17 But Jesus answered them, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.

g ch. ix. 4. & Σίν. 10.

18 Therefore the Jews "sought the more to kill a ch. vii. 19.

hitherto, and I work." No words which Jesus had hitherto uttered asserted so unequivocally His Divine Power and Godhead as did these. For they imply, as the Jews understood them to imply, that God was His own Father; "His Father," in a way which no other being, human or angelic, shares with Him; His Father, not in the sense of having been created by Him, but in the sense of having been begotten of Him. And as a human father begets his equal, because he communicates to his son his own human nature as fully as it is possessed by himself; so the Eternal Father has communicated to His Son His own Divine Nature in its perfection, so that, as He works, the Son works. Christ here says, in effect: "My Father has to this day worked unceasingly on the Sabbath, in sustaining and upholding all things; and I work along with Him. As He, in innumerable instances, has terminated a disease on the Sabbath day, so can I, and so will I."

"For He all but wisheth to signify some such thing as this. If thou believest, O man, that God, having created and compacted all things by His command and will, ordereth the Creation on the Sabbath day also, so that the sun riseth, rain-giving fountains are let loose, and fruits spring from the earth, not refusing their increase by reason of the Sabbath, the fire works its own work, ministering to the necessities of man unforbidden: confess and know of a surety that the Father worketh God-befitting operations on the Sabbath also. Why, then, saith He, dost thou uninstructedly accuse Him through Whom He works all things? for God the Father will work in no other way, save through His Power and Wisdom, the Son. Therefore He and I work." (Cyril.)

18. "Therefore the Jews sought the more ... equal with God." The omission of the translation of a very important word in the Greek of this verse [idios, idios, his own] in our Authorized is very unaccountable, seeing that in such a place as Rom. viii. 3 [God sending His own Son] they have correctly rendered it as His own [or proper] Son: so here His own or proper Father. The remark "making Himself equal with God" is the Evangelist's, and at once states the impression which the Jews received from the words of

him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said

Christ, and the truth of that impression. Thus Augustine: "So even the blind, even the slayers of Christ, yet understand the words of Christ. They did not understand Him to be Christ; they did not understand Him to be Son of God; but, for all that, they did understand in these words that such a Son of God was betokened as was equal with God. Who He was they knew not, yet that such an one was declared they knew at once, in that He said, 'God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.' Then was He not equal with God? It was not that He made Himself equal, but God had begotten Him equal."

It is necessary now to say something respecting the utterance of such words on the part of our Lord.

Humanly speaking, it seems impossible for those who heard them, whether disciples or enemies, to understand them. For it takes the whole Catholic Faith, which was not revealed till Pentecost, to understand them even in part. For they imply that the God of Israel has a Son, Who can properly and literally be called His own Son, because begotten by Him, and not as created beings, who are by a figure called His sons, because made by Him or adopted by Him. In all this it is of necessity implied that this Eternal Father, in begetting His Son, derived to Him His whole Infinite Nature in all the fulness of its Divine Attributes, more particularly the attribute of power as exhibited in the ceaseless upholding of all things.

No living being at that time could understand this. To apprehend it requires not only Faith but Knowledge such as was not then given. Now this saying and what follows upon it takes its place amongst those sayings of Christ which this Gospel seems especially written to bring to memory: sayings which, as I said, had been heard by the Apostles, and had sunk into their minds, and through them had silently leavened the teaching of the Church. This saying of Christ, and this only, of those which have been preserved to us, is the ground for such words as we have in Coloss. i., "By Him all things consist; and in Hebrews i., "Upholding all

things by the word of His power."

It seems natural that "the Word made Flesh" should speak sometimes as the "Word," not merely as the greatest of prophets, or the greatest of teachers, or even as the Messiah; but as "God

also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

i

i ch. x. 30, 33. Phil. ii. 6.

"His Father;" rather, "His own Father," "His peculiar or proper Father" (os). manifest in the flesh:" speaking at such times not according to the knowledge of His creatures, but according to His own infinite knowledge, if for no other reason than for this, to show them what a heaven He lived in, how far above all thought were His relations to His Father, and to the Universe. This is one of such sayings; another I have noticed is, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him and He would have given thee Living Water;" others are, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; "As the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father; "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I and the Father are one;" "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Let anyone try to realize the amount of ignorance displayed even by Apostles before Pentecost, and then try to divest himself of the knowledge which he has derived from the Pauline Epistles, from St. John's Gospel and general Epistle, from the Creeds of the Church, from the writings of her Fathers and Doctors, and then say how he would have received such words from a man, perhaps much younger than himself, and having no recognized position whatsoever in the Theocracy.

I would remark, in passing, that sayings such as these must be THE Revelation-the special Revelation of any book in which they are, for the first time, made known: all other things which it teaches, or is supposed to teach, such as counter-developments of belief and unbelief in human beings, must be beyond measure subordinate to the making known of such sayings of Christ as these. In what, then, consisted the guilt of the Jews, in that they sought the more to slay him, because, "He had not only broken the Sabbath, but said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God?" They were surely not bound to receive such claims by whomsoever asserted, and if they were faithful administrators of the Law of Moses, they were bound to prosecute blasphemy most severely. Their guilt was twofold: (1) they persisted in ignoring the miracles of Jesus, and (2) they shut their eyes to the force of Scriptures which clearly revealed that the Messiah, whom they then expected, would be a superhuman being. That their ignoring of His miracles arose from wilful and determined, and therefore sinful prejudice, is

19. Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily,

clear from the fact that one of the first amongst them came to Him, confessing on the part of others, besides himself, "We know that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest except God be with Him; and others could ask, "When Christ cometh, will He do more miracles than those which this man hath done?" And respecting the testimony of the older Scriptures to the Divine claims of the Messiah, had they not the Psalms, one of which spoke of Christ as God's begotten Son (Psalm ii.), and another as David's Son, and David's Lord; and Isaialı of the Messiah as "Wonderful, Councillor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace;" and Jeremiah, as the Lord our Righteousness;" and Micah, as One Who, though born in Bethlehem, had His "goings forth from of old, of everlasting"? We have evidence that commentaries written before, or about our Lord's time interpreted these places of the Messiah. So that if they were guided by their own Scriptures, they would have expected a Messiah very closely related to God.1

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The Saviour now proceeds to soften, and yet to re-assert what he had said. He had spoken of the Father and the Son both working as if on an equality, now He proceeds to show that this does not imply two Gods, two independent Agents in upholding all things, but that He, as the Son of God, cannot work independently of, or apart from, His Father. It has been supposed that the following verses were spoken before a council of the Jewish rulers, who were seeking further ground of accusation against Him, implied in the words, sought the more to slay Him," not by proceeding to apprehend Him at once, but by endeavouring to make Him commit Himself to something more definite on which they could lay hold.

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19. "Then answered Jesus . . . . The Son can do nothing of Himself. . . . these also doeth the Son likewise." The Lord, therefore, meets them by disclaiming all independent or separate action, just as He Himself is "of" or "from" the Father; so all that He does, or says, is "of" or from" the Father. Whatever

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1 The reader will find large extracts from Onkelos, Jonathan Ben Uzziel, and others, who were either contemporaries of our Lord, or sufficiently near to His time to show the opinions of the Rabbis, in "Selecta Targum" in Schaaf's "Opus Aramæum."

k

k ver. 30. ch. viii. 28. & ix. 4.

verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son like- & xii. 49. & wise.

1

20. For the Father loveth the Son, and

xiv. 10.

1 Matt. iii. 17. ch. iii. 35.

2 Pet. i. 17.

19. "Likewise;" rather, "in like manner,"
‚""similarly;" Vulg., similiter.

He sees in the bosom of the Father, in the depths of the Divine counsels, that He does. What is inworking in the will and wisdom of the Father, that, so to speak, He works out.

We may illustrate this by a reference to creation. God made all things, and yet all things were made by the Word, for "without Him was not anything made that was made." This, of course, excludes the idea that God made some things, and the Logos others of a similar sort, and after a similar fashion of working; and shuts us up to the true meaning, that whatever was in the Divine foreknowledge and will, planned and determined on as to its existence and coming into being, that the Son worked out, so to speak, and gave shape to, as the Mediating Agent of His Father. And this consideration enables us to understand these words of the Son absolutely and universally, even with reference to those things which are peculiarly His work as the Incarnate Son, such as the accomplishmentof our Redemption. These things considered as actually done by Himself, the Son cannot see the Father do; but all that He did and suffered in working out our Redemption was in the Divine Foreknowledge, Mind, Will, Wisdom, and Love. So that in redeeming us He did nothing but what He saw in the foreknowledge and will of the Father.

20. "The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth." Here we have the Lord still, in some measure, speaking after the manner of men, and using human illustrations to set forth the highest truths of God. Just as the obedient human son imitates what is done by his father, and being of the same nature does the same things in the same way; so the human father confides all to his son whom he loves, takes him into his whole counsel, hides nothing from him. Now the Lord implies that there is in the Divine Relationship between the Persons of the Godhead that which answers to this loving human relationship. As the Father knows the