For this cause therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 18. That God was his Father, [4] making himself equal to God. In divers places of the Old Testament, God is called the Father of the Israelites, and they his children: but here, and on several other occasions, the Jews very well saw, that he called God his Father in a quite different sense from that in which he could be said to be their Father; that his words made him equal to God, and that he made himself God. See John 10:33. John 19:7. Luke 22:70. and so forth And therefore Saint Augustine says on this verse: (Trac. xvii in Joan.) Behold the Jews understand what the Arians do not. Witham.