NO SENSE OF NEED
“‘For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son of Man gives life to whom He is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father. Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him. Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.'” John 5:21-24 (NIV).
Wow! That was a mouthful for His opponents to swallow!
Did these men who thought and acted in the natural, understand what Jesus was saying? What was their first impression?
Even if they did not get what He was saying, they could not miss that fact that He was talking about unity, partnership and authority in His relationship with God that clearly put Him on the same level as the Father. This must have riled them to the core because no one would have the gall to make such claims unless he were either crazy or speaking the truth.
They were face to face with someone who was evidently completely human and yet He was talking about God as His Father and claiming intimacy and unity with Him and the functions that belonged to God alone; raising the dead and judgment. And then, on top of that, He was demanding equal honour with the Father as though He were on a par with Him! To them this man was a complete lunatic or a dangerous blasphemer.
Yet Jesus did not behave like either. Could someone who was out of his mind do the things He was doing? He had just healed a man who had been paralysed and helpless for thirty-eight years. Was that the action of a madman? And the way He did it was equally miraculous — He simply spoke to the man; told him to get up and walk. That’s how God worked — spoke the universe into being and it happened!
The facts stared them in the face but their minds could not process the facts or the explanation He gave about the facts. On top of that they had their prejudice and their resistance because they did not want to believe in Him. If they did, their comfortable lives and the power they wielded over the common people would be shaken to the core.
What was the problem that lay at the heart of these religious leaders’ thinking, and the difference between them and the tax collectors and “sinners” they despised? They had no sense of need. Religion is the most difficult disease to cure because it infects with such self-righteousness that no sense of need remains.
What was Jesus doing when He spoke to these stubbornly insensitive people? He was trying to awaken in them an awareness of how far they were away from the truth, as one insightful preacher said, “He offended the mind to expose the heart.” Jesus’ words do that. He either offends or informs His hearers in order to expose the deception they have swallowed and followed. People either react or respond to Him according to their sense of need.
The Samaritan woman, by contrast, responded to His exposure of her unsavoury lifestyle by telling the people of her home town what Jesus had revealed. She was neither ashamed nor embarrassed by His disclosure. She was transformed and she wanted everyone to know it.
The Pharisees reacted in anger towards Him and schemed to kill Him rather than respond to Him because, unlike the Samaritan woman, they felt no guilt and had not sense of need. Their self-righteousness, based on their performance which they put on for the sake of their audience, left them with the idea that God was obliged to them because of their “goodness” and they had no need of His mercy or grace.
There is only one thing that will keep us aware of our need of God’s mercy — our utter inability to reach God’s standard of perfection. We can either keep trying and failing or we can fall upon His mercy and receive His forgiveness and the gift of His perfect righteousness which Jesus gives to us at the expense of His own life.