Day 10 - Altaring the ego

Reading: John 5:31-47

Have you ever thought to yourself, “If only I lived when Jesus was walking this earth. I wouldn’t have any doubts at all if I could see his miracles and hear his teaching!”

The reality, however, is that many who saw and heard him in the first century did not believe him. For that reason  Jesus appealed to the practice laid down by Moses (Deuteronomy 19:15) of calling forwards “two or three witnesses” to support his claims about himself, as a person’s testimony about himself was not admissible in a court of law (John 5:31). In Jewish law courts a lot of significance was placed on the reliability of the witnesses. If they were trustworthy and dependable, then their witness carried a lot of weight.

Jesus asserts that a number of witnesses testify on his behalf: John the Baptist (5:33), the works that Jesus was doing (5:36) and God the Father himself (5:37). These three, he was saying, are all reliable witnesses, and therefore accepting Jesus’ claims should be a simple matter.

But it wasn’t, was it? Many of those who heard him and saw his miracles did not believe. How could that be?

Jesus explains the reason: “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (5:44)

Pride, it seems, is the great barrier to belief. Pride twists how we view things, contorting the truth to make it fit with what we want to believe: that we are gods, worthy of praise and admiration. And if we believe we are gods, then there is no room for faith in Christ as God, is there? As the Scottish preacher James Denny once put it, “No man can bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. No man can give the impression that he is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.”

Response

Lord, my pride gets in the way of trusting you and of believing what you might do, even today. You are God, I am not. Help me to live in the reality of that today.

Roger