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We must now give attention to the special feature of this section, which is placed in
correspondence with verses 28, 29 in the structure.
"The hour is coming and now is" (John 5: 25).
"The hour is coming" (John 5: 28).
The additional words "and now is", found in the first occurrence, are absent from the
second. In the first passage, "the dead" are said to hear the voice of the Son of God,
whereas in the second "all that are in the graves" hear His voice. In the first, they that
hear "shall live", in the second, they that hear "shall come forth" (5: 29). In the earlier
passage they that live are those that do not come into condemnation (John 5: 24), whereas
in the later passages they that hear are those who are raised from the dead.
"They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil,
unto the resurrection of damnation" (krisis).
It is evident that the former passage refers to those who are spiritually dead, but who,
upon hearing the gospel, live; whereas, the later passage refers to the physically dead, all
of whom must hear His voice; but all these are not necessarily saved, neither does the
hearing of the voice imply any element of faith on their part for while some come forth to
a resurrection of life the rest come forth to a resurrection of judgment. There is little or
no satisfaction to be discovered in the commentaries as to the precise meaning of the
added words "and now is". Let us conduct an investigation for ourselves and see whether
we can learn enough from the Word itself to help us to appreciate what is intended. We
remember, of course, that similar expressions are found in chapter 4:; and it is fatal to
ignore these when examining chapter 5: In chapter 4:, the question is one of worship;
in chapter 5:, one of life.
1.
The hour was coming, (an hour future to the time when the Saviour sat and talked
at the well), when men would neither at Jerusalem, nor at Samaria, worship the
Father. This "hour" had not "come" when Peter and John went up to the temple at
the hour of prayer (Acts 3: 1), and the type of worship that was offered and
conducted at Jerusalem at the moment that Christ uttered the words in John 4: 21,
continued until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70.
2.
"The hour cometh, and now is", looks to a day when the true worshipper should
worship the Father in spirit and in truth. No time need elapse before that took
place; even while the temple still stood at Jerusalem, "true" worshippers could
and did "worship the Father in spirit and in truth".
There is, however, a possibility that John, writing his gospel long after A.D.70,
brought the Lord's testimony to the Samaritan woman up to date, saying, the hour the
Lord had said was coming, is now here, the words "and now is" referring to the
dispensation that had been instituted upon the setting aside of Israel, which in this gospel
John particularly ministered to "the world". Parallels for this practice can be found in the
O.T. In Gen. 6: 4, the record reads:
"There were giants in the earth in those days."