=17. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.= The argument is very brief; it is based on the premises that we are to be followers of God as dear children (Ephes. 5:1), that the Father’s work is a pattern for our own working. It gives color to the opinion that the days of creation are long eons or periods; that the seventh day, which God blessed and on which he rested, is the present period in which the mere physical work of creation has given place to the higher work of redemption; thus the Sabbath of God becomes both interpreted and an interpreter to us of what our Sabbath should be. The divine work does not cease; the grass grows, the buds swell, the flowers bloom, the fruits ripen, the rains fall, the winds blow,--but all this is the work of love; over all this work God’s tender mercies brood (Psalm 145:9). The lesson of nature interpreted here by Christ is that the work of love is never a violation of the true Sabbath law. This verse, with Matt. 12:8 and Mark 2:27, give the three canons for the Christian observance of the Sabbath. (1) The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath. It is then a Christian day, belongs to the Christian dispensation, is under the Lordship of Christ and in his kingdom, and is to be kept in that spirit of joyous freedom with which Christ makes free. (2) The Sabbath is made for man. It is therefore man’s day; belongs to all men, Gentile and Jew, poor and rich; a day to be used _for_ man; so that whatever work is necessary to the real abiding welfare of the human race, is not foreign to this day. (3) My Father worketh hitherto. The Father’s work is the example and the law for his children; the work of love, the work for others, the work that has tender mercy for its inspiration and its overseer, is Sabbath work. It is to be our rest-day as it is our heavenly Father’s rest-day, and only so; a prophecy of that eternal rest which will be one of glorious activity: a rest from care, from worldliness, from the common temptations of life, but not a day of mere dull cessation of labor. 18 Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill[172] him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making[173] himself equal with God. [172] ch. 7:19. [173] ch. 10:30, 33; Zech. 13:7; Phil. 2:6.