influence" us in the first place : but still we are never to forget our liability to fall ; since it is expressly said, " Be not high- minded, but fear ;" and, " Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." In a word, " the grace of God that bringeth salvation to us, teaches us to deny sin of every kind, and to live righteously, soberly, and godly in this present world :" and therefore, if, like this impotent man, we have received healing of the Lord, let us glorify him by a life of open, resolute, and unreserved obedience. And if the world raise a clamour against us, let it suffice us to reply, ' We are following the commands of our heavenly Benefactor.']
Christ's equality with the father.
John v. 17, 18. Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I ivork. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
THE whole Christian world is much indebted to the zeal of the blind, and bigoted, and persecuting Jews in our Lord's day ; since they elicited many important truths which might not otherwise have been brought to light. For instance, when they ac- cused our blessed Lord of violating the Sabbath-day, they led him to mention with approbation David's eating of the shew-bread in a case of extreme neces- sity (an act which we could not otherwise have ven- tured to justify) ; and to expound as a general vindication of such conduct, that declaration of the prophet, " I will have mercy, and not sacrifice3." Here a similar accusation leads him to vindicate his own conduct on still higher principles ; namely, his own equality with God the Father, and his right to dispense with laws instituted only for the benefit of man. True, this brought upon him still severer cen- sure from his opponents, who judged him worthy of death for so arrogant and impious a claim. But they should have seen, from the miracle which he wrought,
a Matt. xii. 2—7.
1625.] Christ's equality with the father. 3H5
that he was fully authorized to do what he had done, and that he was no other person than he professed himself to be.
To open this subject to you, I will shew, I. How far the Jews were right in their interpretation of our Lord's words —
The expression which our Lord had used was, doubtless, exceeding strong13 —
[He called God his Father, evidently in a more emphatic and appropriate sense than any mere man could presume to do. The Jews at large regarded " God as their Father0:" but no one had ever dared to arrogate to himself so near and peculiar a relation to God as our Lord did on this occasion. The very argument he used shewed in what sense he intended his words to be taken: " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.1' My Father continues all his works of providence on the Sabbath- days, as well as on any other day: and I, by reason of my relation to him, possess the same right, and am free therefore from all imputation of blame in exercising it. This, I say, is the force of our Saviour's words ; and if they be not so under- stood, they afford no vindication of himself whatever : and]
The Jews were right in their interpretation of them —
[They marked the emphatic manner in which Jesus had claimed that high and peculiar relation to the Fatherd: they marked also the force of the argument founded on that relation: and they justly said, that he did arrogate to himself equality with God.
But they were wrong, exceeding wrong, in so hastily judging him a blasphemei\ They, if they could not believe his words, had a vast abundance of works from which to judge, and which bore ample testimony to the truth of his assertions6. In their hasty judgment, then, they were wrong; but in their interpre- tation of his words they were right : for our blessed Lord, instead of correcting their views as erroneous, confirmed them all as just and true. He proceeded to declare, that neither his Father nor himself acted apart from the other : that, on the contrary, there was a perfect unity of mind, and will, and pur- pose, and operation between them; nothing being done by the Father, but it was done by the Son likewise ; that all men might honour the Son even as they honoured the Father ; and