The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat."
11 But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.' "
12 So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?"
13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." 15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
The Authority of the Son
16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defense Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working." 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Dig Deeper
I had a wonderful childhood. I really did, and there's not too much I could even think to complain of, but I do remember one part of my childhood that was particularly traumatic. You see I had a rhythm to my week. I went to school all week and Sundays were set aside for church, but Saturdays were supposed to be different. To me, Saturday mornings were for nothing more than laying around and watching cartoons (this was back when they were still making good cartoons) from whenever I woke up until about noon. My dad seemed to be operating in a different world, though. He always wanted to get up early on Saturday mornings and do some work. That might sound bad enough, but what was even worse was the fact that he wanted to always bring me into his disturbed world of hard work and no cartoons. He was simply operating in a whole different reality than I was and it made me angry. Saturdays were about self-absorption not hard work. No matter how many times he tried to explain the whole theory behind doing work on Saturday mornings, it sounded like crazy talk because Saturdays were a completely different thing for a different purpose in my world than they were in his.
This seems to be something of the problem with Jesus and the leadership of the Jews. It wasn't so much that they didn't understand the things that he was doing, it was that they were living in a whole different world with a entirely different reality than Jesus. They still think that it's time to rest and wait around for God to something, but Jesus knows that that time has passed. It is time to get up and start working. God is doing something new and the time to be a part of it is right now. Waiting anymore would just be wasting time.
John has waited until verse 9 to give us a vital piece of information. Jesus has healed this man on the Sabbath. By Jesus' day, the Sabbath had become something far different than what is actually described in the Scriptures. It was intended to be a day of rest that both reminded the Jewish people of the fact that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh and that pointed ahead to the true rest and healing that God would bring to the world one day. Israel, through time and tradition, however, had gone far beyond the call to keep God's day holy and focused on Him, and had added all kinds of rules and regulations that people had to follow. The Lord had told the Israelites not to work on the Sabbath and not to carry loads (Ex. 31:12-17; Jer. 17:12-17; Neh. 13:15-19) but tradition had defined that down to the point that you could not carry any object from one domain into another on the Sabbath, so you could carry a man on a mat, but not the mat itself. In reality, the man did not break any biblical Sabbath regulations, only the traditional oral law that attempted to interpret biblical passages.
The specific issue that Jewish leaders jump all over the man for is that he should not have been carrying his mat on the Sabbath. The man wants no part of this issue and does not attempt to defend Jesus in anyway. He seems more than happy to pass responsibility off to Jesus. He only carried his mat because Jesus told him to.
The question that we really need to ask though, is why would Jesus heal the man on this day? There were six other days in the week. This man had been in his condition for nearly forty years, why couldn't it wait for one more day and avoid all of the controversy. The answer is far more subversive than might at first appear. What seems to be happening is that Jesus is bringing the life of the new creation into a world that still wants to cling to the old creation. The old world still wanted to lay around and watch cartoons, the way they always had, but Jesus was already up and working. It was time to get moving, God's new creation was here. The new creation was replacing the old one for those who wished to follow Jesus but this simply made no sense to the Jewish leaders. Yet, this is precisely the picture that John has painted for us. From the first verse of the Gospel, he told us that this was an event of new creation. He has left clues all throughout, such as pointing out that Jesus' opening week of ministry was seven days, mimicking the seven days of creation. Everywhere Jesus went, he was bringing forth signs of the new creation (still wondering how many of those signs John will describe?).
As Jesus opens the veil separating heaven and earth further and further, the forces that stand opposed to the new creation react in increasing fiercer levels. The new creation was being unveiled further as John shows another instance of the angels ascending and descending on the son of man (cf. 1:51). The Sabbath was always a day to rest and remember the original creation week, but Jesus sees things quite differently. The Sabbath is no longer a time of rest, it's a time of opening up the world to the new creation. God was restoring things that were sick and broken and devastated by a world caught in sin. All humans are born into that world with no way out on our own. The only hope for the world was for God to do something. This is precisely what the new creation is all about. It is God fixing what sin has done to the world.
The man who was healed, though, is like so many of us. He had walked right into the new creation but he had no idea who Jesus was or what he was doing. In fact, we are never told that this man really ever understood the full implications of what Jesus had done. He had tasted of the new creation but still seemed far more in fear of being in trouble with the powers-that-be rather than standing boldly in the new reality which had reached out and touched him. When Jesus tells him to stop sinning or something worse may happen to you, he isn't necessarily implying that sin caused the man's condition (Jesus, in fact, denies that sin is a factor in cases like this is 9:3). Being stuck in a world of sin with no way out, even if part of your condition in that world is to be crippled, pales in comparison to the reality of being brought into the new creation and not embracing it. There is no place for sin in the age to come which is why Christians are called to enter into the sinless life of Christ and fully embrace it as we are transformed into his image (Col. 3:10). If this man continued to fail to realize what was going on and walked back into a life of sin, it would be far worse than being stuck there in the first place with no knowledge of the new thing God was doing. Those who have never entered the new creation, have hope. Those who have entered and then willingly walked away from it, have no hope (cf. Heb. 6:4-6). The fact was that the time for those in Israel to choose between the new thing being brought into the world through Christ and the old way was running short and if this man didn't embrace the new creation while he still had a chance, the prospects were dire. Having hope is always better, no matter how dire your circumstances, than having no hope.
Sadly, verse 15 seems to indicate that he still didn't get. Whereas the man healed of blindness (ch. 9) defended Jesus and would not distance himself from Jesus, this man was more than happy to distance himself. So, the anger and hatred of the leaders is quickly transferred from this man to Jesus. In response to the persecution of the Jewish leaders, Jesus said that his Father was always at His work, and so was he. In saying this, Jesus has pushed the door between heaven and earth open just a little bit farther, claiming that his work and the work of the Father were on an even plane. Jews of Jesus' day had understood that, although God rested from creation on the seventh day, he continued to work by sustaining the entire creation. They explained that since the entire universe was God's domain, He was not breaking any Sabbath ordinance by moving an object from one domain into another. In other words, only God could work on the Sabbath because the entire universe was His (this was all Jewish reasoning and tradition, not Scripture mind you). Jesus' point was that, just as God was above normal Sabbath regulations, so was he. There were only two possible responses when someone claimed equality with God in ancient Israel. Either he could be taken at his word, or he would be killed for blasphemy. Clearly, the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus' word. They did not want the logos that he was bringing. They wanted to remain in their old reality. They simply didn't want to get up and get to work, helping to bring about God's new creation. This meant that, in their eyes, Jesus had to go. He would have to be killed.
Devotional Thought
God's new creation is all about healing, forgiving, and bringing life and light into the darkness. What signs of God's new creation have you seen in your life? Take some time to really think and pray about signs of the new creation in your own life. This should not only fill you with gratitude but should also give you a determination to share with others what God has done in your life.
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