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Joh_5:25. Jesus re-affirms what He had already asserted in Joh_5:24, but in the more concrete form of allegorical expression.
καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ] i.e. in its beginning, since Christ’s entrance upon His life-giving ministry. Comp. Joh_4:23. The duration of this ὥρα , however, continues till the second advent; already had it begun to be present, but, viewed in its completeness, it still belonged to the future. The expositors who take the words to denote the literal resurrection (see Joh_5:25, even Hengstenberg), refer καὶ νῦν ἐστιν to the individual instances of raising from the dead which Jesus wrought (John 11; Mar_5:41; Luk_7:14; Mat_11:5); but this is as inappropriate in general as it is out of keeping with John’s Gospel, for those individuals were not at all awaked to ζωή in the sense of the context, but only to the earthly life, which was still liable to death. Olshausen, who illogically explains Joh_5:25 as referring to the resurrection of the body, appeals to Mat_27:52-53.
οἱ νεκροί ] the spiritually dead; Mat_8:22; Rev_3:1; and see on Joh_5:21.
τῆς φωνῆς ] according to the context, the resurrection summons (Joh_5:28), which is here really, in the connection of the allegory, the morally life-giving preaching of Christ. The spiritually dead, generally, according to the category οἱ νεκροί , will hear this voice, but all will not awake to its call; only οἱ ἀκούσαντες , which therefore cannot be taken in the same sense as ἀκούσονται , but must signify: those who will have given ear thereto. Comp. Joh_8:43; Joh_8:47. In Latin: “Mortui audient … et qui audientes fuerint,” etc. It is the ἀκούειν καλοῦντος , Plut. Sert. 11, al., ἀκούειν παραγγέλλοντος , and the like, ἀκούειν τοῦ προστάγματος (Polyb. xi. 19. 5). If we understand the words of bodily awakening, οἱ ἀκούσαντες with the article is quite inexplicable. Chrysostom: φωνῆς ἀκούσαντες ἐπιταττούσης ; Grotius: “simul atque audierint.” All such renderings, as also the vague explanation of Hengstenberg,[211] would require ἀκούσαντες merely without the article;[212] and ζήσουσιν would, in opposition to the entire context, signify “to live” generally, in an indifferent sense. Olshausen, indeed, supplements ἀκούσαντες —which, nevertheless, must of necessity refer to Τῆς ΦΩΝῆς —by ΤῸΝ ΛΌΓΟΝ from Joh_5:24 : “they who in this life hear the word of God.” It is just as impossible to hold, with Luthardt (so far as he would include the literal resurrection), that ΟἹ ἈΚΟΎΣΑΝΤΕς refers to those “who hear the last call of Jesus differently from others, i.e. joyfully receiving it, and therefore attain to life.” This is an imported meaning, for there is no such modal limitation in the text; but οἱ ἀκούσαντες alone, which, so far as it must differ from the general ἀκούσονται , can only designate those who give ear, and by this the literal resurrection is excluded. For this double meaning of ἀκούειν in one sentence, see Plat. Legg. p. 712 B: θεὸν … ἐπικαλώμεθα · ὁ δὲ ἀκούσειέ τε καὶ ἀκούσας (cum exaudiverit) … ἜΛΘΟΙ , and also the proverbial expression ἈΚΟΎΟΝΤΑ ΜῊ ἈΚΟΎΕΙΝ .
[211] The article is said to indicate the inseparable connection between hearing and life.
[212] See Eurip. Hec. 25, 26, and Pflugk thereon. But οἱ ἀκούσαντες with the article is: quicunque audiverunt.