{"id":4742,"date":"2013-11-19T00:05:59","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T08:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=4742"},"modified":"2013-11-19T17:29:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T01:29:31","slug":"4742","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2013\/11\/19\/4742\/","title":{"rendered":"Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Then Jesus said to him, \u201cGet up! Pick up your mat and walk.\u201d 9\u00a0At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. <\/p>\n

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10\u00a0and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, \u201cIt is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.\u201d <\/p>\n

But he replied, \u201cThe man who made me well said to me, \u2018Pick up your mat and walk.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

So they asked him, \u201cWho is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?\u201d <\/p>\n

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. <\/p>\n

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, \u201cSee, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.\u201d 15\u00a0The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well. <\/p>\n

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, \u201cMy Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.\u201d <\/p>\n

For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. <\/p>\n

Jesus gave them this answer: \u201cVery truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21\u00a0For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. (John 5:8-23)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tA diplomat is described as someone who can tell you to go to Hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip. Jesus was no diplomat. When the crowd got angry with him, he just poured more gasoline on the fire. Jesus justified his service for humanity on the Sabbath by pointing out that his Father didn\u2019t take the day off. The already angry crowd grew angrier still. Not only was Jesus a Sabbath-breaker, now he was blaspheming.<\/p>\n

\tHow so? By calling God his Father, they understood that Jesus had claimed to be God. Why? Because the son of a man is, like his father, a man. But since there is but one God, God\u2019s Son must simply be God.<\/p>\n

\tThe crowd did not like that at all, but Jesus didn\u2019t back down. He hammered the point home. His critics were right: he was claiming equality with God. Everything Jesus knew, everything he did, he\u2019d gotten from his Father. He also told them that if they didn\u2019t accept him as God then they were the ones guilty of the blasphemy.<\/p>\n

\tJesus was not concerned with making himself likable. He was only concerned with making sure people understood what he meant, even if they didn\u2019t like it. It\u2019s not always possible, or even a good idea, to calm your critics.<\/p>\n

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Then Jesus said to him, \u201cGet up! Pick up your mat and walk.\u201d 9\u00a0At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10\u00a0and so the Jewish … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4742"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4745,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742\/revisions\/4745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}