good place here at the chapter break, I think for us to finish for tonight.