On the Equality of the Father and the Son

(John 5:17-47).

To the Jews' plots to kill Him for breaking the Sabbath, Jesus answered them: "My Father does to this day, and I also work." These words contain Jesus' testimony about Himself as the consubstantial Son of God. All the following words are only a development of this basic idea of the Lord's answer to the Jews, who wanted to kill Jesus even more because He called Himself the Son of God: "Verily I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, except He see the Father doing: for what He does, the Son does likewise." It is natural for him, as the Son of God, to follow the commandment given to Adam and his descendants, but following the example of God the Father. And God the Father, although He rested on the seventh day, did so from the works of creation, and not from the works of providence. Correctly understanding from the words of the Lord that He teaches about His equality with God the Father, the Jews began to accuse Him, who, in their opinion, was worthy of death for breaking the Sabbath and blasphemy. Verses 19-20 reveal the doctrine of the unity of the actions of the Father and the Son, in relation to the usual ideas of the son imitating the father, and of the father loving the son and teaching him his works. In the words "The Son can do nothing of Himself" there is nothing of Arianism, but only, as St. Chrysostom says, that the Son does nothing contrary to the Father, nothing alien to Him, nothing incongruous, contrary to the will of the Father. "And he will show more works than these, so that you will be amazed," i.e., like the Father, the Son can not only heal the paralytic, but also raise up the dead (5:21).

At first, we are talking about the spiritual resurrection, about the awakening of the spiritually dead to a true, holy life in God, and then about the general bodily resurrection, and both of these resurrections are in close internal connection with each other. Man's perception of true life, spiritual life, is the beginning of his triumph over death. As spiritual disorder can be the cause of death, so the true life of the spirit leads to eternal life, which conquers death as inevitable.

With spiritual resurrection the Lord combines His other great work – judgment. This means, first of all, the moral judgment in the present life, which will inevitably lead to the final universal Dread Judgment. Christ appeared, as Life and Light, into a spiritually dead world immersed in spiritual darkness. Those who believed in Him were resurrected to a new life and became light themselves; but those who rejected Him remained in spiritual death, in spiritual darkness. That is why the judgment of the Son of God over people continues throughout life, which will eventually end with the last Last Judgment. And thus the destiny of men is eternally in the full power of the Son of God, and therefore it is proper to honor Him as well as the Father, for "he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him." Verses 24-29 contain a further depiction of the life-giving activity of the Son of God. Obedience to the words of the Savior and faith in His messengership is the main condition for the perception of true life, in which there is also a pledge of bodily blissful immortality. The words "He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death unto life" mean: He will not be judged. "The time is coming, and it has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and when they have heard, they will live" – here again we are talking about the spiritual revival as a result of Christ's preaching, since the Son is the source of the life He borrowed from the Father (5:26). The power of judgment also belongs to the Son, because for this purpose He became man, being by nature the Son of God (5:27). This authority of the Son of God as Judge will culminate in a universal resurrection and righteous retribution (5:28-29). This will be a righteous judgment, since it will be the result of the complete agreement of the will of the Judge with the will of the Heavenly Father (5:30).

In verses 31-39, Christ testifies with all emphasis to His divine dignity. In doing so, He refers to the testimony of John the Baptist, who was highly respected by the Jews, but He also says that He has an even greater testimony than John: it is the testimony of His God the Father, the testimony of the signs and wonders which His Son performs as if on His Father's commission, as they are part of the plan for the salvation of men, which the Father has given Him to fulfill. God the Father bore witness to His Son at the moment of His baptism, but He gave an even greater witness to Him as the Messiah through the prophets in the Old Testament Holy Scriptures, and the Jews do not heed this Scripture, because the Word of God has not taken root in their hearts, and therefore does not dwell there: they do not hear the voice of God in His writings and do not see His face in self-revelation there. "Search the scriptures, for you think through them to have eternal life; but they bear witness to Me." Further, Christ reproaches the Jews for their unbelief, saying that He does not need glory from them, since He does not seek glory from people, but grieves for them, because not believing in Him as God's Messenger, they reveal in themselves a lack of love for God the Father, Who sent Him. Since they do not love God, they do not accept Christ, who has come with His commands, but when another, falsely named Messiah comes, with his self-invented teaching, they will accept Him even without any signs.

Since the time of Christ, the Jews have had more than 60 such false messiahs, and the last of them will be the Antichrist, whom the Jews will accept as their expected Messiah. The reason for the unbelief of the Jews is that they seek human glory, and it is not the one who rebukes them, even if he has the right to do so, that pleases them, but the one who glorifies them even without any right to do so. At the end of His speech, the Lord deprives the Jews of the last foundations on which they had built their hopes. He says that none other than Moses, in whom they trust, will be their accuser at the judgment of God. And he will accuse them of not believing in Christ, for he wrote about Him. This refers to both the direct prophecies and promises about Christ in the books of Moses (Gen. 3:15, 12:3, 49:10; Deut. 18:15), and the whole law, which was the shadow of the good things to come in the Kingdom of Christ (Heb. 10:1) and the nurturer (tutor) in Christ (Gal. 3:24).

Picking the ears of grain on the Sabbath

(Matt. 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5).

After this, Jesus left Judea for Galilee. On the way back to Galilee, on one of the Saturdays, which St. Luke calls the Sabbath "the first on the second day of Pascha", that is, the first Saturday after the second day of Pascha. The Lord walked with His disciples through the sown fields. The disciples, feeling hungry, began to pluck the ears of grain, rubbed them between their hands and ate the grains. This was permitted by the law of Moses, which forbade only bringing the sickle into someone else's field (Deut. 23:25). But the Pharisees considered this a violation of the Sabbath rest, not missing an opportunity to reproach the Lord for allowing His disciples to do this. In order to protect His disciples from reproach, the Lord points out to the Pharisees the incident of David, described in the 1st Book of Samuel (chapter 21).

David, fleeing from Saul, came to the priestly city of Nobah and asked the priest Abimelech to give him five loaves or whatever he could find, and he gave him the former showbread, which, according to the law, could only be eaten by priests. The power of the example is that if no one condemned David for eating these loaves of bread in hunger, then the Lord's disciples do not deserve condemnation for the fact that, serving the Lord and sometimes not even having time to eat, caught by hunger on the Sabbath, they violated the commandment of Sabbath rest to a very small extent. Then the Lord reveals the source from which the unjust condemnation of the disciples flowed: this is a false understanding of the requirements of the law of God. If the Pharisees had understood that compassionate love for the suffering is above traditions and customs, they would not have judged the innocent who pluck ears of grain to satisfy their hunger.

Man was not created for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was given to man for his benefit; Therefore man himself, and his preservation from death and exhaustion, is more important than the Sabbath law. And the fact that the Sabbath law is not a prohibition to do anything at all is evident at least from the fact that in the temple on Saturdays the priests slaughter sacrificial animals, skin them, prepare them for sacrifice and burn them. And they, however, are not guilty of breaking the Sabbath rest. And if the servants of the temple are innocent of such a transgression, how much more innocent are the servants of Him who is above the temple, and who is Lord of the Sabbath, who has the power to abolish the Sabbath as He established it.

Healing of the withered hand

(Matt. 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11).