The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And for this the Jews persecuted Jesus [and sought to kill him], because he had done these things on sabbath.
Jesus healed a man who had been unable to walk for years, and it should have brought joy. Instead it began the hostility to Him that runs through the rest of John's Gospel — all because of the day He chose to heal.
Note: the writers quoted below use an older English Bible, so their wording differs a little from the ESV. Their text of this verse also adds the words "and sought to slay Him." The ESV places that clause at verse 18.
The offence was not a small break in routine. That day stood for something much bigger:
It was the Sabbath. That matters here, and it holds a prominent place in this scene. God gave the Sabbath as a token of the covenant between the Jews and the Lord. But by now it was clear that the law did not give God's rest to man. Man needed the power of a new life. He needed grace, so that he could be in relationship with God.
That is also why the reaction came so fast and so fierce:
The nation is at once sensitive of this. It touched the place of their pride; for the Sabbath was the sign of all their national distinction.
The verse says the Jews reacted to "these things" — the healing, and one act more:
Were the Jews mistaken, after all, in thinking that the seal of the first covenant was really broken by that deliberate word and authority of Jesus? He could have healed the man without the smallest outward act to shock their zeal for the law. He expressly told the man to take up his couch and walk, as well as to rise. There was purpose in it. There was a sentence of death pronounced on their system, and they felt it.
The same writer asks why the bed had to be carried at all:
Could he not have left his bed there, or at least then? Yes. But he did it at the word of the One who healed him. That was a plain testimony, and a very galling one, that God had no fellowship with their Sabbaths.
Their anger had a source, but it was not the law of God itself:
The man was healed on the Sabbath day, and this at once stirred up the prejudices of the Jews. Those prejudices got no support from the Word. They rested only on the teaching of the rabbis. So the Jews persecuted the Lord, because He had healed the disabled man on that day.
One writer stops simply to take in the sight:
What a spectacle! Religious people were seeking to kill the Lord of the Sabbath. These were the leaders and teachers of religion, the guides of the people who professed to belong to God. And why? Because He had made a man completely whole on the Sabbath day!
Another writer weighs their response against what they had just seen:
They saw the grace of God rising above all legal barriers for man's sake. It should have filled them with thanksgiving. Instead they seek to destroy Him, the faithful representative of that grace in this scene of suffering.
The man himself had gone and named his healer. One writer reads no ill will in that, and contrasts him with the leaders:
Probably the man acted in simplicity. He did not know their malice, and thought that they too wanted to know this wonderful Person... They are taken up with one thing only — the contempt shown to their Sabbath-keeping pride.
Verse 16 is where a pattern starts:
This part of Scripture shows how the devil opposes the Lord and His heavenly work on earth. He can use people who boast in religious ancestry and privileges... In John 7:1 "The Jews sought to kill Him." In John 8:48 they insult Him... And in John 19:15 their moral degradation reaches its depth in their united cry, "Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him." So they not only oppose the work of the blessed Lord; they refuse Him and put Him to death. Those born and raised in an earthly religion can be hostile to the last degree to what is of Christ.
- Sign — The Sabbath was the token of Israel's covenant and the sign of their national distinction. To act on that day touched their pride.
- Purpose — Jesus could have healed the man without telling him to carry his bed. He added that command on purpose. It was a sentence of death on their system.
- Pretext — The charge rested on rabbinical teaching rather than on Scripture itself.
- Reversal — Teachers of God's law tried to kill the One who had just made a man completely well. Grace showed up the heart that opposed it.
- Trajectory — The persecution that starts here runs on through the Gospel to the cry "crucify Him." Religious hostility to Christ travels that far.
But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto and I work.
Jesus had just healed a disabled man at a pool in Jerusalem, and He did it on the Sabbath. The Jews accused Him of breaking the day of rest. He did not defend the act. He pointed to what His Father had never stopped doing — and His accusers heard the claim He was making about Himself.
God did rest once, when creation was new. That rest ended.
A Sabbath in the strict and proper sense could only happen when there was nothing left to do. It belonged to an undefiled creation — a creation with no spot of sin on it. God can have no rest where there is sin. Look around, and you learn that God cannot enjoy a rest in creation now. The thorn and the thistle, and ten thousand other sad and humbling fruits of a groaning creation, rise before us and declare that God must be at work and not at rest. Could He rest amid the sighs and tears, the groans and sorrows, the sickness and death, the degradation and guilt of a ruined world?
The creating is over; something else has taken its place.
The seventh day was a day of rest for God. His work had involved both creating and making, but all was now complete. From that time until now He has plainly not set His hand to work of that order. The entrance of sin made it necessary for Him to take up work of another order. The Lord Jesus referred to this when He said, "My Father is working until now, and I am working."
Notice what Jesus does not appeal to.
In the other Gospels, when people challenge the Lord for doing His works on the Sabbath day, He answers from the case of David eating the holy bread from God's house, or the priests doing work in the temple, or the way His accusers themselves would lead out their donkey to water on the Sabbath day. But here, in John's Gospel, He does not plead what David, or the priests, or His accusers would do or had done. He pleads what the heavenly Father had always been doing in this needy, ruined world.
This work is grace, and the scene at the pool shows what that means.
Christ had come to work. What makes it so blessed is this truth: it was not man's work and man's strength; the Father and the Son are the workmen in our salvation. The law required man to work, just as the pool of Bethesda required a man to be quick enough to get himself into it. But in the gospel, it is God who works: "My Father is working."
The two words that inflamed His hearers were not about the Sabbath at all.
It was an overwhelming answer. They knew nothing of fellowship with the Father. He, not they, could call God "My Father," and loved to say that He "is working until now." For the Father could not rest in sin, He would not rest in misery. This is not yet God judging. So He was working as Father, and working until now — though only now was He declaring Himself Father, in and by the Son. Jesus, the Son, had fellowship with His Father, unbroken and perfect.
His hearers drew a conclusion about equality with God. That conclusion needs stating with care.
If the time for God's rest had not come, the full time for His work had, so that people might be made ready for a place in that rest. The Jews were right to take the Lord's words as involving His equality with the Father. But for that reason it could not be true that He made Himself God. The truth was this: being in the form of God, He did not treat equality with God as a grasping at something that was not His own. Instead He emptied Himself — that is the wonderful word — and took the form of a servant.
The Master's answer settles something for His followers too.
"Sabbath" means "rest," and the Lord said, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." The Lord Jesus could not rest in a world full of sin and suffering. He could not keep the Sabbath down here... No more can a true Christian keep the Sabbath in such a world. He has no more right to be resting here than his Master. If his Master must work, so must he. But in Hebrews 4:9 we read, "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." The Sabbath rest is ahead of us.
- Sin broke the rest. God rested over a spotless creation. Thorns, tears and death ended that rest, so He took up work of another kind.
- Work of grace. This work is not judgment but grace. The law asked a helpless man to move himself; at the pool, God moved instead.
- Father and Son together. In John, Jesus points to no example from David or the priests. He points to what His Father has always done — and does the same Himself.
- "My Father" is the offence. Those two words claimed a place no one else could take. His hearers heard equality with God in them.
- Rest still ahead. The work ends in the Sabbath rest that remains for God's people. Until then the servant works, like his Master.