Following Jesus - John 5:1-47

Below are a few things printed from this message on John 5 to assist you in your study of this amazing chapter.

A simple outline of John 5:

The Crime (5:1-15)
The Decision to Prosecute (5:16-18)

• First basis: Jesus violates the Sabbath
• Second basis: Jesus is making divine claims

Jesus Goes to Trial (5:19-47)

• Jesus and God
• Witnesses for Jesus’ case
• Jesus prosecutes His opponents

From Gary M. Burge, The NIV Application Commentary - John (Zondervan 2000)

C. S. Lewis quote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish things that people often say about Him.  ‘I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan, 1952), 41, quoted in The NIV Application Commentary - John, Gary M. Burge (Zondervan 2000), 185.

Additional notes surrounding the issue of sin that leads to sickness (John 5:14)

While it is a difficult idea to accept, the Bible is clear that SOME (not all, but some) sickness is in fact the result of specific sin.  In passages such as Acts 5:1-11, 1 Corinthians 11:30, and 1 John 5:16 we see this idea plainly conveyed.

"This does not mean that everyone who commits these sins will inevitably fall ill or die; it does mean that some instances of suffering are the direct results of specific sin... (Here in John 5:14) the two clauses, 'Stop sinning' and 'something worse may happen to you', cannot be interpreted independently.  They are tied together: the meaning is 'Stop sinning lest something worse happen to you'.  The unavoidable implication is that the bad thing that has already happened was occasioned by the sin which the person must not repeat."  D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Inter-Varsity Press 1991), 245-246.