things on the Sabbath."[15] In what
particular form the charge of Sabbath-breaking was brought against our
Lord, whether formal or conversational and tentative, John does not say.
He is more concerned to give us in full the substance of His apology.
For the first time our Lord now gave in public an explanation of His
claims; and this five minutes' talk with the Jews contains probably the
most important truth ever uttered upon earth.

The passage embodies the four following assertions: that the healing of
the incurable on the Sabbath resulted from and exhibited His perfect
unison with the Father; that this giving of life to an impotent man was
an illustration or sign of His power to quicken whom He would, to
communicate life Divine and eternal to all in whatsoever stage of
spiritual or physical deadness they were; that His claim to possess this
supreme power was not mere idle assertion, but was both guaranteed by
this miracle, and otherwise was amply attested; and that the real root
of their rejection of Him and His claims was to be found, not in their
superior knowledge of God and regard for His will, but in their worldly
craving for the applause of men.[16]

1. Our Lord's reply to the charge of Sabbath-breaking is, "My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work." He did not make any comment on the
Sabbath law. He did not defend Himself by showing that works of mercy
such as He had done Were admissible. On other occasions He adopted this
line of defence, but now He took higher ground. The rest of God is not
inactivity. God does not on the Sabbath cease to communicate life to all
things. He does not refrain from blessing men till the sun of the
Sabbath is set. The tides rise and fall; the plants grow; the sun
completes his circuit on the Sabbath as on other days. "Why does not God
keep the Sabbath?" a caviller asked of a Jew. "Is it not lawful," was
the answer, "for a man to move about in his own house on the Sabbath?
The house of God is the whole realm above and the whole realm below."
For God the Sabbath has no existence; it is a boon He has given to His
creatures because they need it. His untiring beneficence is needful for
the upholding and for the happiness of all. And it is the same
superiority to the Sabbath which Jesus claims for Himself. He claims
that His unceasing work is as necessary to the world as the Father's--or
rather, that He and the Father are together carrying out one work, and
that in this miracle the Jew