When God Calls A Witness
When God Calls A Witness
John 5:31–47 How God Convinces People He Is Real — and our Role in It.
The Witnesses God Actually Calls
John 5:31–47 — How God Convinces People He Is Real — and our Role in It.
The first experience I ever had with evangelism was an utter disaster. About a year after I became a Christian, my youth pastor took me to a leadership summit up in Big Bear. One afternoon, they told us we were going to put our faith into action. They bused us over to the ski resort to interrupt people on their way to the slopes and talk to them about Jesus. So picture it: families frantically trying to keep all their kids together, wrestling with clunky gear, hunting for goggles. And here comes a nervous fourteen-year-old.
“Excuse me, do you know where you're going when you die?”
It was neither the time nor the place. I felt utterly rejected and very quickly gave up entirely. We were supposed to be out there a couple of hours; I sat down on a bench and waited for the bus.
The strategy was only one of the things wrong with that scene. Looking back at that fourteen-year-old, I don't think I understood what evangelism actually is. If I'm honest, I thought it was up to me to find the perfect words to make people give up their skis and turn to God. But it never was about me. John 5:31–47 has a lot to say about that, and about the surprising witnesses God actually calls.
Picture John 5 as a courtroom drama. Verses 17–30 are Jesus' opening remarks, and he makes some audacious claims about himself: he is the source of life, the judge at the final day, the one who should receive all our honor — three claims in the Bible only God gets to make about himself. Jesus is claiming to be so much more than merely human.
Now the witnesses get called to the stand, and Jesus starts by taking himself off the list: “If I testify about myself, my testimony isn't true.” He isn't offering something brand new. He is not pitting himself against the God of the Hebrew Bible. What he's bringing is ancient and established. Unexpected and yet pointed to all along, Jesus was revealing most precisely who God had always been.
Then verse 32 introduces a little mystery: “There is someone else who testifies about me, and I know his testimony about me is true.” You'd assume that's John the Baptist, but later in this Gospel Jesus makes it clear: the ‘someone else’ is the Holy Spirit, the advocate who keeps pointing us back to the Lord (Jn 14:16). John comes next, and the contrast with that mysterious “someone” is the point. John is the first human witness in the Gospel, and yet Jesus says, “I don't accept human testimony, but I say these things so that you can be saved.” At first, that sounds deflating, but I don't think that's how we're supposed to read it. Instead, I find an invitation to both confidence and humility in how we approach being God's witness.
Confidence, because God really does want to use people. Human witnesses will be flawed and inadequate — I stumble over my words, forget my Bible references, can't answer every question — and God still says, yeah, I'm going to use you anyway. And humility, because if you stack the efficacy of the various witnesses in this scene, I'm at the very bottom.
Confession Time: There have been conversations where, in my head, I'm thinking, yes! I am nailing this; there is no way this person doesn't become a Christian on the spot. But it has never once happened that way. When I'm too full of myself is most often when I'm met with blank faces. Then there have been times I knew I was completely fumbling it, and those are the times someone actually crossed the line into faith.
I'm not even sure I'd describe it as God working through me — more in spite of me. Praise God, because he keeps using my flawed and inadequate witness.
The Three ‘Words’ of the Gospel
There's a helpful framework I picked up from Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian and one of the twentieth century's most influential. The first is the living Word, Jesus himself; below that the written word, the Scriptures; and below that the proclaimed word — every sermon I preach, every time you tell your testimony. The hierarchy is clear, with Christ at the top. But here's the paradox: experientially, we flip that on its head. Most people start at the bottom, hearing a proclaimed word from some flawed human being like you or me, and it points them up to the written word, which was never meant to hand us information. The end goal is to connect with the living Jesus.
Jesus acknowledges and still uses humans like John, but the stronger witnesses are the works of God, most powerfully the cross and resurrection. In my own life, it's likewise been the activity of God that makes for the strongest witness. In a few weeks, we'll get to John 9, the man born blind, grilled by these same leaders with questions he can't answer. He gives the perfect response:
“One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see.”
Being a witness doesn't mean answering every hard question thrown at you. It might just mean pointing at the actual work of God in your own life.
And I am challenged by the way Jesus refers to the Scriptures themselves.
“You examine the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, but they testify about me, and you don't want to come to me so that you can have life.”
Apparently, you can read the Bible and not experience it as the Word of God. I studied Greek and Hebrew in seminary and loved it, and there were days I had the actual word of God open in front of me while I spent an hour parsing conjugations — and then in an instant it clicks, and I'm not parsing Hebrew anymore, I'm being confronted with a living God.
You see, the Bible is our absolute authority here at Grace Hill — the only source that points us to God's story, and we're not up here parsing the latest Taylor Swift song. But we don't worship the Bible — we worship Jesus.
So, how are you invited to respond this week? I find myself standing right where John the Baptist stood — another human witness, called to keep talking about Jesus with my friends, my family, my neighbors, knowing the whole time that I'm insufficient. I am daily invited to go with both confidence and humility: God wants to use me, and it was never up to me anyway.
And before you're sent as his witness: how is God encountering you with his works and his word? Have you been studying words on a page without encountering the living Lord? What if Jesus wants a relationship with you, and it starts today?
