Johannine Studies
VI. MISSIONS AND THE SERVANTS OF GOD (JOHN 5)
Johannine Studies
VI. MISSIONS AND THE SERVANTS OF GOD (JOHN 5)
Subjects reviewed in this chapter:
Pluralism and The Gospel of John – An Evangelistic Mandate in John – Let God be God [5:1-21] – Glorifying God: The Task of Servanthood [5:22-29] – Partnership in Missions [5:30-47]
Pluralism and The Gospel of John
In December of 1938, the International Missionary Council (IMC) met in Tambaram, a few miles from Midras, India. In preparation for the conference, the IMC had invited Dr. Hendrik Kraemer to write a book. His book, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, immediately received international attention and became the catalyst for the papers that were presented at the conference. Two particular concerns of Kraemer, who began the conference with a summary of his thesis, involved the historical nature of Christianity in contrast to other religions and the extend to which God might be at work in the lives of non-Christians.
One respondent, Dr. Karl Reichelt, director of a Christian monastery for Buddhists at Tao Fong Shan (Hong Kong), gave such a forceful presentation from the floor that his discussion was drafted into a paper and included in the conference proceedings. He believed that “the all-embracing activity of Jesus Christ, as well before as after his incarnation, found in the Gospel of St. John, is of the greatest importance with regard to world mission work. . . . I am convinced that a new understanding and a wise application of the missionary thoughts emphasized by the Gospel of St. John also in our times would inaugurate a new and successful epoch, especially in the old culture lands of Asia.”1
In contemporary missiological jargon, he believed the Gospel of John would be the best source for a contextualized message and development of an ethnictheology within the religious context of China. By applying John’s use of the logos in the prologue to explain the uniqueness of Christ, he communicated the gospel in terms of the Buddhist Tao and attributed anything that is true and good in all nations to Christ as the source. The Buddhists who actually responded to his message called themselves the “friends of the Tao (Logos).” For, according to Reichelt, “Christ is for them the full realization and incarnation of the wonderfully rich Tao-idea, which holds the supreme sway in all the three religions in China (Buddhist included).”2
Drawing from twenty years of experience, Reichelt identified four ways in which the Gospel of John served a missiological function for Buddhists: (1) as searchers for the truth and religious experience, it gave them the solution; (2) their difficulty accepting one, personal God was eased by the implications that God created the world through the Logos; (3) the all-embracing paraclete provided a key to understanding the Trinity; and (4) The Johannine statement about the new birth, which conditions the entrance into the kingdom of God, gives also a wondrous thrill to many of the pilgrims, who through years of meditation in lonely cells and strenuous pilgrimages to the holy mountains and the great masters have been searching in vain to get that unspeakable experience of “breaking through” for which they are dreaming and longing.3
The proceedings of the conference did not include responses to Reichelt, but we would guess that Kraemer and others would have suspected Reichelt of going a little too far. His shift from a soteriological to a christological basis for the Christian message and his bold efforts to contextualize form and meaning could justifiably raise suspicions of potential syncretism.
In August of 1980, Eric Sharpe, an English scholar from Uppsala, gave a lecture at Tao Fong Shan evaluating Reichelt’s understanding of the Gospel of John and his methodology.4 He raised serious questions in both areas and suggested that one needs to begin reading John in its original context before reading it as a Buddhist. If that were done, a Buddhist would more likely reject the gospel as “not addressed to his situation, to the Buddhist tradition, or to any of the infinitely complex ways in which the Buddhist traditions have analyzed the human condition.”5
Furthermore, he did not believe the gospel could so easily bridge the gulf between two very different worldviews of reality and raised objections to this early example of the “anonymous Christian” perspective.6 Sharpe argued for the creation of greater tension between the logos and the Buddhist worldview. For, he observed, that John “affirmed equally strongly that faced with the choice between the light of the Logos and the darkness of self-will, human beings have habitually chosen darkness rather than light – a fatal choice which does much to nullify whatever of the light may remain in them . . . between the revelation and the religions of the world there falls the shadow: the Wav which is not followed, the Truth which men make into a lie, the Light which is terribly transmuted into darkness.”7
This example of the role of the Gospel of John in the history of Christian rnissions could be duplicated in countless other contexts. Historically. missionaries have assumed that the Gospel of John would be the best place in scripture to begin with Muslims. It records more of the words of Christ, making it more compatible to their view of revelation. However, in my experience with Muslims, I found the prologue to be too meaty for their monophysitic theology and 3:16 offensive to their cultural values. This, by no means, discounts of value of the gospel, it only suggests that we find appropriate starting points. The Buddhist and Muslim experiences may be cautions against using the Gospel of John as the initial “kerygma” with audiences that are significantly different from the original audience.
Further study of the issues of pluralism raised by these examples would presuppose a background in world religions, cultural anthropology, contextualization and theology of missions.8 Since this may be beyond the interest of the reader, we will focus on a few missiological issues from the Gospel of John and, more specifically, the themes of servanthood, witnessing and sending in the fifth chapter.
An Evangelistic Mandate in John
Very few, if any, of the New Testament books were written specifically to non-Christians for the purpose of conversion. The writers of the New Testament fulfilled a prophetic role, calling the church to its divine mission.
John does not identify his audience. In fact, the author himself is not specifically identified. It is assumed that the most specific statement of purpose appears in 20:30-31. “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
The majority of the discussion of the purpose of the book usually concentrates on this single verse. Some scholars assume the book was written to encourage Jewish believers with a christological problem. Advocates of this position would read the passage with an emphasis on the phrase “the Christ.”9 That is, the purpose was to strengthen those Jews who had responded to Christ but through continued tensions with Judaism began to question his identity. “John persuades them to continue to accept Jesus as the Messiah and respond accordingly. In fact, this is the only book in the New Testament that uses the term Messias, the Hellenized transliteration for the Aramaic term for Messiah.”10 From this perspective, the gospel represents an apologetic or polemic against Jews to support the faith of believers more than an evangelistic tract to reach the unbelieving.
For example, chapter five could be read as a defense of the Christian understanding of the Sabbath and Jesus to a Jewish audience. Thus, Beasley-Murray considers it “a prime example of the missionary apologetic of Christians to Jews” with an appeal to reason.11 There is further support for this thesis in the fact that Gentiles and unbelievers are not even identified in the book.12
This text could also be read with an emphasis on the phrase “that you may believe,” giving it an evangelistic objective. Robinson and van Unnik argue that the main purpose of the book was to convert Diaspora Jews.13 More recently, D.A. Carson revived the conclusions of Robinson and van Unnik. Adding a syntactical argument to the case, he identified the major question of John to be: “Who then is the Messiah?”14
A textual variant for the tense of the verb “to believe” creates some of the problem in clarifying the purpose. Although the reading is unverifiable due to the condition of the manuscript, Bodmer II (p66) seems to support the original hand of the Codex Sinaiticus as well as Codex Vaticanus in the use of the present subjunctive pisteuēte, which could mean “that you may continue to believe.” However, the majority of the manuscripts, along with a correction in the Sinaiticus manuscript, use the aorist subjunctive, pisteusēte, meaning, “that you might believe.”15 There are instances where the present subjunctive and aorist subjunctive can occur for both conversion and maturation, meaning the purpose of the book should not be determined entirely by the tense of this verb.16
We may be tempted to hastily tilt the evidence towards an evangelistic objective because the book itself is known as a “Gospel.” Some may also try to impose a rigid dichotomy between conversion and maturation by reading into the text artificial distinctions between the kerygma (gospel) and the didache (maturation). For example, Donald McGavran, in his first book, Bridges of God, made a much greater contrast between “discipling” and “perfecting” in Matthew 28:18-20 than is exegetically possible, since the verb “to disciple” is the primary verb in the passage.17
MeGavran did not seek to rewrite the text as much as correct the assumption that a decision of faith or baptism was the end of the missionary task of the church. The planting and health of churches were of equal concern. It is also likely that the author of John had a more wholistic goal of producing “true disciples” (8:30-31) who were saved to serve and bear witness to the honor and glory of God. If so, the author may have had a missiological purpose of moving the Johannine community to action in a context of opposition to their christology, more than producing a gospel tract written to convert the Diaspora Jews or Gentiles. In this gospel, the evangelistic mandate under which the Son served the Father was clearly passed on to the disciples.
The Gospel of John begins with a boldly stated christology (1:1-51) followed by a discussion of six signs (or “works”) that confirm the Messianic mission of Jesus (2:1-11:57), the preliminaries to the cross (12:1-17:26), the “glorification” (18:1-20:31), and a concluding postscript with the seventh sign and a dialogue with Peter on shepherding God’s people (21:1-25).
In the first eleven chapters, John emphasizes the Messianic character of Jesus as King, Prophet, Servant and co-equal with God. The Servant of Yahweh, in the four “servant songs” of Isaiah, is identified as the one who has the support of Yahweh (42:1-4); is honored in the eyes of the Lord, although rejected by his own people (49:1-6); suffers innocently, but would be vindicated (50:4-9); and suffers on his way to glory (52:13-53:12).18 These themes also appear in John, but parallels between John and Isaiah could not be pressed too far, with only four direct quotations of Isaiah in John (1:23; 6:10; 12:38, 40).
Ward Andersen claims that four of the seven signs in John (5:1-9; 6:1-14; 9:1-7; 11:1-44) suggest the image of the Servant of God developed by the prophets, especially Isaiah.19 Israel had been called to be a Servant of Yahweh to the nations. What began as a national mission decreased to a remnant and then to one man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. John shows how Jesus fulfilled the eternal will or mission of God with the hope that their response to Christ will move them to become a growing number of witnesses sent from God to reveal his glory.20
Due to the missiological implications of the Servant motif, this paper will focus attention on the first of the signs of the Servant in John 5.21 The chapter begins with the healing of a lame man, followed by a narrative on the honor of God, the resurrection of life, and the witnesses of God.
Let God Be God (5:1-21)
During an unidentified Jewish feast in Jerusalem, Jesus goes to the Pool of Bethesda, beside the Sheep Gate, on the north side of the temple platform. A number of invalids were always there waiting to be healed by mysterious forces that would occasionally move the waters of the pool.22 Jesus approached a man who had been lame for thirty eight years and asked him if he wanted to be healed. The man did not answer the question, he stated his problem. However, without a statement of faith or identification of Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus simply commands this Jew, on the Sabbath, to “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk” (v. 8). John makes no reference to the reaction of the Jewish authorities to this sign, but gives considerable attention to their objection of this violation of the Sabbath law.23
Jesus took the initiative to heal the man and, later that day, to find him in the temple. But the recipient of God’s grace proceeded to inform “the Jews”24 that Jesus was the one who told him to carry his bed on the Sabbath. A monologue between Jesus and “the Jews” follows and further increases the opposition to Jesus. He defends his actions by claiming “My Father is working still, and I am working” (5:17).25 John explains to his readers that the Jews sought to kill Jesus because he presumed God was his Father, “making himself equal with God” (5:18).26 Jesus supports this claim with some well known witnesses.
Jesus develops his defense around their understanding of the social relationship between father and son. Because Jesus publicly claimed sonship in this text (5:16-30), it is considered by some to be one of the most profound sections in the gospel.27 Before probing into the nature of the father-son relationship, allow a brief digression into some possible application of theological themes in this pericope.
First, the gospel flows out of John’s observation that Jesus reflected the glory of God, full of grace and truth (1:14). Fascinating examples of that glorious nature appear at every turn of the page. God’s grace implies initiative, undeserved blessing. What better example can be given of this divine nature than healing a man without a request, with no commitment on his part, and eventual betrayal to the authorities? Jesus, as God’s faithful servant, took the initiative. That is what he was sent to do.
Likewise, at the heart of the mission enterprise rests the willingness of God’s people to take the initiative. As Jesus sought and healed the man in need without his request or preliminary obligation, so the task of the Lord’s Body today, the church, is to seek opportunities for service and witness.28 Likewise, in the world, God’s servants take the initiative to immerse themselves into the life of a new community, to build relationships and serve people – because our Lord would have done the same.
Secondly. Jesus identifies God as the source of this healing power. Servants of God do not work alone. The faithful engagement in missions requires a partnership with God, who is always at work. He is not an esoteric thought or passive object of worship, but an active and dynamic partner in the process of reconciliation. In the Old Testament, God is described more by verbs than nouns. Likewise, in this chapter we see the evidence of a God who “works,” “loves,” “raises the dead,” “gives life,” and “judges.” Thus, the Son does what he sees the Father doing. As God worked with Cornelius before Peter arrived and Lydia before she met Paul, so God works in the lives of the unchurched before the missionary arrives. It will therefore be important to understand the history of those who seek God to determine how God has worked in their lives. In so doing, we find a common point of reference and confirm that God starts with people where they are.
Finally, this text identifies a problem all the monotheists have to struggle with, namely, letting God be God. There is the temptation to confine God to one ethnic or cultural tradition: Hebrew for the Jews, Arabic for the Muslims and Western for Christians. When God is confined to one ethnic setting, the purpose of mission will shift from serving the nations (which requires a world-view broad enough to see humanity through the eyes of God) to preserving our own nation, cultural heritage and religious traditions. When we reach such a point, God’s deeds must always be acceptable to our human reasoning and limitations. The binding of God to their culturally confining definition of the Sabbath law destroyed the mystery of the kingdom and blinded the patrons of the temple system to the Messiah. The same can happen with the church today when we fail to accept God as a partner and assume that the task of world evangelism cannot or should not be done because we cannot see beyond our own cultural walls. God’s people must acknowledge that their Lord is always at work (Jn. 5:17) and allow for the fact that he may even have “other sheep” (Jn. 10:16) they do not know about. Our task is humble servanthood, modeled after the humble Servant who “can do nothing of his own accord” (Jn. 5:19).
Glorifying God: The Task of Servanthood (5:22-29)
Chapter five presupposes the Son’s mission to the world with the expectation of the human response to the unique revelation of the Divine nature. “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (5:22-24)
John uses two terms for honor in the book as he did for terms like “love” and “sending.”29 In the eastern worldview, the most fundamental value in the father-son relationship is honor. The prophet Malachi compares the relationship between delinquent Israel and Yahweh to a father with a dishonorable son: “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor?” (Mal. 1:6). It should be no surprise that immediately after Jesus identifies himself as “the Son” for the first time in the Gospel of John (with the possible exception of 3:16) we find a discussion of honor, the “glue” that makes the vertical relationship between father and son functional.
This theme is developed through two common New Testament motifs, both of which are in this text, to describe the relationship between God and man: sonship and servanthood. The quality of both these relationships is directly proportional to the degree to which honor determines motives and behavior. The response of men in society to parents, kings and masters becomes the model for understanding man’s relationship with God. The shameful, dishonorable man is the one who does not give doxa or timē to God.30 It should be the natural reciprocal response to the one from whom protection and blessing come. Within this social structure, the eldest son has a special obligation to keep the family honor and he does so through a special relationship of unity with his father.
For the 21st century American, the father-son analogy fails to communicate all the nuances the Palestinian peasants or Judean villagers would have grasped. Kenneth Bailey describes the family obligations in his exposition of the parable of the eldest son as seen through the eyes of a Palestinian villager today. “The older son reflects on the state of affairs and quickly decides not to enter the house. Custom requires his presence. At such a banquet the older son has a special semi-official responsibility. He is expected to move among the guests, offering compliments, making sure everyone has enough to eat, ordering the servants around and, in general, becoming a sort of major-domo of the feast. The custom is widespread all across the Arab world and on into Iran, where in the village the older son stands at the door barefoot to greet the guests. Part of meaning of the custom is the symbolic nature of the gesture, by which the father says, ‘My older son is your servant.’”31
Although it is too broad a jump from an Arab worldview today to the Galileans or Judeans in the first century, it is even further to the American worldview. We would do well to at least begin. within a cultural context where the social structure more closely parallels that of the first century. The continual loss of vertical relationships in a Western society may leave the Bible reader at a loss in understanding the implications of this description Jesus gave of his relationship with God.
When Jesus declared that he was the Son of God (the one and only), the disciples and “the Jews” understood the type of relationship implied. He was not a second or competing god. Father and son are not in competition; the son serves the father. The honor of one is shared with the other. Jesus prayed that the disciples God had given him would see his doxa (Jn. 17:24). This honor Jesus would give his disciples was fellowship as sons of God (Jn. 17:22). The only occurrence in John of timē with God as the subject is in 12:26: “my father will time the one who serves me.”
In the context of chapter 5, Jesus was not setting forth a new principle of father-son relationships, as it may seem to a contemporary western reader, but rather was building on existing cultural values that understood the vertical relationship between father and son.
When accused of demon possession, Jesus responded, “I honor (timē) my Father and you dishonor me” (Jn. 8:49). He was not contrasting their ways of worship with his. He was contrasting lifestyles. One was blameless while the other brought shame. Jesus honored God because he kept his word. He concludes, “If I glorify (doxa) myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God” (Jn. 8:54). To translate doxa in this context as “glory'” makes it too easy to shift the meaning away from sin and obedience to some eschatological hope.32 It should be read as 5:23: “that all may honor (timē) the Son, even as they honor the Father.”
Jesus was sent on a mission to bring glory and honor to the Father. His task was to do the will of the one who sent him (5:30) because the Jews had not honored God in fulfilling the purposes of their election. Therefore, the glory and honor of God becomes the source and the message of the gospel. The resurrection confirmed the “glorification” (7:39; 21:19) of Christ and became the event to which the disciples bore witness. The resurrection, the will of God, the mission of those he sends are all explained by Jesus as interrelated. “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”33
Partnership in Missions (5:30-47)
“To witness” and “to send” are two specific themes in this section that relate to both the task and methodology of the Christian mission and are found throughout the gospel.
Witness and glory are the primary theological themes in this section. In making a defense of his mission to bring eternal life (5:24), Jesus called for a string of witnesses, as if he were in a court of law (resembling the scenes in Isaiah 43 where Yahweh called for witnesses of his love and care for an elect nation that became unfaithful).34 Jesus did not seek glory for himself (like his opposition, 5:44), but called John the Baptist (5:33-36), the Father (5:36-38), the scriptures (5:39-40), and Moses (5:45-47) as evidence of his mission from God to fulfill his will. If calling God his Father was offensive to “the Jews,” then the claim of the divine witness must have been an even greater offense. Jesus attempted to focus attention back to the real issue of his healing the lame man, the sign of God’s sending, rather than their Sabbath issue. The climax of the witness is stated in 5:36: “But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has granted me to accomplish, these very works which I am doing, bear witness that the Father has sent me.”
Throughout the gospels, the testimony of Jesus as sent from God motivates a reciprocal response in man of faith in God through Christ.35 The phrase “him that sent me” or the one “who sent me” occurs so often in John that it becomes another reference to deity.36 Throughout the gospel, God is identified as the one who sends.37
John uses two words for sending in such a way that it is difficult to be sure of the difference in meaning between apostellein and pempein. These two terms are used to express Jesus’ awareness of his mission. Rengstorf argues that apostellein is used to denote the authority with which Jesus fulfills his mission and pempein to affirm the participation of God in the whole process.38 As with the other use of similar terms, it may be difficult to make clear distinctions. For example, pempein in 5:30, 37 and apostellein in 5:33, 36, 38 are both translated “sent” in each instance. With either term, the message is that God initiated the whole process of redemption through Christ and expects mankind to honorably respond to his Son.
The missiological implications of the centrifugal nature of God and the task of human witness creates the standard for any fellowship of God's people who seek to do his will. As John Stott observed, a very precise statement of the mission of the church emerges from this gospel. “The crucial form in which the Great Commission has been handed down to us (though it is the most neglected because it is the most costly) is the Johannine. Jesus had anticipated it in his prayer in the upper room when he said to the Father: ‘as thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world’ (Jn. 17:18). Now, probably in the same upper room but after his death and resurrection, he turned his prayer-statement into a commission and said: ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I send you’ (Jn. 20:21). In both of these sentences Jesus did more than draw a vague parallel between his mission and ours. Deliberately and precisely he made his mission the model of ours, saying ‘as the Father sent me, so I send you.’ Therefore our understanding of the church’s mission must be deduced from our understanding of the Son’s.”39
