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occurrences. The words of John 4: 34, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me,
and to finish His work", is the opening reference to the Lord's works, while the words of
John 17: 4, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do", closes the
references.
Every intervening link between the eight signs, namely, John 2: 13 - 4: 42;
4: 53, 54; 5: 16-47; 6: - 8:; 10: 1-42 and 11: 47 - 20: 31 is marked by the
inter-relation of ergon, "work", and pisteuo, "believe", except 4: 53, 54, where the
Lord's statement, "except ye see signs and wonders" (verse 48) indicates what the
reference to "works" is.
Instead of subduing the anger of the Jews the Lord's answer increased it.
"Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken
the sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God"
(John 5: 18).
No Jew could really object to another Jew calling God His Father, but the Saviour did
not say, "Our Father" but "My Father". He never did say "Our Father", as we are taught
to do. When He instructed His disciples to pray He taught them to say "Our Father", but
when He prayed He never said "Our Father". On the resurrection morning this
distinction is emphasized:
"I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God" (John 20: 17).
The R.V. corrects the A.V. in John 5: 18,
by translating the word idios, "own",
"but also called God His Own Father".
We do not go to the angry Jews to find a ground for the deity of Christ, and the words,
"made himself equal with God", arise out of the claim that the Saviour made that God
was His own Father. He did not claim to be the Father, but he did claim equality with the
Father. Isos means "equal", and is quite distinct from "identity". There is here no
confusion of the Persons of the Father and the Son. When the labourers who had worked
all day complained, "Thou has made them equal unto us" (Matt. 20: 12), the equality was
not of nature or person but of wages. When Peter said of the Gentiles that God had given
them the "like" gift to that already bestowed upon the Jews at Pentecost, the equality was
of gift, not nationality; Cornelius was not made a Jew. The truth concerning the relation
of the Father and the Son is the great theme of the Lord's reply to these words. He does
not deny the equality which the Jews accused Him of claiming, but demonstrates and
enforces it. While He readily admitted that the Son could do nothing of Himself, yet He
not only claimed to "see" what the Father did, but also that He, the Son, did "likewise".
Is this not equality? He twice uses the familiar figure of simile--"For as . . . . . so"--and
does not simile imply equality? This simile is used of two tremendous statements. The
first, that as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, "even so the Son
quickeneth whom He will" (John 5: 21); the second, that as the Father hath life in
Himself "even so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself" (John 5: 26). We are
not however left to our own failing powers of logic; the Lord definitely states the case,