John 5:45 – “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.“
Jesus was sharing the weight of the law with the Pharisees and all those who believed that they were “righteous” or “good people”. Adherence to the law, religious practices, staying away from scandalous sin, and many other acts of piety all based on a comparison of oneself with others is what the Pharisees and “righteous” lived by thinking that this was the standard of God. Jesus shared such a profound truth, but they were not able to grasp onto it. Although they searched the scriptures diligently, probably more so than the generations today, they could not fathom what Jesus was telling them in this simple statement.
Do we truly understand what is being said here and the true significance of this statement? This is why it is written later on in Romans 3:19-20:
(19) Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; (20) because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.
The Pharisees and the “righteous” had chosen not to believe in Christ, that He truly was the Son of God come down to earth to pay the price for man’s sins. Christ was letting them know that He was not the one to judge, but rather they would then be judged whether they had kept the Law. The entire Law. Not just bits and pieces or the parts that man may think matter – every single last word of the Law. In James 2:10 it states:
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
In other words – what John 5:45 is saying is that you either have Christ, the Savior, the Redeemer, the one who shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins, so that we may stand before the Father and be seen as clean, or you have the weight of Law to abide by. When Christ mentioned Moses, specifically and most importantly He was referring to the Ten Commandments that Moses and the Law would judge every man and woman by if they decided they didn’t need a Savior. No need to go any further than these very basic and straight forward ten rules. Literally just ten! Forget studying under the tutelage of a great Rabbi and learning all the intricacies of the Law, the feasts, the assemblies, the year of Jubilee, and every possible mandate from scripture. Just look at these ten simple rules and you will see that it is impossible to be seen as clean in the eyes of God.
We have a great tendency as humans to believe that with the passing of time, all things are forgiven, forgotten, or not applicable to being judged now. The word of God explains that in order to stand before the Father we have to be perfect – perfect would mean never sinning, even once. So you either have Christ as your Savior, or you are willing to stand before God based on the Law.
If you don’t have Christ, how will you do in the Trial?