"Tolerance or Truth?"

Scripture Passage

John 5:1-47; Mark 2:23-28; Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5; Mark 3:1-6; Matthew 12:9-14; Luke 6:6-11; Matthew 12:15-21

Scripture Focus

“No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God” (John 5:44 NLT)

Observation

In John 5, Jesus instigates conflict with the Jewish religious leaders by instructing a man He’s healed to “pick up [his] mat and walk” (5:8). Instead of rejoicing that a man infirmed for 38 years was now made whole, Jesus’ critics were angry that He had instructed the man to “pick up his mat”—that constituted “work” and was therefore a violation of their rules regarding the Sabbath.

In response to all that, Jesus says some remarkable things. He affirms His full alignment with the Father, declares that in that relationship “the Son gives life to anyone he wants” (5:21), that “the Son [has] absolute authority to judge” (5:22), and that “anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent him” (5:23). These forceful declarations come from only one paragraph of this passage—other adjoining paragraphs contain statements just as potent.

All of this points to the supremacy and uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the Son of God. Don’t ever let anyone tell you Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God—one paragraph of John 5 is enough to dismiss that notion!

Near the conclusion of today’s reading from John, Jesus says…

“No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God” (John 5:44 NLT)

That verse has my attention as an apt description of what goes on in the name of religious tolerance in our day. Every faith is accorded equal honor (“you gladly honor each other”) except that faith which actually dares to celebrate one name “above every name” (Philippians 2:9 NIV). Contemporary culture has room for spirituality, but no tolerance for God.

As for me, I once more affirm God as holy, humanity as sinful, and Jesus alone as Savior. "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12 NIV).

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