DID OUR SAVIOUR BREAK THE SABBATH?
By Editor
QUESTION. Some contend that John, in chap. v, 18, says that Jesus broke the Sabbath. Do you understand John to say so? G. W. COLCORD. ANSWER. We do not. John only records the charges made against Jesus by the Jews. The Jews accused him of breaking the Sabbath, but he answered them with a most triumphant vindication of himself from all their accusations. This cannot be better set forth than in the following which we give from the forthcoming History of the Sabbath: "And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath-day. But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God." John v, 16-18. Our Lord here stands charged with two crimes: 1. He had broken the Sabbath. 2. He had made himself equal with God. The first accusation is based on these particulars: (1.) By his word he had healed the impotent man. But this violated no law of God; it only set at nought that tradition which forbade anything to be done for curing diseases upon the Sabbath. (2) He had directed the man to carry his bed. But this as a burden was a mere trifle, like a cloak, or mat, and was designed to show the reality of his cure, and thus to honor the Lord of the Sabbath who had healed him. Moreover, it was not such a burden as the Scriptures forbid upon the Sabbath. (3) Jesus justified what he had done by comparing his present act of healing to that work which his Father had done HITHERTO, i. e., from the beginning of the creation. Ever since the Sabbath was sanctified in Paradise, the Father, by his providence, had continued to mankind, even upon the Sabbath, all the merciful acts by which the human race has been preserved. This work of the Father was of precisely the same nature as that which Jesus had now done. These acts did not argue that the Father had hitherto lightly esteemed the Sabbath, for he had most solemnly enjoined its observance in the law and in the prophets; and as our Lord had most expressly recognized their authority, there was no ground to accuse him of disregarding the Sabbath, when he had also followed the example of the Father from the beginning. The Saviour's answer to these two charges will remove all difficulty: "Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do; for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." John v, 19. This answer involves two points: 1. That he was following his Father's perfect example, who had ever laid open to him all his works; and hence as he was doing that only which had ever been the pleasure of the Father to do, he was not engaged in the overthrow of the Sabbath. 2. And by the meek humility of this answer—"The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do"—he showed the groundlessness of their charge of self-exaltation. Thus in nothing was there left a chance to answer him again.