John 5 Deeper Dive March 1 2026

JOHN 5

Participant Discussion Guide

“The Son Who Gives Life and Judges All”

Source of Old Faith Church

2000 Texas 12  |  Vidor, TX 77662

9:45 AM  |  Sunday, March 1, 2026

A WORD BEFORE YOU BEGIN: These questions are not a quiz. There are no trick questions and no answers designed to make you feel judged. The goal is simple: to see what Jesus is actually doing and saying in John 5, and then to honestly consider what that means for our lives. If a question lands somewhere tender, that is worth paying attention to. You are not required to share anything you are not ready to share.

Read John 5 together before discussion begins. If time is short, read these three movements:

  • 5:1–15 — The Healing at Bethesda
  • 5:16–29 — The Authority of the Son
  • 5:30–47 — Witness, Scripture, and Unbelief

Ask together: What shifts between these three sections? This chapter moves from healing, to conflict, to theology, to judgment, to heart exposure. It is not primarily a healing story. It is an identity story.

ASECTION A Healing and the Will — John 5:1–15
John 5:6  When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’

The setting: Jerusalem. The Pool of Bethesda. Five covered colonnades filled with blind, lame, and paralyzed people. Jesus approaches one man — disabled for thirty-eight years — and asks a question that should be obvious. The man never says yes.

Before you discuss: notice that the man explains his circumstances rather than answering the question. His trust is in the pool, the timing, and the mechanism — not in the person standing in front of him. Jesus heals him anyway, without being asked.

1.Read verse 6 carefully. Jesus asks: ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The man never says yes — he explains his problem instead. What does his answer tell you about where his hope actually was? What did he think was standing between him and healing?
2.  TAKE-HOME Where are you still lying on your mat when Jesus may already be telling you to get up and walk? What ‘pool’ have you been waiting beside — a relationship, a circumstance, a ministry role, a church to get right — expecting that thing to be what finally fixes you?
3.The man did not ask Jesus for anything. Grace arrived before any request. How does that change the way you think about what God owes us when we pray, or what we need to do to ‘qualify’ for His help?
4.In verse 14, Jesus finds the man in the temple and says ‘Stop sinning, lest something worse happen to you.’ Physical healing and moral faithfulness are connected here. Does that surprise you? What does it say about what Jesus actually wants for us — not just healing, but wholeness?
BSECTION B Legalism and Spiritual Blindness — John 5:10–18
John 5:17  Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’

After the healing, the religious leaders interrogate the man for carrying his mat — a Sabbath violation in their interpretation. They then pursue Jesus. His defense is not to deny the charge. He escalates: He claims to be doing the work the Father does, on the Father’s authority. They hear this as a claim to equality with God and begin planning to kill Him.

VOICE FROM THE EARLY CHURCH Irenaeus of Lyon  (c. 130–202 AD)Source: Against Heresies, Book IV, Chs. 12–16  (ANF Vol. 1, pp. 474–484) Irenaeus made the case — writing around AD 180 — that the law Moses gave was never meant to be an endpoint. It was always a road. He argued in Book IV that the law’s natural precepts were not abolished by Christ but extended and completed, because the law’s whole purpose was to educate and form a people capable of receiving Him. Those who received the law and refused to follow it to its destination — Christ Himself — had fundamentally misread everything Moses wrote. Applied directly to John 5: the Sabbath law belonged to the larger Mosaic economy pointing toward Christ, the one who, as Lord of the Sabbath, was its fulfillment. Irenaeus: ‘The Lord did not abrogate the natural precepts of the law by which man is justified’ — He fulfilled them. To defend the Sabbath rule against the Sabbath Lord was to use the signpost to block the road it marked.
5.The religious leaders are more focused on a man carrying his mat than on the fact that a man disabled for 38 years can now walk. What does their reaction reveal about what they actually loved? Have you ever seen that same pattern in yourself or in a church community?
6.  TAKE-HOME What ‘religious systems’ or habits do you tend to trust more than Jesus Himself? This could be a theological tradition, a church practice, a spiritual routine — something good that may have quietly become more important than the relationship it was meant to support.
7.If you grew up in a church environment with a lot of rules — about dress, behavior, music, attendance — how did that shape what you thought God was like? Has that picture needed to be corrected by what you’ve actually read in the Gospels? Share as much as you’re comfortable sharing.
CSECTION C Jesus’ Identity — Equal with the Father — John 5:17–27
John 5:23  Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

Under pressure, Jesus does not walk back His claims. He makes them more precise. He says He does what the Father does. The Father shows Him everything. He gives life as the Father gives life. He executes judgment. And all people must honor Him just as they honor the Father. This is not a subtle claim. The leaders understood it perfectly — they wanted to kill Him for it.

VOICE FROM THE EARLY CHURCH Athanasius of Alexandria  (c. 296–373 AD)Source: Orations Against the Arians, Oration II, Secs. 18–22  (NPNF2 Vol. 4, pp. 352–358)John 5:19–23 was one of the central battlegrounds of the Arian controversy in the fourth century. The Arians used ‘the Son can do nothing of himself’ (v. 19) to argue that the Son was a created or subordinate being — greater than humanity, but less than fully God. Athanasius spent his life refuting this, and his answer drew directly from this passage. He argued in the Orations Against the Arians that the works the Son does are not imitations of the Father’s works — they are the same works, performed from the same divine nature. His logic was straightforward: a creature cannot give what it does not possess. If the Son can raise the dead and give life as the Father gives life, the Son must be what the Father is — truly God. He addressed John 5:30 (‘I can do nothing on my own’) in Oration III, Sections 36–38, and argued that this reflects the Son’s eternal relation to the Father within the Godhead — a relationship of love and shared will, not a hierarchy of rank or a limitation of nature. Applied to verse 23: you cannot honor the Father while dishonoring the Son, because they are not two Gods in a chain of command — they share one divine nature and one will.
8.In verses 19–23, Jesus makes a series of layered claims about His relationship to the Father. Walk through them slowly: He does what the Father does. The Father shows Him everything. He gives life as the Father gives life. He executes judgment. All must honor Him as they honor the Father. Which of these claims strikes you as most significant? Which is hardest to fully absorb?
9.Verse 23 says that whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father. How would you use this verse to respond to someone who says they believe in God but do not think Jesus is anything more than a great teacher or prophet?
10.Jesus says He only does what He sees the Father doing (v. 19) and that He cannot do anything on His own (v. 30). Some people use this kind of language to argue that Jesus is less than the Father — a subordinate or created being. But how does verse 23 answer that reading? What is the difference between relational submission and being less than God in nature?
DSECTION D Eternal Life and Resurrection — John 5:24–29
John 5:24  Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Jesus makes two distinct promises in this section. The first is present: whoever hears His word and believes already has eternal life — already passed from death to life. The second is future: all who are in the graves will hear His voice, rising to life or to condemnation. Both promises rest on the same authority: the Son has been given power over life and death.

The two are not competing. They are sequential stages of the same reality. The transfer happens now; the completion happens at the resurrection of the body.

11.Read verse 24 slowly. Notice the past tense — ‘has passed.’ Jesus is not talking about something that will happen at death. This has already happened for the believer. What difference would it make in your daily life if you lived as though that was actually true right now?
12.  TAKE-HOME What would change this week if you really believed Jesus has already moved you from death to life (v. 24)? How would you relate to fear, to other people’s opinions, to suffering, differently?
13.In verses 28–29, Jesus says ‘all who are in the graves’ will hear His voice. That is explicitly physical — bodies, graves, resurrection. How would you explain the difference between the ‘present resurrection’ of verse 24 and the ‘future resurrection’ of verses 28–29 to someone who is confused about what Christians believe about death and what comes after?
14.Jesus describes two outcomes in verse 29: resurrection to life, and resurrection to condemnation. Many people assume all people end up in the same place, or that the dead simply cease to exist. What does this passage say directly about both of those assumptions? How do you hold this truth with both honesty and compassion?
ESECTION E Scripture and Unbelief — John 5:39–47
John 5:39–40  You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Jesus closes with a penetrating diagnosis — not aimed at pagans, but at the most scripturally educated people in the room. They know the text. They have built their lives around it. And He says the whole structure has been used to avoid the very person the text announces. He names the root: they do not have the love of God in them. They receive glory from one another instead of seeking the glory that comes from God. And then He turns Moses against them.

A QUESTION WORTH SITTING WITH HONESTLY Some of us have been exploring biblical topics through YouTube channels, podcasts, or books that draw heavily on texts outside the Bible — books like 1 Enoch, the Book of Jasher, or various ancient writings. The leaders in John 5 missed Jesus not because they had too little material, but because their hearts were not oriented toward Him. Adding more texts to our reading does not automatically produce clearer sight. The question is always: does this bring me to Christ, or does it pull my attention somewhere else? The early Church recognized exactly 27 New Testament books because those texts reliably testified to the apostolic witness of this Jesus. Books outside that canon were not suppressed — they simply did not meet that standard.
15.Jesus says in verse 39 that they search the Scriptures diligently — and then in verse 40, ‘yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.’ Is it possible to know the Bible well and still miss Jesus? What is the difference between using Scripture to confirm what we already believe versus letting it bring us to Christ?
16.In verse 44, Jesus names ‘receiving glory from one another’ as something that makes it impossible to believe. Who in your life — a community, a family, a church tradition — do you tend to seek approval from in ways that might be making it harder for you to respond openly to what Scripture actually says?
17.When you engage with materials outside the Bible — YouTube content, ancient texts, alternative histories — are they drawing you closer to the Jesus of John 5, or are they drawing your attention away from Him and toward secondary puzzles? How do you discern the difference?
18.Jesus says Moses wrote about Him (v. 46). How has your reading of the Old Testament changed as you’ve understood more about Jesus? Are there passages in the Old Testament that now look different to you because of what you know about Christ?

CLOSING REFLECTION

Read together before closing in prayer

John 5:24  Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

The man at the pool could not get into the water on his own.

The leaders at the temple had every resource and refused to use it.

And Jesus stood in front of both of them — the One who said ‘Rise’ to the helpless man, and who will one day say ‘Come forth’ to every person who has died.

The question John 5 leaves with us is not complicated. It is simply this:

Will you honor the Son?

WHAT THE EARLY CHURCH HEARD IN JOHN 5 Two voices from the first three centuries of the Church — men who were reading this chapter long before it became familiar — heard two things above everything else. Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 180 AD) heard the Sabbath conflict as a confirmation of something the entire Old Testament had been building toward: the law was always a road, not a destination. Every Mosaic form — Sabbath, sacrifice, temple, priesthood — was pointing forward. When the Pharisees defended the Sabbath against Jesus, they were doing what Israel had been tempted to do throughout its history: stopping at the signpost instead of following the road. Irenaeus’s pastoral conclusion was not ‘the law is bad’ — it was ‘the law was always meant to bring you here, to this person.’ His word to us is: don’t let the forms of faith replace the one that the forms announce. Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 350 AD) heard the identity claims of verses 19–23 as the text that made everything else either stand or fall. He spent his life — and his freedom, exiled five times — defending the point that Jesus makes in those verses: the Son’s works are the Father’s works because they share one nature. A creature cannot give life. Only one who is Life can give it. For Athanasius, the stakes were not abstract. If the Son is less than God, then when He died on a cross, a creature died — and the resurrection of a creature saves no one. The full deity of Christ is not a theological puzzle; it is the hinge on which every promise in the Gospel turns. His word to us is: honor the Son fully, because anything less is not honoring the Father either.

Source of Old Faith Church  |  2000 Texas 12, Vidor, TX 77662  |  March 1, 2026

ECF sources: ANF Vol. 1 (Irenaeus) | NPNF2 Vol. 4 (Athanasius) | Full texts at ccel.org