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Lord likens His people to sheep, and "hearing" is a characteristic of His sheep--see 10: 3,
8, 16, 27 "My sheep hear My voice"--and the result is "they believe on Him that sent
Me" (5: 24). In this Gospel Christ is pre-eminently the Sent One to carry out the Father's
purpose. There are 28 occurrences of pempo and 17 of apostello (45 in all) that speak of
Christ being sent. He is THE APOSTLE of Heb. 3: 1 and the Father's purpose is
declared in I John 4: 14:
"The Father sent the Son to be The Saviour of the world."
Hearing the voice of the Son of God affects two classes, those who are spiritually dead
and those who are physically dead:
"I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the
voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in
Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself. And He has given Him
authority to judge because He is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is
coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out--those who
have done good will rise to life, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned"
(5: 25-29).
Resurrection from physical death is mentioned in verse 28 and refers to the future.
But the dead of verse 28 dealt with those who were listening at that time to the Lord's
words. "And now is" (A.V.) or "has now come" (N.I.V.) of verse 25 prove this. They
are the "spiritually dead", "dead in trespasses in sins" (Eph. 2: 1; 5: 14). The
quickening voice of the Son of God brings them to spiritual life. Eph. 2: 10 tells us
what follows. Such are "created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before
ordained that we should walk in them" (see also Titus 3: 8). Hence those "who have
done good" of John 5: 29, produce those "good works" which are the fruit of the
spiritual life in Christ. As this resurrection deals with all mankind, "for all that are in the
graves" can only refer to the place of physical death which is the lot of all mankind,
because all are sinners under condemnation and death (Rom. 3: 19).
For the believer, salvation means being transferred by grace out of the kingdom of
Satan, death and condemnation, into the kingdom of God's dear Son (Col. 1: 13), where
condemnation is unknown, for Christ has atoned for all his sins, and eternal life now
reigns. We are dealing with basic truth here, not dispensational, and are not surprised to
find that the apostle Paul stresses the same truth in Rom. 8: 1, for to be "in Christ
Jesus" means no condemnation now. The rest of the verse does not have sufficient MSS
backing but is found in verse 4 where it accompanies the walk of the believer after
salvation. Condemnation is a legal term as used in Romans, and God does not put any
believer "into the dock" a second time. A believer may sow to the flesh and reap
corruption by so doing, but that is another matter.
The resurrection to life in John 5: 28, is to eternal life, and this is only for the
believer in Christ, as he is granted immortality found only in the Lord.
The Lord Jesus now deals with witness. He said: