The Jewish leaders understood exactly what Jesus was saying.
Today, there are many people that deny what Jesus said, or try to explain it away, or work to distract people from the truth.
But the Jewish leaders were there. They were listening to Jesus in person, and they knew precisely what he meant:
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
John 5:16-18
Jesus had healed a man who couldn’t walk on the Sabbath. He was lame, paralyzed, and hoping for a solution, hoping for a miracle. And that is what he got. Jesus came by the pool at Bethesda and asked the man if he wanted to get well. That is an important question… Sometimes we prefer the situation that we find ourselves in. Do we want to get well?
The man did, and so Jesus healed him, telling the man that he needed to pick up his mat and walk.
Now Jesus knew the Law and the traditions of the Jewish leaders. He had just healed the man on the Sabbath, but instead of recognizing the incredible miracle that had just happened, what did the leaders focus on? The fact that the man was carrying his mat! Jesus had told the man to carry his mat, knowing that it was the Sabbath, specifically to rile the Jewish leaders, to cause a reaction upon the wrong thing. Jesus knew that they would react to the man carrying the mat instead of the fact that the man was in fact standing and walking after having been paralyzed and lame his entire life.
Jesus referred to himself as the Lord of the Sabbath. He was “entitled” to heal someone on the Sabbath – as if we would ever need an exemption from the Law to do good for someone else – because he is the Lord of the Sabbath. He made the law that says rest on the Sabbath. He could determine how it would be applied. He wasn’t breaking the Sabbath. He was doing good on the Sabbath!
But the Jewish leaders saw what they wanted to see. They saw that the man was carrying his mat and so, having been identified by the man who was healed, they went to Jesus, just as Jesus knew that they would, and Jesus explained himself this way:
My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.
That’s right. He said it: “My Father…” God himself is working, and so am I. That’s why I healed the man on the Sabbath. Because God worked that day. God did good on the Sabbath, and so I do good on the Sabbath. God worked on the Sabbath, so I work on the Sabbath. My Father worked on the Sabbath, so I worked on the Sabbath.
So yes, the Jewish leaders heard him correctly, and they wanted to kill him for it. According to them, Jesus was blaspheming. He called himself equal with God. And they were right. That is exactly what Jesus was doing. He was calling himself equal with God. He was calling himself God.
As I said before, there are many today that attempt to deny or distract us from the reality of who Jesus claimed to be. Muslims will say that he was a prophet and only a prophet.
Is that what Jesus said? Or is that what the Jewish leaders understood? Far from it. They understood him perfectly: Jesus claimed to be equal with God.
Or Jehovah’s Witnesses will explain away Jesus as being “a” son of God. Not God.
Is that what Jesus said or what the Jewish leaders understood? Far from it.
Or Catholics will say that we need to pray to the saints or talk to Mary. We need to pray to dead people. Just people. Not one of them claimed to be equal with God. And does that make any sense given who Jesus claimed to be or who the Jewish leaders understood him to say? Not in the least.
God himself came to earth in the form of a man to reestablish his rule and reign, to redeem and purchase a people for himself with his own blood. That reality, and that story, is greater than any lie or any distraction that could be told today. When Jesus’s disciples looked at him…when the Jewish leaders looked at him…and when we look at Jesus through his words in the Bible today…we are all looking directly at God. Jesus, as the Jewish leaders correctly understood, claimed to be equal with God.