Observations from the Greek text in John's Gospel:John 5:39-47

I have been fixated over this passage for that last few days.  I’ll do a little analysis on the Greek text first, then I’ll share some thoughts on this for today’s church.

39 "You carefully examine the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life.  Those Scriptures are the ones that testify about me.  40 You don’t want to come to me so that you may have life.
41 "I don’t accept honor from people, 42 but I have known you that you don’t have the love of God within you.  43 I have come in the name of my Father, and you don’t accept me.  If another comes in his own name, you will accept him.  44 How are you able to believe while accepting honor from one another and not seeking the honor which is from the only God?
45 "Don’t think that I will accuse you before the Father.  The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you placed your hope.  46 For if you have believed Moses, you would have believed in me.  For he wrote about me.  47 Now if you don’t believe those writings, how will you believe in my statements?"

This dialog is between Jesus and Jewish leaders.  He has healed a sick person and told him to pick up his mat and go.  This was done on the Sabbath.  The Jewish leaders are so upset with Jesus, that they want to kill him.  Up onto this point, Jesus has been describing to them that he has the authority to do what he does because he is doing the works of his Father who has sent him.

Jesus starts our verse 39 with ἐραυνᾶτε τὰς γραφάς (You carefully examine the Scriptures).  BDAG defines ἐραυνάω as “to make a careful or thorough effort to learn something”.  The verb appears here in the present tense and carries a continual aspect.  Therefore, the Jewish leaders are continually examining the Scriptures.  The Jewish leaders think that they can find eternal life in the Torah.  In a bit of irony, Jesus agrees with them, but in a different way.  Jesus is the key to eternal life, not the law.  Torah did include the law, but it also contained this prophecy:

Deuteronomy 18:15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites.  You must listen to him. NIV11

The reason that the Jewish leaders didn’t want to get life from Jesus is because they were too busy “glorying” over other like-minded men (one another).  In verses 41-44, John uses δόξα which is normally translated as “glory”.  Here, it is being used as “honor as enhancement or recognition of status or performance”.  I’ve translated it as “honor”.  It could also be translated as “fame”.  The “honor”, “fame” or “glory” that the Jews wanted was around how well they kept the law.  They were so fixated on keeping the law, they missed Jesus.  They were only studying a part of the Scriptures; the ones that contained the law.  They missed the prophecy about the one who would have “life”.

Their hope was in Moses and his writing, but ironically, it is Moses who is continually accusing (present tense verb again) them before God.  Why?  Because they didn’t believe everything that Moses wrote, or at least they ignored some of the things that Moses wrote, thus not believing all of it.  In the Greek text of verse 46, there is an untranslatable Greek particle ἂν.  This makes the last part of the sentence contingent on the first part.  Therefore, they can’t believe in Jesus because they don’t believe what Moses wrote about him.

In verse 47, Jesus says: “Now if you don’t believe those writings (literally letters), how will you believe in my statements (words)?”  The Jews had to embrace the entire Word of God, or in this case the entire Torah, not just the parts where they could “glory” over each other for keeping.

Paul says that the Jews tried to establish their own righteousness through the law in Romans 10:3 because they didn’t submit to God’s righteousness.

Let’s fast-forward to today.  I’ve experienced many things in today’s churches.  I’ve seen many people embrace parts of the NT, but ignore much of the rest.  By doing so, have we missed Jesus?  I’ve been to conferences where the platforms were built very large to get all of the preachers up there.  It then took over an hour to “honor” all of them.  Are we receiving glory from each other over glory from the only God?  Is it fame we seek, instead of God?  Instead of “God’s church”, it’s now Bro. So and So’s church.  Instead of the Lord’s people, it’s now Bro. So and So’s saints.  A friend of mine told me one time that people sometimes worship their doctrine more than they worship God.  I’m starting to believe that!  Are we trying to establish our righteousness with our doctrines and not submit to God’s righteousness?  Have we missed Jesus?