Chuck Larsen

The religious leaders, scribes, and Pharisees had a tradition of understanding God’s message to man in the Scriptures to be about personal behavior. They seemed to miss the fact that every generation before them failed in being faithful to God. From Adam and Eve through the days of Noah, the tower of Babel, and onward through the desert exodus, even through the period of the Judges and then the united and the divided Kingdoms, there was nothing but failure in living up to God’s righteous standards for life. Yet the focus of these religious people remained on being better, trying harder, and doing good. Even the greatest of their heroes was a gross failure in his own personal life, becoming both an adulterer and murderer not to mention his family failures. They continue to pick out episodes of his life as the example for everyone to follow, ignoring the fact of his gross sins. This is still done today from church pulpits presenting topics like  “Standing up to our Giants” like David did, or being faithful like all the Judges were, etc. The point of those passages in the Bible is not that these people were good and we ought to follow their example. The point is that they were all sinners and needed a savior!

The religious leaders were searching for eternal life in the Scriptures and Jesus informed them that yes, it was there, because the Scriptures are all about Himself. But Jesus advised them there will be a witness to testify against them when they fail to acquire “eternal life.” “It won’t be me,” Jesus says, “but the very one you are trusting in.” John 5:45-46 gives us Jesus’ words to the religious leaders of His day. They were laying burdens on the back of the people that were too heavy for them to bear. They were enforcing the law even to the point of stoning adulteresses in spite of their own sinfulness. They presented a standard by which to live up to in order to merit God’s favor. But Jesus says, “Yet it isn’t I who will accuse you before the Father. Moses will accuse you! Yes, Moses, in whom you put your hopes. If you really believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me.”

Stop focusing on being better, trying harder, or doing more! The Scriptures are not about keeping the law. They are about our failure to keep the law and our need for a savior to stand up to our enemy for us and wipe out our sin. This is what the author of Hebrews is talking about when speaks of Jesus being the most important thing. It’s about who He is and what He has done for us. Hebrews 1:2-4 concludes, “but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” Let me put the important phrase in red!

I did not make up the idea that Jesus is the subject of the entire Bible. I got that from Jesus himself. In John 5, Jesus is confronting the religious leaders. They claim to be disciples of Moses because they know he came from God, but they don’t know about this Jesus. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day claimed to hold Moses’ teachings as the cornerstone of their faith. They lean on Moses and the rest of the Old Testament as the most important thing in life. Jesus points this out to them in John 5:39. He says as translated by the Amplified Bible, “You search and investigate and pore over the Scriptures diligently, because you suppose and trust that you have eternal life through them.” Jesus isn’t correcting their assumption of being able to find “eternal life” in the Bible. The Scriptures do point us in the way of Eternal Life!

He’s telling them that their focus when reading and studying the Bible is misdirected. In the very next verse, John 5:40, he adds, “And these [very Scriptures] testify about Me!” He is affirming the reality of eternal life being found in the scriptures in that the whole of scripture is about Him who is the “heir of all things, through whom also God created the world. Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and Jesus upholds the universe by the word of his power.” This is the Good News directly from God who “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that anyone who believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

The religious leaders, scribes, and Pharisees of Jesus’ day were reading the scriptures to understand the prerequisites of earning God’s acceptance and inheriting eternal life. They were looking for either loopholes in the law that might excuse them from perfect obedience or they were writing lists of things to do or not do to win God’s favor. That’s all they could see in the Bible and that was all they were interested in. I’m afraid there are still some Pharisees, scribes, and religious leaders today who still focus on the wrong thing and mislead many into believing that they can earn or deserve God’s acceptance by trying harder or doing more. Jesus says to them and to us in the next verse, John 5:40, “And still you are not willing [but refuse] to come to Me, so that you might have life.” A literal rendering of John 1:5 from the Good News Bible says this about Jesus, “The Word was the source of life, and this life brought light to humanity.” If God has spoken, and Jesus is the message, there is nothing more important than to listen to what He has to say!

Martin Luther tells a story about being in prayer and meditation on a Good Friday, when a vision of Christ in all His radiant glory appeared on his wall! After his initial thought that this must be some grand revelation, he concluded instead that it must be a trick of the devil, for Christ appears to us in His word in a more humble form. He spoke to the vision saying, “I know no other Christ than He who was crucified, and who is pictured to me in His Word.” When he said this, the image vanished. The man who coined the phrase, “sola scriptura” stood by his conviction of the sufficiency of Christ as recorded in the Bible. God speaks to us today, in these times, as the author of the book of Hebrews says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.” Luther was convinced that Jesus alone, as revealed in the Bible alone, is sufficient for him. He is for me too! He didn’t need an angel or any other supernatural visitation to confirm for him the truths of the Bible and the reality of the sufficiency of Christ. God’s greatest communication to Luther and to all mankind came from God’s Son who gave Himself for us.

The author of Hebrews goes on to explain why Jesus and the message from God that He brings is the most important. The passage continues “but in these last days He has spoken to us by his Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power.”

In a very real sense, when Jesus speaks, God speaks. He doesn’t say, “thus saith the Lord” as the prophets did. He simply speaks. My former seminary professor, Stanley Toussaint used to say, “If God has spoken, there is nothing more important than to listen to what He has said. Let me say that again. If God has spoken, there is nothing more important than to listen to what He has said.” God speaks to us all in Christ and through Christ. There is nothing more important than what He has to say. Jesus, Himself, made it clear that His words were God’s words. John 8:28 gives us Christ’s testimony. It says, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.”