November 27, 2008

Jesus Keeping the Sabbath

Leon Morris writes concerning a healing sign that Jesus performed on the Sabbath in the Gospel of John.

That the miracle was performed on the Sabbath stamped Jesus as an evildoer in the eyes of Pharisaic officialdom. The sign is Jesus' assertion that he could do on the Sabbath things that the Pharisees could not do. His relationship to God differs from theirs. Apart from God Jesus is helpless (vv. 19, 30), so that the healing of the man must not be seen as simple a magnificent human achievement. As John relatesit, it is a deed in which God set his seal on the work of his Son. ......

We are told of four Rabbis challenged to explain why God commands Israel to abstain from work on the Sabbath while he himself does not do so. They asked, "Is not a man permitted to carry on the Sabbath in his own courtyard?" and pointed out that both "the higher and lower regions are the courtyard of God", so that in his own way God is keeping the Sabbath. Only it is not the way earthlings keep it. Jesus is saying that he observes the Sabbath in the same way the Father does. The Jews recognized that his claim meant that he was asserting that God was his own Father, his Father in a special sense, for he was "making himself equal to God" (5:18). But Jesus did not mean this in the sense that he was a second god, a being quite separate from the Father. He says that he is quite unable to do anything from himself, and that what the Father does the Son does (5:19). He does not say that he does similar things, but that he does the same things. (Morris, Jesus Is The Christ, pp. 28-29)




Again, Jesus does not say that he does similar things. He does
the same things! Glory to our Lord and Savior.

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