John 5:17,18 - My Father is working

5:17

“But Jesus answered them”. The Pharisees have not actually asked Jesus a direct question here in relation to the healed man, so we have now moved on from the specific incident of the healed man to the general matter of the religious leaders’ antagonism towards Jesus and in relation to His general approach to the Sabbath. “My Father is working until now, and I am working”. Now in Genesis 2:1-3 we read that God had completed His work of creation and rested from all the work He had done in creation. But this does not mean that God had done nothing since! He was continually working, as we read here, and that was the common Jewish understanding. In particular God was sustaining the universe. The Sabbath commandment was given to man, so God’s working did not cause a problem for the Jewish leaders. When Jesus says “and I am working” this is further antagonism to the Jewish leaders, for yet again Jesus is claiming equality with God. He was doing God’s work on the Sabbath. We should also note that healing is part of God’s work.

5:18

Remember that John’s gospel was written primarily (though not exclusively) for a Hellenistic audience, and it may have seemed strange to them that Jesus was a Jew, was God’s saviour, and yet the Jewish leaders persecuted Him, even to death. Indeed this was a very strange and stupid thing to do. So John explains why there was this antagonism. Breaking the Sabbath, in their eyes but not in God’s, was serious enough, but Jesus also claimed equality with God. He was calling God His Father. This made Him equal with God. There are those who claim that the idea of Jesus being God was something that was only added many years after Jesus’ life on earth. There is no Biblical evidence whatsoever for such a notion. We see in these verses that Jesus’ teaching on the Sabbath, and His claim to be the Son of God, have far more force to the Jews than they initially do to us. The Jews were in doubt that Jesus was claiming equality with God, and these were people who knew the Jewish Scriptures, they were not ignorant. Where they went wrong was not in thinking Jesus was claiming equality with God, but in refusing to believe Him. They knew exactly what Jesus was saying, and they rejected it.