Trinity. Yet here we have our Lord handling the subject of His own Person, and, behold ! we cannot follow Him. We seem only to touch His meaning with the tip of our fingers.
We learn, for one thing, from the verses before us, that there are some works which it is lawful to do on the Sabbath day.
The Jews, as on many other occasions, found fault be- cause Jesus healed a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years, on the Sabbath. They charged our Lord with a breach of the fourth commandment.
Our Lord's reply to the Jews is very remarkable. " My Father," he says, " worketh hitherto, and I also work." It is as though He said : — " Though my Father rested on the seventh day from His work of creation, He has never rested for a moment from His providential government of the world, and from His merciful work of supplying the daily wants of all His creatures. Were He to rest from such work, the whole frame of nature would stand still. And I also work works of mercy on the Sabbath day. I do not break the fourth commandment when I heal the sick, any more than my Father breaks it when He causes the sun to rise and the grass to grow on the Sabbath."
We must distinctly understand, that neither here nor elsewhere does the Lord Jesus overthrow the obligation of the fourth commandment. Neither here nor elsewhere is there a word to justify the vague assertions of some modern teachers, that " Christians ought not to keep a Sabbath," and that it is " a Jewish institution which has passed away." The utmost that our Lord does, is to place the claims of the Sabbath on the right foundation. He clears the day of rest from the false and superstitious teaching of the Jews, about the right way of observing it. He shows us clearly that works of necessity and works of mercy are no breach of the fourth commandment.