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The Jews considered Christ as claiming equality with God. But supposing that they mistook His meaning what can be said of His not correcting them? The charge of Sabbath breaking from which He vindicated Himself in the text was insignificant compared to the charge based upon His vindication. Why not defend Himself against such awful blasphemy. On the contrary, He confirms the inference of the Jews in ver. 19. If He were not God He had no right to refer to what God did as His vindication. The practice of the Creator could not be quoted in proof that a mere creature might do what He thought fit on the Sabbath. But were Christ and God equal He could act as God and therefore on all days alike. Notice —

I. THE CONTINUED WORKING OF THE FATHER

1. It would present no satisfactory account of the beautiful arrangements of the visible creation to say that matter was first endowed with certain properties and placed in certain relations and then left to obey the laws originally impressed. Of course God has given laws, and exerts no immediate agency to supersede them; but He is continually working by and through them as instruments.

(1) This is the teaching of philosophy which insists that where there are laws there must be an agency and a power of which laws are modes.

(2) The Bible teaches not only the production but the preservation of all things by God. There is scarcely a natural production or occurrence which is not referred immediately to His agency.

2. God has also revealed Himself as a moral Governor, and observes every motion of the human will, makes it subservient to His own purposes, registers whatever occurs for judgment, instigates every good action and overrules every bad. No calamity which can befall us, no anxiety disquiet, no joy cheer, no prayer escape which does not proceed either from His permission or appointment.

3. There are worlds upon worlds for which He does practically the same as ours. It were to be God to know what God has to do.

II. THE CONTINUED WORKING OF THE SON.

1. We may suppose that Christ partly referred to the perfect union of will and person which there is between the Persons of the Trinity when Paul declared that He was "the brightness of the Father's person," etc. He went on to speak of Him as "upholding all things by the word of His power."

2. But as Christ wrought the miracle in His mediatorial capacity, it is rather as the Saviour than as the Creator that He here speaks. The truth then is that Christ has all along been redeeming as the Father has been with preserving all mankind.

(1) This is true all through the dispensations. As soon as there was sin there was salvation — through Christ, so theft every human being added fresh employment to the Mediator as well as to the Creator.

(2) We cannot but conclude that Christ in the office of Mediator has done something for unfallen beings, and if so, how immeasurably this widens the sphere of Christ's activity.

III. THE EFFECT OF THIS DOCTRINE should be —

1. To give us the same confidence in addressing the Mediator as in addressing the Father. Providence, in giving us our daily bread, is not more uniform than that intercession from which we derive daily grace.

2. To console the timid and downcast. "My Father worketh hitherto," and whom will He neglect or fail to sustain? "I work," and whom will I refuse to save? Who shall come to me and be cast out?

3. To encourage an application to that Divine Saviour who in His house provides healing for the impotent on the Sabbath day.

(H. Melvill, B. D.)

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KJV: After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

WEB: After these things, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.