The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. That is why the Jews were out to get Jesus—because he did this kind of thing on the Sabbath.

17 But Jesus defended himself. “My Father is working straight through, even on the Sabbath. So am I.”

18 That really set them off. The Jews were now not only out to expose him; they were out to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was calling God his own Father, putting himself on a level with God. (The Message)

I remember one well-known preacher pointing out that, although the Jews had Jesus crucified on false charges, the real reason they wanted Him dead was because of His overt claims to Divinity. (We are going to see more of these as we go through the fourth gospel). So they had to come up with lying reasons for getting rid of Jesus – ones that would get the attention of Pilate and the Romans.

We must not miss the magnitude – the sheer explosive power – of Jesus claiming to be one with the God of the Jews, the God of the Old Testament. The sanest, and best man who ever lived, said this about Himself, and we must examine His claims and make up our own minds. We surely cannot just ignore them as if they were a matter of little consequence? If they are true, they have huge implications for our lives here, and hereafter.

C.S. Lewis famously said in ‘Mere Christianity’:

”I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.”

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Someone said, ‘The truth will set you free, but first, it may make you angry!’ For many of the Jews in Jesus’ day, it made them angry, and they never got free.