John 5:17

I. The eternal Sonship of Christ.

17. Worketh hitherto By virtue of his oneness with God, Jesus is truly Lord of the Sabbath; and he no more violates the Sabbath by sending the current of vitality through the limbs of this paralytic, than the Father violates the Sabbath by keeping the stars in their courses, or sustaining the generations of men in the flow of life. God, having indeed closed the work of original creation with the creation of man, rested therefrom through a long Sabbath of time, even until now. God’s creative days were each perhaps an age; and this world’s long age may be his Sabbath. But he breaks neither that Sabbath, nor the Sabbath-day that commemorates that repose, by carrying on the ordinary train of nature or redemption. And as he has hitherto worked even through these Sabbaths, so do I work. I create nothing absolutely; but I control, hasten, or even vary, the processes of ordinary nature.

Hitherto From the close of his creative work until now.

I work My secret power in healing this man worked, just as God’s secret power worked in his generation and birth.