In chapter five of John’s gospel, the animosity toward Jesus on the part of the established religious leaders within Judaism comes into focus. Two key issues are highlighted here.

First, they are upset with Jesus because He did not follow all their religious rules regarding the Sabbath. They had taken God’s commandment to honor the Sabbath and designed lots of rules for what a person could and could not do if he or she wanted to honor the Sabbath. In other words, they thought THEIR RULES were how a person obeyed the commandment. If you obeyed their rules, you were honoring the Sabbath. If you disobeyed their rules, you were not honoring the Sabbath. Thus they made their rules almost equal to the commandment itself.

After Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath who been sick for 38 years (verse 5), He told the man to “pick up” his “pallet and walk” (verse 10). The problem was that one of their rules said it was wrong to carry something on the Sabbath, because that was the same as working on the Sabbath. When the religious leaders saw this man carrying his pallet, they questioned him (verse 10). When they learned it was Jesus who had healed the man and told him to carry his pallet on the Sabbath – breaking their rule – they began “persecuting Jesus” (verse 16).

Some of that may strike us as odd, but as humans we can all be guilty of making our rules almost equal to God’s word. Think about it a minute. Traditionally some Christians and churches have had “rules” or “expectations” about what a good Christian would or would not do on Sunday. If a Christian broke one of those “rules” they were judged. That is exactly what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day did with their rules about the Sabbath.

Each of us has rules or traditions that help us stay on the right path and obey Scripture. There’s nothing wrong with that. It only becomes a problem when we begin giving our rules authority similar to Scripture and apply those rules to other people. Judging someone on the basis of one of our rules is wrong. That is especially true when we care more about our rules than we care about the person – which is what the religious leaders Jesus’ dealt clearly demonstrated when they were more upset that the man had carried his pallet on the Sabbath than they were excited that he had been healed of a sickness he had suffered for 38 years. Rules can make us harsh.

Second, these same religious leaders were upset with Jesus because He claimed equality with God the Father (v.18). Jesus was very clear about this:

• Jesus gives life to the dead, just like the Father (verses 21,25)
• Jesus judges humanity (verse 22)
• Jesus will be honored by humanity, just like the Father (verse 23)
• Jesus is the source of life, just like the Father (verse 26)

Jesus is not part man and part God. Biblical teaching is that Jesus is fully God and fully man. I’ll admit I don’t completely understand how that can be. That’s OK – because the fact that I can’t fully understand everything about Jesus is evidence that He really is God. It makes sense that I cannot completely grasp everything about God – because He is God and I’m not.

Jesus did not begin at Bethlehem that first Christmas. Because He is God, He is eternal. What we celebrate at Christmas is when Jesus took upon Himself humanity. He did this so that He could make atonement for our sins by dying on the cross as a perfect sacrifice.

There are many people in our world today who like the “idea” of Jesus and some of His teachings. What they don’t like is the fact that Jesus is actually God, with the authority that comes with being God. As Christians we need to be careful that we don’t fall into that same trap. When we say “Jesus is Lord” we are actually saying that He is God and has all authority over our lives. That also means that His word has all authority over our lives.

Pastor Steve Hogg