Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
All Commentaries on John 5:18 Go To John 5
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
The mind of the Jews is wound up unto cruelty, and whereby they ought to have been healed, they are the more sick, that they may justly hear, How say ye, WE are wise? For when they ought to have been softened in disposition, transformed by suitable reasoning unto piety, they even devise slaughter against Him Who proves by His Deeds, that He hath in no whit transgressed the Divine Law by healing a man on the sabbath. They weave in with their wrath on account of the sabbath, the truth as a charge of blasphemy, snaring themselves in the meshes of their own transgressions unto wrath indissoluble. For they seemed to be pious in their distress that He being a Man, should say that God was His Father. For they knew not yet that He Who was for our sakes made in the form of a servant, is God the Word, the Life gushing forth from God the Father, that is, the Only-Begotten, to Whom Alone God is rightly and truly inscribed and is Father, but to us by no means so: for we are adopted, mounting up to excellency above nature through the will of Him That honoured us, and gaining the title of gods and sons because of Christ That dwelleth in us through the Holy Ghost. Looking therefore to the Flesh alone, and not acknowledging God Who dwelleth in the Flesh, they endure not His springing up to measure beyond the nature of Man, through His saying that God was His Father (for in saying, My Father, He would with reason introduce this idea) but they deem that He Whose Father God properly is, must be by Nature Equal with Him, in this alone conceiving rightly: for so it is, and no otherwise. Since then the word introduces with it this meaning, they perverting the upright word of truth are more angry.
