Jesus said to the Jews:
“If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true.
Jesus did not come for the purpose of self-promotion. This might not be immediately obvious to us, who have the advantage of hindsight to look back at all he said and did, and are able to build a picture of him not only fully human, but as fully God as well. Yet the way he revealed himself was careful. He did mighty deeds, but asked the recipients not to reveal them. He gave testimony to the truth, but only to those who were willing to listen. He did not reveal himself to curry favor with man. But rather he revealed himself in order to reveal the Father and way to the Father.
I do not accept human testimony,
but I say this so that you may be saved.
Jesus did not contend with popular opinion. Some thought he was a fraud or a charlatan. Others thought he was Moses, Elijah, or one of the Prophets. None of them could receive the truth of who he was without the revelation of the Father. Even the true testimony of John the Baptist was only sufficient point the way. People needed to move from rejoicing in that light and believing that testimony to the still greater testimony of the Father about his Son.
The works that the Father gave me to accomplish,
these works that I perform testify on my behalf
that the Father has sent me.
When Jesus worked he did not view those works as bragging rights for himself, but rather evidence of the Father's favor and approval on his life and ministry. They were events with the same meaning as the words spoken at his baptism, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" (see Matthew 3:17).
John the Baptist and the Scriptures pointed to the one in whom eternal life would finally be given. But it was possible to stubbornly stop anywhere along the way to Jesus, caught up in what the crowds thought, in what was popular or pious, and not come to him for that life.
You search the Scriptures,
because you think you have eternal life through them;
even they testify on my behalf.
But you do not want to come to me to have life.
It is sad when someone does not want to come to Jesus to have life. But it is easier than it seems to get so caught up in the world, in people who come in their own names, in popular opinion, and so arrive at a place where we convince ourselves that we have all we need. It really can wear a mask of religiosity or piety. But true religion and piety are a constant invitation, an arrow to the person of Jesus himself, and through Jesus, to the Father's heart. There is no rest here for the smug and the self-satisfied. It is a constant journey, a pilgrimage, to the coming Kingdom. Our very pretenses of religiosity will accuse us if we fail to heed that call.
Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father:
the one who will accuse you is Moses,
in whom you have placed your hope.
For if you had believed Moses,
you would have believed me,
because he wrote about me.
To the degree to which we have become stiff-necked and hard of heart let us turn to Jesus who did not come to condemn us, but rather to give us new hearts, and a better burden to assuage our necks. Even more than Moses stood in the breach for Israel, Jesus stands in the breach and pleads for us.
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the mana Christ Jesus (see First Timothy 2:5)
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