Context for Truth

For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. But He answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." (John 5:16-17)

According to the context of this passage it must be assumed that the Jews believed that Jesus was working on the Sabbath day in violation of some existing rules. In doing so they also were implying that Jesus must be a lawbreaker and therefore could not be right with God or He wouldn't be so out of sync with what religious people taught who had studied the Word of God far longer than Jesus had even been around.

But instead of quibbling over the definition of what constitutes work, Jesus instead begins to move here into more controversial matter by exposing even more of their prejudices. It would have done no good whatsoever to try to correct their misunderstandings about the meaning of the religious terms they were using when their fundamental picture of God was their core problem. When our context of how we believe God feels about us and relates to us is distorted, it does little good to try to tweak various details about how we do religion because all that knowledge doesn't make much sense unless our inner background beliefs about reality are first radically altered.

Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)

So instead of arguing about the right or wrong way to keep the Sabbath holy or what work means, Jesus moved right to the core problem that all of us really must deal with – our view of God and our relationship to Him. By calling God His Father Jesus likely knew He would stir up even more intense problems for Himself than He was already experiencing but He did not try to obscure anything about what He knew to be true. He was not trying to stir up controversy just to be belligerent, but neither did He try to obscure the fact that His view of God was incompatible with the common beliefs of the religious people who were in control.

It is so easy to get caught up in arguments and debates about what we are allowed to do during Sabbath hours or what we think God views as sin. I have seen these debates all of my life and still hear them frequently whether they revolve around what is acceptable activities to have on the Sabbath or even over which day of the week is the true Sabbath. I am not implying in the least here that these things should be ignored or not important at all. That is certianly not the case. But what I am saying is that when we talk about these things outside of the far more important context of having a corrected view of God's character and the way that He relates to sinful human beings all of these debates become mute points even if they happen to arrive at correct conclusions based on infallible Scripture proof.

Instead of getting caught up in the never-ending debates that have gone on for centuries about what proper Sabbath observance should look like, Jesus instead goes right to the heart of our problem – our feelings and beliefs about our own personal relationship with God. By stating unequivocally that God was His dear Father and then going on to elaborate on that fact by talking about His intimate relationship with His Father, Jesus turns on a very bright light that begins to expose the dark nature of how all of us still feel about what God thinks about us.

Right at the beginning of this book John stated this issue very clearly as the context for the whole rest of this gospel.

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:4-5)

Jesus did not have any animosity toward these deluded religious leaders who resisted His love for them for so long. It is too easy to fall into a trap of thinking that these confrontations with the Jewish leaders provoked ill feelings on the part of Jesus or that He enjoyed sparring with them. But that is because we project our own confused ideas about God into these stories instead of seeing the real truth about how God feels about all of us. Jesus passionately loved these men just as much as He did every other sinner that He met. He loved them just as tenderly and passionately as He did the man He had just healed. But their reaction to His love was quite different than the response of faith that had been demonstrated in the life of this healed man and as a result they found themselves in constant tension and jealousy because they believed that He was out to compete for their influence and political power over the people.

But Jesus had no interest whatsoever in political power because He knew that politics was the counterfeit of God's system of government. Although He was respectful of human political structures He never got entangled in the least with any of their petty games. He left them to struggle and fight among themselves and focused His entire life and energy on revealing to all the real truth about how God feels about us. Some people responded by changing their minds about God and as a result were radically transformed in character themselves. Others persistently resisted the truth of Jesus' revelations about God's attitudes towards us and as a result found themselves at increasing odds with Jesus' life and testimony about His Father.

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 5:18)

Was Jesus really breaking the Sabbath?

Was it wrong for Jesus to call God His own Father?

Was Jesus really trying to make Himself equal with God in the eyes of men?

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness... (Philippians 2:5-7 NRSV)

To imply that Jesus was somehow trying to introduce a new Sabbath by deliberately breaking the seventh-day Sabbath that He himself had given to mankind at creation is patently absurd even in the immediate context of this verse. In fact, that logic sides with the unbelief of the Jews that Jesus was confronting in this passage even though they supposed that they were trying to enforce observance of the true Sabbath. It is easy to be so focused on trying to argue that we know which day the real Sabbath comes on or argue about who has the best version of rules about how to keep it holy that, like these Jews in Christ's day we may find ourselves at serious odds with the picture of God that Jesus came to reveal so clearly.

If we have not caught a transforming glimpse of the true nature of Jesus and correspondingly what God is like as a result, all of our strenuous arguing and proof-texting and Bible studying will only accomplish getting us close and closer to treating Jesus the same way these Jews were treating Him. We will insist that those who are actually revealing the true characteristics of godlikeness are not in compliance with our Christian traditions or regulations and we will end up persecuting the very ones that are in fact representing God far more accurately to the world than we are.

I need to be very careful to apply this lesson to my own heart and not be blinded like these Jews of old by the same sort of self-righteous thinking that infected their religious profession. They were intent students of the Scripture and had invested years in meticulous education so they could know sound doctrine and could amass irrefutable arguments for 'the truth'. But they had failed to see with their hearts the most important thing about true religion and as a result were filled with emotions of hatred and murder against the very One who best reflected the character of the God they insisted that they served.

I see the same penchant in my own life, to resort to less than loving ways to impress truths upon others while failing to have a spirit reflective of how God treats me. When I catch myself doing this (or more like when the Spirit catches me and convicts me) I immediately realize that if I do not live in the peace and rest of God – that Sabbath kind of rest that God intends for me to experience all the time – then it matters little how 'right' I may be because the spirit that is coming from within me is neutralizing all the factual truths I may be trying to convey to someone else.

Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:5-6 NRSV)

Father, I see this weakness all too often in my own spirit at times. It is so easy for me to become raw and defensive in the way I try to share what You are teaching me and I realize that by allowing that kind of spirit to infect me that I am misrepresenting You. Forgive me and heal me and fill me with Your Spirit so that others will see Your beauty flowing out of my life instead of my harshness or self-righteousness. Fill me with Your presence today and use me as a clean channel for others to see Your beauty and compassion and truth more compellingly.

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.

Misplaced Eagerness

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you." The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. (John 5:14-15)

I hear that still, quiet voice saying some things right now to me through this passage.

“Look, you have been made well! Don't allow anything to separate your heart from me again because there are serious and very dangerous consequences that result from such choices.”

Because of my revised understanding about the true definition of sin I now can see this much more clearly. I am learning that sin is not so much the external harmful behaviors or the breaking of rules and regulations that we most often associate with that word, but sin is the choice to look to anyone or anything else to be our source of life and the authority that we choose to obey other than the One who created us for Himself. All of those other things are just symptoms of a state of mind, outworkings of an attitude of independence, of trying to live for myself instead of in close, dependent relationship with my loving heavenly Father.

Sometimes I find myself concerned that somehow it is inevitable that I may fall into some overwhelming temptation that I may encounter someday and then I will experience terrible pains of anguish and regret. But then I am reminded that such fatalistic thinking is really a temptation itself that is being pressed into my mind from supernatural evil forces and that God is bigger than anything that sets itself against His authority in my heart. That is not to say that I am immune from such an event in my life; I am very vulnerable to falling into sin more than I realize. But living in fear of such things more than abiding in God's love and responding to the attractiveness of God's true character is a very unstable way of living the Christian life.

Clearly Jesus is warning this man that there really are inevitable consequences in our lives when we choose to indulge in sin, especially in the light of clearly knowing better and choosing it anyway. There is a place for holy fear, a fear that trembles at the thought of what life will be like without the life-giving presence of Jesus always close to us. But fear has been way overrated as a legitimate motivation to keep people close to God. It may be a good kick-off point to get people moving in the right direction toward wanting to know God better, but if it is used as the primary long-term motive for coming closer to God it becomes more and more unreliable as the fearsome attacks of the enemy threaten to overpower our fears about offending God.

All of counterfeit Christianity, indeed all false religions are filled with teachings based on fear that are simply distortions or even outright lies about the truth of how God relates to His children. These fears and terrors are some of the greatest obstacles that prevent many people from responding to the loving grace of our Redeemer and Savior. Fear may serve to warn us away from plunging further into a life of independence from God, but it is helpless to effectively draw us very close to the heart of the One who is passionately in love with us and wants to cultivate intimate ties of friendship and unbreakable bonds of love between us. No healthy marriage can ever be held together primarily through fear and the same is even more true with our relationship with our heavenly Father.

But as I said, there still is a useful but temporary place for fear in the life, especially near the beginning of our walk with God. Because of our immaturity and our penchant to operate from selfishness instead of surrender to God's Spirit, we are in constant danger of losing sight of the amazing love that has already done so much to deliver us from the pain and complications of sin. Jesus wanted this man to keep this in mind and to not forget the years of pain and misery that had resulted from some very wrong choices earlier in his life. But He was not trying to tell the man that this fear should be the full context of all of his relationship to God for the rest of his life.

God is seeking a close relationship with each one of us that transcends the narrow bounds of fear. Unless we are willing to move well beyond the initial motivations of fear and allow our hearts to warm to the glow of His presence we will never be able to experience the kind of joy and intimacy that He desires to have with us.

What I find intriguing and even a little sad is this man's possibly immature reaction to Jesus' introduction of Himself to him in the temple. Instead of responding by seeking to attach himself much more firmly to Jesus and letting go of his feelings of obligation to the skeptical questioning of the Jewish leaders, he instead immediately leaves the presence of the One who had just done such wonderful and miraculous things in his life and runs away from His presence in an attempt to placate the demands of those who have no genuine interest in him or care at all about his heart.

This man could have ignored the deceptive questions of Jesus' enemies and instead could have responded in gratitude by staying in Jesus' presence and learning more about God's ways of viewing reality. But he was still so entrenched in the mindset of those around him that he missed an incredible opportunity to bond closely with his healer and instead initiated even more problems for the One who just had so graciously healed him.

In a way this man actually started to do exactly what Jesus had just told him not to do. In rushing away from the presence of Jesus because of his compulsion to satisfy the demands of religious authorities he was actually indulging in sin; for sin is really the act of removing ourself from God's life-giving presence and submitting our lives to an inferior authority in His place. That is really allowing other gods to come in place of the presence of the only true God in our heart and except for God's amazing grace such choices will only bring even worse consequences.

While it may appear to us that running to “the Jews” and telling them who healed us may to us seem like “witnessing”, when seen from heaven's perspective it may be something very different. Jesus did not intimate that this man needed to do any such thing. In fact as can be seen immediately following this action, this “witnessing” by this healed man did not result in greater admiration for Jesus by the Jews but produced just the opposite effect, possibly much to the dismay of this man who had not bothered to run his idea by Jesus first.

How often do I do the same thing in my attempts to further the work of God on earth. How often do I run around thinking that I am promoting the kingdom of heaven while failing to stay close to the presence of Jesus and listening to that quiet, inner voice of His Spirit before plunging into some witnessing escapade that is not doing God any good in the long run.

It would have been a much better choice for all involved if this man had turned his attention to staying close to Jesus and seeking to know what Jesus had in mind for him rather than the choice that he did make. I want to learn from his mistake and remember to stay close to Jesus myself and to check with Him all the time before I go charging off to do things I think will enhance His reputation from my perspective. I am reminded of the verse that I have placed as the header on my contact sheet for my new business venture to remind me of this very thing.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him (really know Him intimately), and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Who Defines Work?

For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. But He answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." (John 5:16-17)

The more I ponder these verses the more I see compelling insights begin to pour out of this story.

Why were the Jews persecuting Jesus?

It had something to do with 'working' on the Sabbath. But immediately I run into the most common problem I have noticed in religion – the accurate definition of words and terms. It does not take much examination to learn that their definition of 'work' as well as their assumptions about what the Sabbath was even all about were seriously skewed and distorted. But I see the very same kinds of distortions all around me today with very similar results, even in my own life.

It is really impossible to even begin to get a handle on the real issues revolving around the Sabbath in this story without seriously getting into the real truth about the original purpose of the Sabbath to start with. To move into this subject is to get into controversial territory on every side. This is a very loaded subject and is becoming even more so as we progress toward the end.

But what many people miss is not just the factual truth about which day of the week should be viewed as the Sabbath as important as that may be, but the real issue that is even more pertinent is the kind of fundamental relationship that God wants us to have with Him which is often most clearly seen in how we relate to Him on the Sabbath day.

So, just like the Jews of Christ's day, if we do not perceive God correctly or have a healthy appreciation for His character of compassion and love and mercy and justice, then our views of the Sabbath and what to do or not to do on that day are going to reflect our confused and usually dark views of what we think God feels about us. Our notions about the Sabbath and how to keep it just might be one of the quickest ways to expose our deeper feelings about how God feels about us personally.

The Jews in this story evidently believed in their hearts that God was more concerned with outward appearances and with technical details of policy and obedience to multiplied rules and regulations than He was interested in an intimate, close, loving relationship with His children. Because of this they found it very easy to completely ignore the obvious demonstration of love and compassion that Jesus had just performed on behalf of this very sick man and instead became very upset because Jesus had violated their petty man-made rules about what they considered proper Sabbath observance.

This is where the intense clash between the real truth about God as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus appears in sharp contrast with the dark, harsh views about God as cherished by far too many people claiming that they are God-followers. The Jews were not some self-made religion like the pagans or the Romans or even the confused, amalgamated religion of the Samaritans. The Jews were the depositories of the teachings delivered to this world directly by God and through one of the greatest prophets of all time, Moses. Yet in spite of all this their opinions about how God feels about people on this planet were so messed up that they could not accept the clearest revelations about how God views sinners as demonstrated in the life of Jesus and how He related to people.

Thus, their ideas about proper Sabbath observance reflected their screwed up pictures of God and they acted out in their own lives and relationships with others the very attitudes that they felt God had toward them. Instead of having any resonance with the compassion that Jesus felt toward this man who had been sick and helpless for 38 years, they could only feel bitterness, resentment and threats to their control and influence over the masses as Jesus threatened their tiny little views of what they insisted God was like.

I notice here that Jesus did not even begin to try to defend His actions or beliefs or implications about what was true. He did not try to explain Himself defensively but instead seemed to almost fan the flames by stating clearly that God is not obsessed with avoiding activities they had come to define as 'work' on the Sabbath day. What I am also starting to perceive here is that Jesus' focus was not nearly so much on what activities are appropriate or not on a certain day but was on the motives of the heart that were being exposed by this miracle in the lives of those who were in opposition to Him.

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8 NIV)

What Jesus seemed to be doing among many other things in this story was redefining the definition of what work really is in relation to the Sabbath day. The Jews thought that if they could restrict physical activities on the Sabbath day for everyone who was supposed to be part of God's chosen people that somehow God would be appeased and would finally have more mercy on their nation and deliver them from the oppression of the Roman occupation. But God is not into performance to impress Him but is very concerned about the attitudes and motives at the deepest heart level which is where sin resides most tenaciously. This contrast became clear in the complete absence of any sympathy on the part of these Jews about the former condition of this sick man now healed.

What I am now starting to see is that these Jews were trying to mask over their obvious lack of mercy and compassion that was being exposed by this miracle of Jesus were trying to turn everyone's attention to the supposed infractions of the law by Jesus and this healed man so as to discredit Jesus in the process. If they could somehow get people's attention away from the attractiveness of Jesus actions and love for people and turn people against Him by painting Him as a violator of God's strict rules and commandments, then they could re-secure their dominance over the minds of the people that was beginning to slip from their grasp.

Nothing has changed in 2000 years, really. Religious leaders still grasp for control by trying to focus people's attention on policy and traditions and regulations and outward performance to draw attention away from the far more vital problems of how we view God and our relationship to Him at the heart level. Religious people fear that if each person begins to follow the Spirit's guidance individually that the result will be chaos in the church, and that simply cannot be allowed. They feel that it is their God-given commission in life to keep control over the minds and lives of the people within their membership lists and to achieve unity through elimination of all irregularities. But inadvertently they are only following in the footsteps of these Jewish leaders long ago and are simply reinforcing lies about God that have infected all of us since the fall in Eden.

Father, please show me the real purpose and meaning and experience of the Sabbath as You intended it for me. Turn my attention back to the real truth about Your compassion and mercy and healing power instead of becoming fearful again about somehow offending You by some external infraction of man-made rules and policies. Fill me with Your presence and draw me into the real kind of rest that You have for me in a true Sabbath experience. Thank-you for all that You are showing me here.

Equal With God

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 5:18)

This verse has the potential for being easily misapplied and misinterpreted by many if they are not desirous of knowing the truth of the gospel as it is in Jesus. Particularly, there are many teachers and preachers keen on maintaining their control over the minds of millions of deceived followers who insist that Jesus really was breaking the Sabbath according to this verse and therefore it is safe to assume that Jesus was introducing a new era with a whole different Sabbath – or worse yet, no particular Sabbath at all. Equally, this text could also be construed to purport that Jesus was seeking to make Himself equal with God just as it seems to say.

Both of these assertions can be enforced with an argument that we must take the Bible at face value and not quibble with the plain meaning of what might be seen in this verse. However, if this is not taken in the larger context of the rest of Scripture then we are set up to be deceived by our own simplicity – or more accurately our own desire to believe notions that serve our own ends instead of coming to a better knowledge of the real truth as it is in Jesus.

What I am starting to see more clearly here is that the real problem was not in what Jesus was doing or saying but was with the picture of God that the Jews had that did not fit well with what they saw in the life of Jesus. Everything about Jesus tended to expose false ideas about God in the ideas and attitudes of the religious people of that day and as a result a great deal of resentment was aroused by Jesus when people refused to reconsider their assumptions about how God treats people, particularly sinners. It also strongly clashed with the real truth about how God feels in general and the characteristics that motivate Him in how He relates to all of His creation.

We are no different than the Jews of Jesus day no matter how enlightened we may think we are. We share the same lies about God that has pervaded humanity ever since Eve and Adam partook of the fruit and absorbed the lies of the great deceiver into their deepest psyche that was then passed on to all of their children. It is impossible to be born as a sinful human being without being infected with these iniquities, this system of lies about God that is passed down generationally from father to child. (That is one reason some believe that Jesus escaped this particular corruption because He did not have a biological earthly father through which this contamination would have been received. But that is another topic altogether.)

Right now I do not want to spend much time dealing with the false assumptions about the Sabbath that many might induce from this text. But what does interest me right now is the notion that somehow Jesus in fact did promote His relationship with His heavenly Father as some sort of leverage that He felt compelled to defend and to use against all who disagreed with Him. I find this rather interesting particularly because this assumption directly contradicts other verses in the Bible, especially that in Philippians where Paul states the exact opposite of what might be inferred from this verse.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness... (Philippians 2:5-7 NRSV)

Any Bible-believing Christian must accept that Jesus was indeed the actual and literal Son of God and that He was in fact part of who God is. Jesus was not an entity separate from God or created by God to represent Him but is part of the three-part expression of what constitutes the Godhead. So from this perspective most Christians do not have issue with the fact that this verse in John refers to Jesus as relating to God as His Father.

However, what might be easily missed here is not that Jesus is in one sense the Son of His Father who is God – a relationship that sometimes we still grapple to wrap our minds around properly – but that this verse is actually referring to assumptions in the minds of the Jews rather than assertions of fact by the writer of this book. John is not trying to mess with our mind here and cause confusion about either the Sabbath or about Jesus' relationship to God as His Father. What John was referring to in this particular verse was the fact that the Jews were making assumptions just as we so easily do ourselves, that their opinions about God and about proper Sabbath-keeping had to be the only right views and that anything that conflicted with what had been worked out by religious experts over many years simply should not be questioned.

Thus the stage was set for the ultimate rejection of the truth as it is in Jesus, not only about the real identity of who Jesus was as the very presence of God Himself among men but also many peripheral issues such as what it really means to embrace the Sabbath as a meaningful link in our dependence on God to save us from sin. When properly understood, the Sabbath is nothing like either what the Jews insisted it meant or even what nearly all Christians assume it means today. The Sabbath when properly perceived from a careful examination of Scripture is far more analogous to an intimate date with a lover than it is about following a list of detailed demands by a rule-obsessed Master looking to demand allegiance from His subjects or simply a nice idea, a suggestion of when people should show up at church.

Likewise, the idea of Jesus promoting Himself as equal with God to answer the objections of the Jews demanding to know by what authority He operated so far outside of their control – this assumption when read into this verse misses the whole point of the passage and the book of John. John was not trying to prove through arguments and facts that Jesus was the duly authorized Messiah that the Jews had to acknowledge in the face of all their resistance, but He was instead an expression of a God radically different than the one any of us have ever dared to imagine before.

While the Jews (and many even today) assumed that Jesus was promoting Himself as equal with God as a means of throwing His weight around and asserting authority so as to gain the upper hand in the power struggles that go on so often among us, Jesus was in fact simply demonstrating what every one of us is supposed to experience in our lives of obedience to the Word of God. Centuries before He had spoken the following words through His prophet Jeremiah:

Thus says the LORD, "Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things," declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

Father, let me be afraid to brag about anything that I think I may have of my own that really comes only from You as a gift. But on the other hand, cause me to not be ashamed to brag about the fact that You have been revealing Your heart to me personally and that You desire to do the same for every person that responds to Your personal invitation to experience the same and far greater intimacy for themselves. I can now see better that Jesus was really inviting those Jews into a more intimate relationship with You and Your Father if they had not been so resistant and blind to what You were really trying to share with them. Open my heart to see what You are really like and what You really want to do in and through me for Your glory.