What Is the Evidence That Jesus Is the Son of God?

From the sermon preached on May 31, 2026

In John 5, Jesus does something unexpected: he does not simply pile up evidence that he is the Son of God and wait for a verdict. He also names the hidden forces inside the human heart that make that evidence structurally invisible. The problem, he argues, is not a shortage of proof; it is a set of deep investments that make belief feel genuinely impossible. If you have ever looked at the case for Jesus and found yourself unmoved despite wanting to believe, this passage may explain why.

Pastor John Starke opened this sermon in "The Controversial Jesus" series by framing John 5 as a courtroom scene. Jesus uses the language of testimony and witness more than nine times in a single passage, and he presents his case in a deliberate sequence: from lesser evidence to greater, building toward something that cannot be easily dismissed.

The first witness is a believable person. In verse 33, Jesus points to John the Baptist (not the gospel writer, but his cousin, whose entire life and ministry was oriented around announcing the Messiah's arrival). Jesus's argument is not that John said persuasive things; it is that John's life rang true. He suffered well. He loved well. He did not fall apart when things were hard. And when a person's life has that kind of weight and consistency, it raises a natural question: what is behind it? What is holding that person together? Jesus says: I am. If John's life compelled you, follow the thread. It leads to me.

The second witness is the works of Jesus himself. In verse 36, Jesus points to the miracles performed in front of large and often hostile crowds: the healing of a paralyzed man, water turned to wine, a child restored to life. These were not private wonders. They were public, witnessed by thousands, and never successfully contradicted. Jesus says in both John 10 and John 14 that if his words strain credulity, his works should carry the weight. They all point in a single direction: toward a man who operates on an entirely different register than any person before or after him.

The third and weightiest witness is Scripture. Jesus tells his audience in verse 39 that the entire Old Testament has been pointing to him. The prophets of Isaiah described the coming of God in terms of the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, and good news proclaimed to the poor (Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61). Here is a man doing exactly those things, publicly, in sequence. Beyond the fulfillment of individual prophecies, Jesus was resolving what had appeared to be a contradiction at the heart of the Old Testament itself: the promised Son of Man of Daniel 7, who comes in triumph and dominion, and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, who is "despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). No one assumed those two figures were the same person, because no one could imagine how they could be. Only a death that absorbed the world's condemnation and a resurrection that defeated it entirely could be both at once.

Take a step today: read John 5:30–47 slowly, noting every time Jesus uses the word "witness" or "testimony," and ask yourself what evidence you are actually willing to sit with.

This is where Pastor John Starke pushed hardest, and where the sermon becomes uncomfortably personal. Jesus does not just present evidence; he identifies the structural conditions of the human heart that make that evidence bounce off. The hindrances to believing in Jesus are not primarily intellectual. They are motivational, rooted in what we are oriented toward and what we have built our lives upon.

The first hindrance is seeking glory from other people. In verse 44, Jesus asks: "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" Starke illustrated this with a moment of pastoral honesty: he called his wife that morning to ask her to bring a different suit because he did not like how he looked in his shirt. He was, he said, hiding what might bring condemnation and curating what would bring approval. That is what we do in every room we walk into. New York runs on this. The approval of a fickle city can feel like the only verdict that matters.

But receiving glory from God requires accepting a diagnosis that is initially intolerable: that we are weak, that we are sinners, that we need mercy. A heart organized around human approval is structurally set up to resist this. It is not that such a person has intellectual objections to the Son of God. It is that seeing Jesus clearly requires seeing yourself clearly first, and that confrontation with our own need is exactly what we spend enormous energy avoiding.

The second hindrance to believing in Jesus is missing what the Bible is actually about. In verse 39, Jesus says to people who loved the Scriptures: you study them looking for eternal life, and they point to me, yet you refuse to come to me. Starke named two modern versions of this same error. One group engages maximally with the text but never encounters the person the text points to; the other values Jesus (his compassion, his social teachings, his presence with the poor) but dismisses the Bible that defines and shapes who he is. Jesus says both approaches fail in the same way: they separate him from Scripture. A Bible without Jesus becomes an impossible moral standard that only condemns. A Jesus without the Bible becomes a projection, a figure made in our image who can only affirm us, never rescue us.

Take one step toward your own hindrances to believing in Jesus: identify which of these patterns you recognize in yourself, and hold that recognition honestly without resolving it too quickly.

The third hindrance Jesus identifies is a missing love. In verse 42, he says: "You do not have the love of God within you." He is not accusing the crowd of failing to love God adequately. He is diagnosing something more fundamental: they have no internal reference point for the unconditional love of God because the only love they have ever been trained by is transactional.
Transactional love says: I w
ill love you if you perform, if you contribute, if you remain lovable. Every relationship we navigate operates on some version of this economy. And so when the unconditional love of God arrives in Jesus, it does not register. The heart does not know what to do with love that is unsolicited, sacrificial, and entirely unearned. We qualify it. We add conditions to it. We assume it must run dry at some point because no human love can sustain itself without return.

Starke returned here to the man by the pool at the beginning of John 5. This man did not seek Jesus. He did not cry out for mercy. He gave an unclear answer when Jesus asked if he wanted to be healed. And Jesus healed him anyway, then sought him again later in the temple to offer something more. Jesus found this man twice before the man looked for Jesus once. That, Starke said, is the nature of the unconditional love of God.

He pressed the point with a question: how would you know that God loves you without Jesus? If your answer depends on circumstances (a good job, a good family, things going more or less as planned), then you are building your confidence on exactly the kind of evidence that collapses the moment your life falls apart. The only anchor that holds when everything else shifts is the cross itself: a God who came to you, who died for you while you were still his enemy, who found you twice before you looked for him once. That is not transactional love. That is the Son of God.

Take one step today: the next time you catch yourself qualifying God's love with conditions, name it out loud and bring it to the cross. Not as a technique, but as an honest act of faith.

The questions at the center of John 5 are not abstract theological puzzles. They are the questions that real people carry through the subway cars and coffee shops and apartments of this city: Is there any real evidence for Jesus, or is faith just a leap in the dark? Why do I still feel like I have to earn my way, even in a church? Apostles Church Uptown gathers on the Upper East Side but is rooted across Manhattan (from East Harlem and Washington Heights to Morningside Heights, Hamilton Heights, and the Upper West Side) precisely because these neighborhoods are full of people asking exactly those questions. If you are working through them, you are not working through them in the wrong place.

Jesus does not ask for belief without witnesses. He calls up the testimony of a compelling life, the record of public works no one could contradict, and the full weight of Scripture — both the triumphant Son of Man and the suffering servant — converging in a single person at a single moment in history. The case is not weak. What stands between us and belief is not a shortage of evidence; it is the thing Jesus names honestly and then addresses at the cross: a heart bent toward its own approval, its own moral performance, its own curated image. His invitation is not to try harder. It is to stop hiding and be loved.

The full sermon library with blogs are available if you want to follow this series from the beginning; start here to find the complete archive.

If this raised questions about faith you are still working through, Pastor John Starke and the congregation continue this series through the Gospel of John each Sunday at 10:30am at Regis High School on the Upper East Side. Plan your visit below to take your next step.