From today’s reading of John 5

In today’s passage Jesus heals the invalid at the pool of Bethesda who, unlike the paralytic from my previous post, did not have a community around him to carry him to where healing was. The majority of the rest of the passage recounts Jesus’ interaction with religious leaders who should have been celebrating with joy over this healing but instead were upset that the healed man carried his mat on the Sabbath.

How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? – John 5:44

This was Jesus’s statement to these joyless men toward the end of his discourse; a statement to men unable to see the life-changing miracle of healing that has just occurred.

Why were they unable to see?

Jesus words strike at the core of people-pleasers like myself. These men considered themselves, I am sure, to be both faithful in lifestyle and full of faith in conviction, yet Jesus unearths for them here both their unbelief and the true motivation of their actions. They lived to receive glory from men and that is what they chased after.

They were unable to see because they weren’t looking in the right direction.

Glory and affirmation from people is like a drug for people like me. If I am not careful to set my heart on the Lord alone, man-made glory and affirmation becomes the driving force of my life. “Gosh, I hope they like me” becomes the internal loop running through my mind, set on permanent repeat. It is Like-Me Meth, and it is deadly. Jesus reveals, over and over in the gospels, that many of those who opposed him did so because they cared only for the praise of men, rather than the glory of God and – did you catch it? – glory from God.

Glory from God! Can you imagine? What is this golden treasure Jesus speaks of?

The sin of people-pleasing, like almost all sins, is really just a twisting of something good. We were all designed to love our neighbor and love and glorify God, and even buried underneath the composting layers of fallenness and sin that desire can still be found. In my desperation to fulfill this designed-in calling I often morph it into a weak-water counterfeit. Instead of loving my neighbor and glorifying God, a drive to patronize and flatter my neighbor, to do good works before my neighbor, to impress my neighbor is born, so that they will glorify me. What’s worse, the concept of “my neighbor” becomes very selective. My “neighbor” becomes only those who are able to give me meaningful praise and glory.

[I originally wrote the paragraphs above using the more cowardly “we” and “our” language that is tempting to use when describing a sin that may just be peculiar to me. I re-wrote them using “I” and “me”. In re-reading them, it all sounds so sordid and wicked. Truth hurts.]

Jesus drives in the dagger. You aren’t seeking God. How can you even say you believe? You just missed joy, the miracle of a brother’s healing done right before your eyes, and you are refusing to see God, standing right in front of you. Not because you are unable to see, but because your eyes are focused only on yourself and on those who can feed your insatiable desire for your own glory. You do not seek the glory that comes from the only God.

The Lord waits for me to seek Him, because He has, and He is, everything I’ve ever really wanted. He is the only one worth giving glory to, and He will, in ways that may still be mysterious to me, miraculously grace-gift me by glorifying me forever. I will one day take up my mat and walk, fully healed, fully His.

In light of that glory, this never-ending seeking after the approval of men seems kind of silly, doesn’t it? What a colossal waste of time.