There is One Who Accuses: Moses

41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. 43 I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:41-47 (ESV)
“Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope.” It’s the irony of Christianity that those who look to be the most “Christian” can in fact not be Christian at all. This happens when Christianity becomes about you and not about Christ. We must not forget that the faith of the Old Testament is the same as the faith of the New Testament. As Jesus says here, Moses wrote of Jesus. Jesus was the hope of Moses. But those who followed put their trust in Moses and not in Jesus. This is Jesus’ way of saying that they put their hope in the law. So they were quite zealous for God, but they went about it in the wrong way as Paul explains in Rom. 10:2. The flesh, the Old Adam, wants to use the law to assert itself before God. He sets his hope on Moses. The people do not realize that his law accuses them. You have broken it. You break it. You will break it again. People think it may be enough to keep some of it, even if they fail to keep other parts of it. But it doesn’t work that way. People think that because they receive glory from others, they will also receive glory from God. People come in their own names, and they are received. Jesus comes in the name of the Father and he is cast aside and rejected. He is rejected because he does not allow the flesh to live, to assert itself. This is the stumbling block of the cross. The salvation that Jesus offers there squashes the hope of the Old Adam to assert how good he is. When a person takes to heart that Jesus died for them, that their salvation cost Jesus his own divine blood, well then you get an idea of the predicament you were in before. And your price of ransom was the same as the hobo’s, the same as the drug addict’s, the same as the pimp’s and the whore’s, the murderer’s, the adulterer’s and the perjurer’s. But then this is why Jesus won’t accuse you, he paid for your salvation. Moses, the sinner who gave us the law, he accuses you. Accusation is what sinners under the law do. It is not what Christ who is above the law does.
No, sinners, they accuse with the law. It isn’t only in the church or with those who read the Bible. This is what sinners do with the law constantly even in the world that fights to not know God’s law. It happens with the gay rights movement for instance when they start labeling others as intolerant if they disagree with them. (Even if the person who disagrees with them is actually tolerant.) It happens with Republicans pointing fingers at Democrats, and the Libertarians trying to wash their hands of all of it. Everyone trying to scramble for the moral high ground and painting everyone else black in the process. And they think they are good because their likeminded friends tell them they are. Kind of the same way I think a person is smart if they agree with me. (Well they are, let’s just face it.) But do we even talk to the other side anymore? This is the nature of sinners. They will receive one another, and pat each other on the back while accusing others. But Jesus, he receives all sinners, he eats and drinks with them, but he will not accuse them.