URC Daily Devotion Friday 23 May 2025
St John 5: 30 – 47
Jesus said: ‘I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgement is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me. ‘If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent. ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from human beings. But I know that you do not have the love of God in[f] you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’
Reflection
These words – ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; […] Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.’ – are among the saddest words in the Bible.
You have the Bible; you know the Bible; you study the Bible; you even have theological quarrels and wars about the Bible; and yet you are completely missing the point! This is, basically, what Jesus is saying here. It’s not about theology – about what you claim to believe. It’s not about how much I know or how loudly I claim to be ‘orthodox’ or ‘reformed’ or ‘right’. It’s about how faithfully we follow the Lord.
This is where Jesus started – they hated him because he healed a man on the Sabbath. God gave them the Sabbath law for their benefit: don’t work all the time, have a day of rest. But they turned it into doctrine, and doctrine is used to divide people into the ‘in’ and the ‘out’ crowd. The ‘holier-than-thou’ and the not good enough. And in their eyes, being kind on a Sabbath wasn’t good enough. It broke doctrine. It was against tradition.
Of course, we are not as bad as those wretched Pharisees. We are Christians, we don’t follow the Law – we have our own rules and doctrines and traditions and habits and party lines. We use these to hit people with, to criticise, and hurt, and use as excuses for being unkind and divisive and ‘holier-than-thou’. We can even find the right scripture verse to support our lack of kindness.
Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
Prayer
Lord Jesus,
following you is not difficult, complicated, nor hard.
You call us to be good, kind, and loving.
You call us to be human and humane.
It is not your way that is hard –
it’s my heart that has grown hard and cold.
Forgive me.
Help me to do better; to be better.
I don’t even ask for years of ‘better’ – I only ask for a day: today.
Amen.