John 10:33
The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
The Jews stated their reason plainly: they were not stoning Him for any good work, but for blasphemy, because He, being a man, made Himself God. What they were answering was His claim to oneness with the Father and His open avowal that He was the Son of God, which they took as grounds to destroy Him. In the surrounding exchange His works are set forth as evidence of His divine mission and His unity with the Father.
Those who witnessed His works of mercy and heard His pure and holy teaching recognized that these were not the deeds and words of a Sabbath-breaker or blasphemer. The attempt to stone Him was one of several such attempts arising from hostility, and each time He escaped, quietly withdrawing until they lost sight of Him, guarded and borne to safety by angels. The opposition against Him united Pharisees and Sadducees.
The blasphemy charge was a pretext driven by hatred and aimed at destroying His influence and cutting Him off from the people. It was stirred because He exposed their hypocritical pretensions, tore aside the cloak of rigorous rites hiding their moral deformity, condemned their hollow professions of piety by His pure religion, and gave pointed rebukes that made them thirst for revenge, while yet He reached men where they were with condescending love and great mercy. Behind the rejection Satan was working to separate the Father and the Son. When Jesus spoke cutting truth reproving their sins, Satan and his angels inspired unbelief, hate, and scorn until the people were enraged to take the life of the Son of God, and, blinded by Satan, they cried for the law and the Father and cried away with the Son, refusing to acknowledge Jesus or have anything to do with Him.
His opponents also tried to use His Sabbath works of mercy to condemn Him as a Sabbath-breaker. Blinded to the power of God in His mighty miracles, they claimed He did those works through Satan and accused Him of blasphemy and madness. They tried to provoke Him to say or do something that would give occasion to condemn Him, and raised political pretexts against Him, representing Him as setting up a rival kingdom to arouse the Herodians to destroy Him and as subverting authority to excite the Romans against Him. At the tomb of Lazarus He openly repeated the same claim, calling God His Father and declaring Himself the Son of God sent by the Father, to give disciples and people the most convincing evidence of the relationship between Christ and God and to show His claim was not a deception.