Day 5, John 5

“the immoral and religious have the same thing in common. They are both trying to avoid God as Savior.” Tim Keller

“all our righteous acts are as filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:6

Our goodness could be the very thing that could hinder us from knowing and understanding who Jesus is. The Jews that persecuted Jesus were so good that they fell in love with their own goodness. They not only obeyed the law that was given by Moses, but they developed more customs built upon those laws, thereby erecting an entire lifestyle based upon their own standard of moral performance. They diligently studied the scriptures and they diligently kept not just the Sabbath command but an entire additional field of Sabbath customs. They thought that their performance would give them eternal life.

But their customs allowed no room for Jesus. They allowed no room for outsiders (like the Samaritan woman) or for invalids (by the pool of Siloam), yet they still had space for money changers. Their reading of scripture was intended to point them to Christ, not support the arguments of their own moral superiority.

How about us? Faithful reading of scripture will give us a growing mental picture of who Jesus is. Scripture takes all kinds of forms (history, poetry, songs, proverbs …) yet they all share the same central purpose of revealing God to us. If Jesus is The Word, God Himself, the entire Bible will point us to him. Or to put it another way, Jesus is the fullest picture of who God is and so becomes the very lens through which we understand scripture.

How has Jesus, the Light of the World, illuminated your picture of God? After five days in our 21 day challenge, do you see God differently than you did before?

Notes: Observe an “apprenticeship analogy” as Jesus describes the way he has learned his work from his father (5:19-30). He describes the way he learned his ministry to be the same way he learned his earthly vocation of carpentry—from his father.