For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
In the previous verse Jesus had said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” Notice that Jesus does not refer to God as “the Father” or even “our Father;” He calls God “My Father.” God is working even to this very day and due to His intimate relationship with God, Jesus is doing the same. The Jews did not miss the significance of this statement.
The Jews saw that Jesus was making a claim that God was His Father in a very special sense. We can today claim that God is our Father because we have been adopted by Him, but Jesus was claiming that God was his Father because they had the same nature, much the same way that we are of the same nature as our earthly dads. We each have half of our father’s genetic make-up and must of necessity be like him. In other words, we are equal to our earthly dads in nature and Jesus is likewise equal to God the Father in His nature. Jesus was saying that He was divine and the Jews understood exactly what He meant. This is one of the few things they were right about. To them, however, He now became a blasphemer in addition to a Sabbath-breaker, so from now on they sought to kill Him. #John 7:19, 25; 8:37, 59
Joh 7:19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”
Joh 7:25 At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill?
Joh 8:37 I know you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word.
Joh 8:59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
There was, of course, another possibility here — that Jesus was telling the truth and He was indeed divine. The incredible healing He had just performed was a witness to that. The Jews, however, were totally unable to accept this possibility. When man’s mind is confronted with God’s truth, it always comes to wrong conclusions. It is impossible for the fleshly mind to accept spiritual truths on its own. We must take heed ourselves to not make the mistake of the Jewish leaders and to, instead, make our decisions from the right source.
Ro 8:7 (AV) Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.