Equal With God

But Jesus answered them, My Father has been working until now, and I have been working. Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.

John 5:17-18

Christ’s claims were unambiguous, especially to the Jewish religionists. After He healed the man at the pool of Bethesda, they began to persecute Him because He had told the man to pick up his bed on the Sabbath day, thus violating one of their petty rules. ‘So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.’ Our text is Christ’s response to their attempts to kill Him. His response inflamed them further because they rightly understood that for Him to claim to be the Son of God effectively made Him equal with God. He was not being ambiguous. They were not misunderstanding Him. Why does this matter to us? It matters because we, viewing the life of Christ in the cultural context in which He lived, need to understand His claims as clearly as they did. Christ unequivocally claimed to be God in human form. Our response to that is to either believe it or not. If we do not believe it, then we side with the religionists and everyone else who opposes Christ. If we believe Him, we become His disciples. What we need to understand is that He really did make those claims. There is no basis for the charge that Christ did not clearly present Himself as the Son of God and therefore equal with God. It falls upon us to believe them or disbelieve them. If we believe, we embrace all that follows; He is the Redeemer, the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him.

Our Gracious Master and our God,
we rejoice that You are the Son of God.
We praise You that You have revealed Yourself
to be equal with God.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning