As the chapter opens, Jesus goes again to Jerusalem for "a feast". Because the gospel records Jesus' visit to Jerusalem for the Passover in, and another Passover was mentioned in, some commentators have speculated whether also referred to a Passover, or whether a different feast is indicated. According to, "Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses : at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles". Bengel's Gnomen lists a number of authorities for the proposition that the feast referred to was Pentecost. The Pulpit Commentary notes that "the indefinite ἑορτη has been identified by commentators with every feast in the calendar, so there can be no final settlement of the problem". In verse 9 it is considered a sabbath.
Healing at Bethesda
At the Pool of Bethesda Jesus heals a man who is both paralyzed and isolated. Jesus tells him to "Pick up your mat and walk!" This takes place on the Sabbath, and Jewish religious leaders see the man carrying his mat and tell him this is against the law. He tells them the man who healed him told him to do so, and they ask who that was. He tries to point out Jesus, but he has slipped away into the crowd. Jesus comes to him later and tells him "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you". The man then tells the Jewish religious leaders that it was Jesus who healed him. The ruins of the Pool of Bethesda are still standing in Jerusalem.
Jesus speaks of His Father and the Jews begin to persecute him
The Jews begin to persecute Jesus. Anglican clergyman Charles Ellicott argued that "the words 'and sought to slay Him' should be omitted. They have been inserted in some manuscripts to explain the first clause of ", the first of several Jewish threats against him. Two reasons emerge:
firstly, for "working on the Sabbath" ;
secondly, for calling God his "father" and thus making himself equal to God.
From Jesus' words, "My Father", Methodist founder John Wesley observed that "It is evident all the hearers so understood him making himself equal with God". St. Augustine sees the words "... equal to God" as an extension of the words in : In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus continues to speak of himself in relation to God : the Son can do nothing independently of the Father; "the Son can have no separate interest or action from the Father". the Son "acts with no individual self-assertion independent of God, because He is the Son. The Son imitates the Father; the Father loves the Son and shows Him his ways; and the Son gives life in the way that the Father raises the dead. But the Father has delegated the exercise of judgment to the Son: all should honour the Son as they would honour the Father, and anyone who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him. The words in verse 19: the Son can do nothing on his own become, in verse 30, I can do nothing on my own; Jesus "identifies himself with the Son". Two sayings then follow each commencing with a double "amen" :
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.
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.
Reformed Evangelical theologian D. A. Carson sees as giving the "strongest affirmation of inaugurated eschatology in the Fourth Gospel"... it is not necessary for the believer to "wait until the last day to experience something of resurrection life." Lutheran theologian Heinrich Meyer refers to "the hour when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God" as the "resurrection summons". Meyer argues that this "hour" extends from its beginning at "Christ’s entrance upon His life-giving ministry" until "the second advent - already had it begun to be present, but, viewed in its completeness, it still belonged to the future".
The fourfold witness
The final verses of this chapter, verses 31 to 47 refer to what the New King James Version calls the "fourfold witness". Jesus states that he does not bear witness to himself, for such witness would not be true or valid. Instead he calls on the testimony of four other witnesses:
Jesus says that the Jews who seek to kill him study the scriptures hoping for eternal life, but that the scriptures speak of him, and people still refuse to come to him for life. People accept people who preach in their own name but not in one who comes in the name of the Father. "How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?" He then speaks of Moses as their accuser: But, says Jesus, since you do not believe what Moses wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" Theologian Albert Barnes notes that "the ancient fathers of the Church and the generality of modern commentators have regarded our Lord as the prophet promised in these verses ". Commentators have also explored whether the contrast to be emphasized is a contrast between the person of Moses and the person of Jesus, or between Moses understood as the author or scriptural writings and Jesus, who did not write but whose testimony was his 'sayings'. Bengel's Gnomen argues that in John 5:47, Moses' writings are placed in antithesis to Jesus' words : "Often more readily is belief attached to a letter previously received, than to a discourse heard for the first time". However, the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges is critical of this approach: These teachings of Jesus are almost only found in John. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus only speaks of himself as the Messiah in such a straightforward way at the very end, shortly before his death. All this occurs in Jerusalem, while the Synoptic Gospels have very little of Jesus's teachings occurring in Jerusalem and then only shortly before his death.
