What is the context?
Jesus explains His work in relation to the Father who loves Him. The Son acts in complete unity with the Father, gives life and receives authority to judge. Honoring the Son is inseparable from honoring the Father who sent Him.
He promises that the person who hears His word and believes the One who sent Him has eternal life and has crossed from death to life. He speaks both of an hour already arriving when the dead hear His voice and of a coming hour when everyone in the graves will come out.
The final distinction is between resurrection to life for those who have done good and resurrection to judgment for those who have done evil. The passage keeps present life through faith and future resurrection and judgment together.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Christian traditions commonly read the Son’s unity with the Father as consistent with His divine authority, rather than His being a separate, competing god. They also affirm a future resurrection and judgment: the Catholic Catechism and Westminster Confession both teach that people will answer to Christ for their lives. (Wesley on John 5:19–23; Catechism §§1038–1040; Westminster Confession 33.1–2)
Readers differ over how the promise of life relates to continuing faith. Reformed teaching in the Westminster Confession says that those truly received by God will be kept to the end, despite serious failures. Wesley reads verse 24’s assurance with the condition that a person does not abandon faith. Both locate life in Christ, while differing over whether a believer can finally fall away. (Westminster Confession 17.1–3; Wesley on John 5:24)
Calvin reads the good works in verse 29 as the fruit that identifies believers, while insisting that their acceptance rests on God’s mercy. This is his explanation of how that verse relates to the promise of life through faith. (Calvin on John 5:29)
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Daniel sees one like a son of man receiving enduring authority, glory and a kingdom whose rule reaches every people. Jesus’ words about the Son of Man’s authority to judge belong alongside that scriptural picture. This is a supported connection between the passages; John does not quote Daniel’s vision here. (Daniel 7:13–14)
Philippians describes the Son’s humble obedience through death and His exaltation, when every knee bows and every tongue confesses Him as Lord to the Father’s glory. Honoring the Son and honoring the Father belong together within God’s purpose. (Philippians 2:5–11)
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.