The Trinity and Eternal Life Explained
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Imagine the smell first. It wasn't the scent of incense or the clean, crisp air of the Galilean hills. No, this was the smell of stagnation. It was the smell of 38 years of sweat, dust, and hopelessness. We're standing at the edge of the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, a place that was supposed to be a sanctuary of healing, but had become a warehouse of despair. Five covered porches are packed tight with humanity. The blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
They're all waiting for a superstition. They're waiting for the water to stir. They're waiting for a miracle that always seemed to go to someone faster, stronger, someone else. Never them, always someone else. And there in the middle of that crushing disappointment lies a man who hasn't walked since before most of the people in the crowd were even born. 38 years. That's a lifetime of watching the ceiling.
A lifetime of being carried. A lifetime of being invisible. He's not asking for much anymore. He certainly isn't expecting a carpenter from Nazareth to walk up and shatter his reality. But that is exactly what happens here. Jesus doesn't offer him a coin. He doesn't offer him a theological debate.
He asks a question that cuts through all the noise. Do you want to be made well? And before the man can even finish his excuse about having nobody to help him get into the pool, Jesus issues a command that rewrites the laws of physics for those withered legs. Arise, take up your mat, and walk. Suddenly, ligaments that haven't stretched in decades snap into place. Muscles that had atrophied swell with strength. The man stands up.
He breathes. He rolls up that dirty mat that had been his bed and his prison and he just walks out of there. It should have been a moment of unadulterated joy. It should have been a parade. But this didn't happen on a Tuesday. It happened on the Sabbath. And in the strict religious world of first century Jerusalem, carrying a mat on the Sabbath wasn't just a faux paw.
It was illegal. It was work. So the religious leaders corner this guy and eventually they corner Jesus. They want to know who gave him the authority to break the rules of the Sabbath.
And this is where the story shifts from a physical miracle to a theological earthquake. This is where Jesus says something so explosive that it echoes down 2,000 years of history and reaches us today. He looks at these scholars, men who have memorized every letter of the law, and he says, "My father is still working, so I am working, too." Now, we read that today, and we might nod and think, "That's nice. Jesus calls God as father. We call God our father, too." But when we do that, we miss the shock wave that hit that room.
You see, we got to peel back the layers of our modern understanding to hear this with first century ears. To those Jewish leaders, God was the only one who was allowed to work on the Sabbath. God kept the universe spinning. God kept life breathing. God kept judgment flowing. If God took a day off, existence would end. So when Jesus said, "My father is working, so I am working."
He wasn't just using a metaphor. He was claiming the family business. He was saying, "The rules that apply to you don't apply to me because I do what God does." Now, the text tells us the reaction was immediate and violent. It says that the Jews sought all the more to kill him, not only because he broke the Sabbath, but also because he called God his own father, making himself equal with God. They didn't think he was being poetic. They knew exactly what he was saying.
In their culture, a son shares the specific nature of his father. That's how they saw it. A human father produces a human son. The divine father produces a divine son. They understood that he was claiming to share the very nature of the almighty.
Now this is where we have to be careful not to shrink Jesus down. Some people try to make him just a great moral teacher or a perfect man. Others try to make him a second independent God acting on his own. But Jesus proves both sides are wrong. He invites us into a mystery that's far more beautiful than either of those options. He's not a creature and he's not a second god. He is the radiance of the father's glory.
Think about the sun for a minute. You have the burning star in the sky, the source of everything. And then you have the rays of light that stream from it and hit your face. Now, are the rays the same thing as the sun? In essence, yes, they are light. You can't have the sun without the rays. If the sun stopped shining, it wouldn't be the sun anymore.
The rays are eternal with the sun. But do the rays originate from themselves? No. They come from the source. They don't do anything on their own. They only reveal what the sun is generating. We often miss this because we tend to view the trinity like a divine committee.
three distinct persons sitting around a table voting on plans where Jesus is the cooperative team player who agrees to submit. But that view implies separation as if Jesus had his own independent will and power but just decided to go along with the father. That would make him a second god. The reality of John 5 is far more profound than that. Jesus isn't a separate partner. He is the radiance. A ray of light doesn't choose to align with the sun.
It flows from it by necessity. It cannot shine on its own. So when Jesus says he can do nothing of himself, he isn't describing a lack of ability. He's describing the perfection of his union, he's not a vice president executing orders. He is the very action of God streaming into history.
This is what John meant when he wrote in his opening chapter. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He called Jesus the logos, the word. Think about your own words. Your word is the expression of your mind. It comes from you. It isn't you, but it reveals you perfectly.
If I hear your word, I've engaged with your mind. That's who Jesus is. He is God from God. Light from light. He is the eternal expression of the father into the world. So when Jesus says in John 5, the son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the father doing. He isn't admitting a weakness.
He's declaring his own nature. He's saying I'm so perfectly one with the father that I literally can't act separately from him. I don't have a separate agenda. I don't have a separate will. If you see me working, you're watching the father work. It's the ultimate claim of equality through the ultimate act of submission. He has life in himself, infinite unccreated life.
But he tells us in verse 26, for as the father has life in himself, even so he gave to the son also to have life in himself. Why does this matter to us sitting here today? Why isn't this just dusty theology for a seminary classroom? It's because of what Jesus offers next. Because of the promise that flows out of this relationship. He turns to those confused, angry religious leaders. And he turns to us and he says,"Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and doesn't come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."
Now, we have to stop right there and rethink everything we've been told about that phrase, eternal life. Most of us grew up thinking that eternal life is what happens after the funeral. We think it's a golden ticket we keep in our pocket so that when our heart stops beating, we get to fly away to a distant place called heaven and live forever. In the tradition I was raised in, it meant you were resurrected at a later time and lived forever on a paradise. We think of it as a duration time that never ends. But that's not what Jesus audience heard and it's not what Jesus meant to the people standing around Jesus that day. Eternal life wasn't about going somewhere else.
It was about a different time arriving here. You see, they believed in two ages. There was the present age, this world that we know full of broken bodies, corrupt politicians, sickness, betrayal, death, all that stuff. And then there was the age to come, the future kingdom of God, where justice reigns, where the dead are raised, and where everything is made new. They believe that life with a capital L, the life of the age, belongs strictly to the future. You had to wait for the end of history to get it. But Jesus is a time traveler.
Jesus stands in the middle of the present age, in the middle of the mess and the smell of the pool of Bethesda. He stands there and says, "I have the authority to bring the future into the now." Did you catch the tense he used? He didn't say, "He who believes will eventually get eternal life." He said, "He has eternal life." Right now, present tense. And he says, "He has passed from death into life."
Perfect tense. It's a done deal. This is the scandalous good news of the Gospel of John. Jesus is telling us that we don't have to wait for the grave to experience the life of God. He's saying that because he is the word from the speaker, the ray from the sun, if you will, he unites us with the very power source of the universe right here, right now. Eternal life isn't just about living forever. It's about living with God.
It's about the quality of life, not just the quantity. Jesus defines it himself later in John chapter 17 when he prays, "This is eternal life." that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ. To know here isn't talking about memorizing facts. It isn't passing a theology quiz. In the Hebrew mind, to know someone is to be intimate with them, to be in a relationship so close that it changes who you are. Jesus is offering us an invite into the family business.
He's saying, "The Father loves the Son and shows him all things, and now I am showing them to you." Think about the man at Bethesda again. For 38 years, his definition of life was small. It was the size of his mat. It was defined by what he couldn't do, by who didn't help him, by the unfairness of his situation. He was trapped in the present age of decay. And Jesus walked in and flooded his reality with the age to come.
Jesus brought the resurrection power of the future and touched his legs in the present. That is what eternal life looks like. It's the power of God invading the broken places of our lives and bringing wholeness before the timeline says it's supposed to happen. We live in a world that is desperate for this. We look around and we see the churn of the present age everywhere. We see it in the news. We feel it in our personal anxiety.
We experience it in our strained relationships. And the temptation is to think that God is distant. That he's waiting for the end of the world to fix it. And that our job is just to hold on and survive until we die. But the Jesus of John 5 says, "No, my father is working still and I am working. The work of new creation has already begun." When we align ourselves with Jesus, when we hear his word and believe, as he put it, we aren't just signing up for a fire insurance policy for the afterlife.
We're stepping into the flow of the father and the son. We become little mirrors reflecting that same light. We get to taste the peace of the age to come in the middle of our chaos. We get to taste the love of the age to come in the middle of a hateful culture. We get to taste the justice of the age to come in and the middle of the present life's unfairness.
This is why Jesus could stand before a tomb in chapter 11 and tell Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. Not I will cause the resurrection later, but I am it. I am the location of the event. If you are with me, you are standing in the presence of the power that created the stars. The power is available to us. It is a life that is derived from the father through the son and into us by the spirit. The father has life in himself.
He grants the son to have life in himself and the son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. And friends, he is pleased to give it to you. He doesn't give it to you because you earned it. Remember that man at the pool? He didn't even know Jesus' name. He didn't have a perfectly formulated confession of faith. He just had a need and he obeyed the command to stand up.
That offer is open to you. The verdict is in. Jesus said that if you trust him, you do not come into judgment. That future court case you're worried about, it's already been settled out of court. The gavl has come down. The verdict is life. Capital L.
You've already crossed the border from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of life. You are a citizen of the future living in the present. So how do we walk out of here and live this? We live it by refusing to be defined by the limitations of this current age. We live it by looking at our dead situations, our dead hopes, our dead relationships, our dead habits, and realizing that we're connected to the one who raises the dead. We live it by realizing we don't have an independent life anymore. Just as the son does nothing of himself, but only what he sees the father doing, we are called to do nothing of ourselves, but only what we see Jesus doing.
We're invited to be the word of the word. We're invited to be the rays of the ray. Don't let anyone tell you that Jesus is just a good example to follow. We can't follow him on our own. His standards are too high. He doesn't just want to be your example. He wants to be your life.
He wants to be the engine in your chest. And don't let anyone tell you that Jesus is a distant second tier deity who hopes you make the cut. He is the I am. The one who was in the beginning with God and was God. The one who pitched his tent among us so that we could see glory up close. The Jews at Bethesda were offended because Jesus made himself equal with God. Today, let's be offended by nothing.
Instead, let's be aruck. Let's be shaken by the reality that the God of the universe didn't stay safe in heaven, but came down. God is hands dirty and offered to share his own relationship with the father with us. The father loves the son. And because you were in the Son, the Father loves you with that same perfect eternal love. You have passed from death into life. The age to come has started in your heart.
So take up your mat. What does that look like on a Tuesday morning? It looks like forgiving the person who doesn't deserve it because you are living by the laws of the future kingdom, not the laws of payback. It looks like refusing to cut corners at work when everyone else does because you answer to the king of the age to come. It looks like speaking the truth when silence is safer because you don't fear the judgment of this world. Whatever it is that has been holding you down, take it up. The Sabbath rest has arrived, not as a day off, but as a person who carries the burden for you.
Walk in that freedom. Walk in that light. And let the life of the age to come shine out of you so brightly that the world starts to smell a little less like the pool of Bethesda and a little more like the garden of God. Let this be our prayer. Aba Father, we come to you today as children of the light. Thank you for sending the sun, the ray from the sun to bring us into your family. We confess we often live stuck in the present age defined by our limitations.
Help us to live as citizens of the age to come right now. Let the light of the future shine through us today. We ask this in the name of the one who passed from death to life so we could too, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my book, The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. Readers call it a fantastic book where you will feel yourself discovering your identity in Christ. One reviewer praised it as five-star material for the spiritual mystic or group Bible study.
It's time to escape legalism and shame. Discover you're already God's beloved child with divine nature flowing through you with what reviewers describe as excellent writing style and elegant pros like a campfire discussion with a knowledgeable and gifted wonour journey from Genesis to Revelation uncovering your true identity. This book shows how to access God's peace, wisdom, and strength from within. Your struggles become opportunities for divine light to shine through. available in hard coverver, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook. The link to the book is in the video description. May God bless your journey along his path for you.
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[music] The churn of life. The pulse of [singing] pain. The walls [music] of doubt [singing] that close us in.
[music] The weight of grief, the stain of sin. [music] But hear [singing] the voice that breaks the [music and singing] standing before the seal of roll [music] back the [singing] stone the savior cries. Awake sleeper [music] and arise. [singing] Though death may hold [music] the present age, his life rewrites [singing] the [music] final page.
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[music] The violence ceases. In the presence [music] [singing] of the prince of peace. The noise of [music] the world begins to still. bowing [singing] before his [music] sovereign will build up. >> He calls the [singing] dead to breathe again.
[music] He breaks the chains of [singing] broken man. [music] So hear the voice that breaks the [singing] glue. [music] Standing before the seal of [singing] tomb.
Roll [music] back the [singing] stone the savior cries. Awake [music] sleeper and arise. Though [music] death may hold the present age, [singing] his life rewrites the final page. [music and singing] Come out. I see [singing] [music] the morning stars the night. [music] >> The church is gone. The work is done.
[singing] [music] The victory [singing] is fully [music] won. >> [singing and music] >> Come [music] on.
