The Father and the Son Worketh- John 5:10-18

Jesus commanded the man to “take up thy bed, and walk” and so the man did. Unfortunately, the man didn’t get very far before the Pharisees found this guy walking around carrying his bed and reprimanded him, “It is the Sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.” The man answers them saying, “He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.” It seems like this guy threw Jesus under the bus here, but JTC assumes that this man excitedly told the Pharisees of his miraculous healing out of joy. Looking at the conversation again, maybe we can see it a different way. The Pharisees stop this man and tell him what he’s doing is wrong, and he says that the guy who performed a miracle said that he could do it. It almost has a school hall monitor feel to it, “you can’t be out here,” “the principal said that it’s ok.” Pharisees say, “you can’t be here,” he answers, “the guy with the real power of God said that it’s ok.” So perhaps he didn’t throw Jesus under the bus as much as he sited His superior authority to the Pharisees. The Pharisees asked the man, “what man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?” The crowds had gathered and the man had lost sight of the Lord, so he couldn’t tell them.

This man was infirm for 38 years and one of the first things that he does is to go to the temple. Whether it was to give thanks to God, or to worship, he had probably spent much time waiting for the waters and growing spiritually. Another example of how the Lord uses our trials to bring us closer to him, if we will let Him. This man didn’t become bitter about his circumstances, he remained humble and teachable as is demonstrated by this man’s immediate appearance at the temple. Jesus was also at the temple and upon seeing the man, warned him, “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” Then the man went and found the Jews and told them that Jesus was the one who had healed him. Why he did this, I’m not sure, JTC says that we are not justified in speculating that he did it maliciously, we have to assume that he had the best intentions. Maybe he didn’t know that the Pharisees were already acquainted with Jesus, maybe he was trying to bring them to Him so that they too could be healed by Him.

The Jews are not pleased with what Jesus has done “and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath day.” Can we just take a second to recognize the insanity of their position? A man comes among them and does things that no one else has done in hundreds of years, and instead of being in awe of this man, they think “hmmm… we should kill him.” What kind of crazy talk is that? “This man is doing miraculous things and helping people, he must die.” This is absolutely insane. I would like to think that if I was confronted with that situation that I would be too dumbstruck to think about anything, let alone, “death.” That’s a special type of evil right there.

Jesus’s answer to the Jewish leadership that confront him seems to me to be scattered all over the place, touching on many different, seemingly unrelated topics, but I’m going to try to make a sequence of topics and see if I can string together how they fit and why Jesus would speak the way that he did.

“My Fahter worketh hitherto, and I work” -> “the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth” -> “The Father... hath committed all judgment unto the Son -> “the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God” -> “all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth” (Resurrection) -> “There is another that beareth witness of me” (John the Baptist) -> “I have greater witness than that of John… the same works that I do bear witness of me.” -> “search the scriptures… and they are they which testify of me.” -> “There is one that accuseth you, even Moses… For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me.”

Let’s go through what all these means and then maybe I can put together a lay-man’s version of the above and maybe it will make more sense to me then. Jesus’ first phrase, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” The Jews were furious and “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.” My question is, how did they know that Jesus was referring to God when he said “My Father?” Maybe it is lost in translation, he must have used the term for “God the Father” and placed it in the spot of “God my Father.” I’ll have to look in to that, but they obviously understood it to mean that Jesus was saying that “God is my Father and I do what he does.” The IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as saying, “Equal with God!- awful blasphemy or awesome truth!- one or the other. There is no middle ground, no room of compromise; there are no principles to compose: either Jesus is divine or he is blaspheming! Equal with God!- not, as yet, in the infinite and eternal sense, but in the sense of being one with him, of being his natural heir, destined to receive, inherit, and possess all that the Father hath. Equal with God!- not that he was then reigning in glory and exaltation over all the works which their hands had mode, but in that sense that he was God’s Son, upon whom the Father had placed his own name and to whom he had given glory and honor and power.” I feel that this is Jesus saying, “I am God’s Son and I am here doing His work.”