AP

If I had not done among them what no-one else did, they would not be guilty of sin.  But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father.  But this is to fulfil what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

John 15:24-25

How sad these words of Jesus are!  I think of the parable he told, that is only recorded by Luke in Chapter 16:

A rich man, throughout his life, lived in luxury, while a poor, sick man, Lazarus, begged at his door.  They both died and the poor man was ‘carried by the angels to Abraham’s side’, while the rich  man suffered in unrelenting torment in Hades.  When the rich man saw how much better off Lazarus was, he pleaded with Abraham for mercy and for ‘Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue’.  When he was told that this was not possible because ‘between us and you a great chasm has been fixed’, he asked, then, if Lazarus could go back from the dead to warn his five brothers about the fate that was ahead of them if they continued the way they were.  The parable ends by Abraham having to say, in spite of the rich man’s logic, that a miraculous resurrection on the part of Lazarus, to report on his experience of the after-life, would be a game-changer for them, ”They will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”.

The point Jesus is making, of course, is that ‘signs and wonders’ will NOT change Man’s sinful, rebellious heart, but they WILL leave him without excuse.  This is the same point with which the Apostle Paul concludes his sermon at the Areopagus: “[God] has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.  He has given PROOF of this to ALL MEN by raising him from the dead.”  The historically attested miracles of Jesus, especially his Resurrection and the Empty Tomb, will leave us all WITHOUT EXCUSE on the Day of Judgement if we have failed in this life to acknowledge Jesus as SAVIOUR and LORD!