Chapter five verse five: In this verse we are told that Jesus never glorified Himself, though He had every reason to do so. His focus was always on the Father to Whom He gave credit for all that He did. On several occasions He admitted that the very words He spoke were given to Him by the Father (Jn. 8:48; 12:49,50). At one point He said that He Himself was not good, that only God the Father was good (Mat. 19:17). As a man created by God Jesus would not compare Himself to the Father Who created Him because the creator of a “house” is greater–has more honor–than the house  (Heb. 3:3,4). As a man, Jesus obeyed the Father unto righteousness and holiness and thereby earned the right to join Him in paradise. As men, the same righteousness and holiness are necessary for our entrance into God’s presence. First John 2:6; 3:3 and Revelation 3:21 tell us that such purity of character is absolutely necessary in order to attain eternal life. Satan’s false prophets refute this Biblical fact. Two billion “sinners saved by grace” believe them just as Adam and Eve believed the Serpent when he told them that they could defy God’s Words and “You shall not surely die”–they would live forever. Sound familiar?

The last half of verse 5 needs to be clarified. The Word, Who was a God, was with a God “in the beginning” (Jn. 1:1-4,14). That Word later came to earth as a man called Jesus of Nazareth. It was only at His conception (“to day”) that the other God–the One Who remained in heaven–became His Father. Prior to the Word’s becoming a man, He and the other God were equals (Phil. 2:6). Jesus willingly divested Himself of His God status and became a man like all other men, became a son of the Father as can any other man, obeyed the Father as can any other man and earned a place with the Father in His kingdom forever as can any other man. He accomplished this feat through obedience to the Father. Other men can follow Him into God’s coming kingdom by obeying the Father as did He. What Jesus was and did man can be and do as He Himself declared in John 14:12. The key, as this verse notes, is faith. However, faith, He declared through all of His Old Testament and New Testament writers, must be confirmed by works of faith–obedience to that in which one has faith–God’s Word. Faith, He tells us in Romans 10:17, is the result of assuming that God’s Word is Truth (Jn. 17:17). However, as James tells us in 2:17,20, faith without works relative to that faith is dead. A starving man can believe (have faith) that the food placed before him will save him from death. However, if he refuses to eat (work) that food he will die. Billions of church people believe that the Bible is God’s Word/Truth but refuse to “work” it–obey it–thereby rendering their faith (and themselves) spiritually “dead.” Jesus made this clear when He said that “Man must LIVE by EVERY WORD  THAT COMES FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD”–His Holy Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. L.J.