What Is Work?

But He answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. (John 5:17-18)

I am looking for the subtle dynamics of what was really going on here and the real issues implied in these brief references. Clearly Jesus was responding to some assumed objections being raised in the minds of these Jewish leaders. The issue that they at first seemed most bothered by was that of 'working' on the Sabbath day.

Jesus' first response to their unspoken accusations (at least we assume unspoken from its absence in the text) indicates that He knew this was the offense they were holding against Him. But as soon as He explained His thinking about this issue they immediately took offense from reference to His Father that He mentioned in His response and escalated their resentment much farther because of His confession of His relationship with God.

But I want to go back to the first issue implied that Jesus addressed in the beginning of this dialog. Jesus stated that His Father was 'working' and used that as His reason to do the same. What is not so clear to some people from this passage is the fact that very many religious ideas and words have been transposed from their true meaning and as a result much confusion results when we fail to perceive truth from heaven's point of view.

It might be easy to conclude from Jesus' words here that He was implying that it no longer matters how people are to keep the Sabbath anymore. Many would use this statement as an excuse to claim that Jesus deliberately violated the Sabbath commandment and therefore in essence was starting to abolish its obligations altogether. But this is a very immature interpretation at best but more likely a flimsy excuse for sidestepping the real meaning and purpose and importance of the true Sabbath.

God has never changed the principles that were laid out in the Ten Commandments or the day designated for rest, and He never will. This idea is one of the most dangerous and deceptive schemes of the enemy of God to entice people into disobedience and darkness. Because of the enormous confusion about what the Sabbath is all about most people have little clue as to the real issues involved here and that still apply to every human being yet today. Far from diluting the requirements of how to properly relate to the Sabbath and the rest it is designed to bring into our lives, Jesus was instead trying to expose false notions about what constitutes work. It was the meaning of the word 'work' that Jesus was addressing in this statement, not the validity of the Sabbath.

Like most of us, the Jews had so distorted their perceptions about the Sabbath and the kind of rest that God says must take place on that day that they had pretty much externalized all of the instructions about how to keep it delivered to them over the centuries by God while at the same time completely ignoring the far more important kind of internal heart rest that God was primarily concerned about. This is very typical for counterfeit religion (which most religion is) and always has been. It is so much easier to try to control our outward activities and appearances in the name of religion in order to impress others and fool ourselves rather than to enter into the kind of internal confrontations and transformations that God longs to effect in our lives.

As with many of His statements, particularly in the book of John, Jesus here is speaking in language reflective of the internal state of a person's life much more than talking about the externals. This is partly because the externals – the behaviors, professions, intellectual beliefs and appearances – all are mostly reflections and outworkings of what is really taking place much deeper at the heart level. It is so much easier to try to manage and manipulate outward appearances and even try to control other people around us than it is to face the real problem of sin inside our own hearts and enter into the kind of inner healing and growing that is so much more important from heaven's perspective.

When Jesus uses the word 'work', He generally is talking about something very different than the assertions of religious people, both then and now. When we get stuck in the kind of technical thinking about what constitutes work and Sabbath-breaking activities and miss the real issue of what kind of rest the Sabbath was designed to provide for us, then we find ourselves caught in the very same quagmire of logic that these Jews experienced. We have not changed much in the last 2000 years and we still tend to view religion and God's requirements from the external perspectives instead of perceiving them as relating to our attitudes and the condition of our heart.

The Jews had developed elaborate peripheral laws, rules, regulations and stipulations in an attempt to “protect” the Sabbath commandment found in the law of God delivered on Mt. Sinai. From this context they had come to interpret the idea of 'work' as anything that violated their established traditions and expanding mass of regulations. This is very similar to the kind of thinking that we find in government today. Layers and layers of laws and stipulations and rules ad nauseum are piled up literally by the millions year after year in an attempt to control and force people into compliance with various and conflicting ideas of how people should relate to each other.

Jesus never allowed Himself to be diverted by these sorts of attempts at behavior control as a means of getting right with God. Counterfeit religion almost always focuses on the outward appearances but God is primarily concerned with the condition of our hearts. When Jesus spoke about His Father working and following His example by working Himself, He was speaking the language of how heaven views work, not the kind of distracting sort of work the God wants us to avoid in true Sabbath-keeping. Paul and others in the New Testament elaborate on this idea of getting a true understanding of the kind of rest that the Sabbath was intended to provide for us and it is vital that we clarify what it really means to enter into God's rest, not just physically like the Jews tried to insist and took to ridiculous extremes, but the inner kind of rest that needs to be the signature of a life that is hidden in God.