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Sometimes our attachment to religion and our religious behavior is so strong that we are unable to separate it from the Work of God which heals, rescues, and frees us from such devout, objective behavior. When religion highjacks our life so much that separation from it seems “sinful”, the Work of God may require a “sin” against religion.

The backstory of this verse is that Jesus heals a paralytic who had been seeking healing for thirty-eight years. It was the Sabbath during a feast, and Jesus tells the man to “Pick up his mat and walk.” The healing came in conjunction with his breaking of the Sabbath law and he was walking around clearly violating the religious rule.

“Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. ¹⁶ And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. ¹⁷ But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” ¹⁸ This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:14-18)

In verse 18, the ESV translates this as “breaking the Sabbath” but the word is (lúo-untie, set free, put an end to). The tense is the “imperfect active indicative” which means the word uses the “past tense” augment on the term making it “éluen” with the “present tense” form of the word. This transforms the word from what is immediately taking place to include all that the Father is always doing. In other words, Jesus is always putting an end to, untying, setting free from the religious rule, because the Father is always putting an end to religious rule.

Verse 18 explains the two reasons the religious leaders took offense at him, and what they desired to do about it.

Often when modern Jewish people read texts like this, there is a claim of anti-semitism. That’s actually not true…but at closer look it’s actually anti-fundamentalism. Jesus, as the anointed one of God (Messiah), the “I AM who I AM who saves” (Jeshua) is revealing that the “work of God” is not to create religion(s), but to deconstruct them if they become an idol. A religion is a container, but it isn’t God. If we conflate our religion with God, we make an idol out of it. If we derive power, status, affirmation, acceptance, and identity from religion, we have an idol, and that is when God works to knock down, untie, or put an end to such idols.

The healing of the paralytic is only partially about walking. It mostly has to do with being healed, rescued, saved from the oppression of religion, which claims to offer healing through its system Salvation is “healing” (freedom) in Christ, not conversion to a religion.

This story depicts the work of freeing a man not only from his physical ailment, but his broken frameworks and beliefs which captivated him for thirty-eight years, depicted by the excuses when asked: “Do you want to be healed?” These are the result of cultural and institutional religion which has forsaken him. The work of the Father is freedom from all religions. Within every world religion there are people who go through the motions, living in a dead, objective, religion. There are also those for whom their system of faith offers a structure and proximity for a soul to subjectively experience divine union. Religion isn’t bad, but over-identification with religion is a prison of idolatry

An example might be the practice of meditation in Buddhism or Hinduism, the practice of Zikr in Islam, or Contemplation in Christianity. Each of these practices are more similar than different, and the result upon the heart (inner self) our soul is that humility and love grows for God and others. No person (regardless of their religion) who experiences God in this way will ever become a fundamentalist and seek to have power over another, because humility surrenders all power. The heart is transformed by experiencing God. “God’s work” fundamentally changes us. If our heart is conformed by over-identifying with our particular religion, that will fundamentally change us also, and we’ll see others as deficient, which is leads to hatred.

God looks upon the heart, not upon our perfunctory religious behavior. Never ever forget that. We can be united to God yet far from religion and united to religion yet far from God.

So when Jesus say’s “My Father is working until now and I AM working” Jesus is saying that he has greater proximity to God than religion, and that his work is to heal, bring life, offer freedom, to everyone, even those who are trapped in a religious framework.

The invalid is an archetype of just about every fundamentalist that I’ve ever met who is paralyzed and burdened, and despite people surrounding them , they possess no real help or salvation. The work of God still frees us and heals us so that we can serve our traditions and systems of faith without being over-identified by them.

Later, when Jesus finds the invalid in the crowd still carrying his mat, he says: “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”  His statement can now be understood. Too often pastors say that his “sin” is what caused his paralysis, and that a future sin could bring it back. I’m confident that is not what this means. Jesus is referring to his “sin” of violating the Sabbath law. Jesus is saying: “Now that you are free in heart, and are healed in body, put your mat back down, play by the rules so that religion doesn’t kill you as it wants to kill me.”

The goal is not anti-religion, but freedom from religion. And Jesus does this by deconstructing it until religion no longer holds us captive. Once free people organize around the faith in God that frees them, that organization is called the ecclesia, the gathering, the assembly, the Church, and just as it was when it was started in the New Testament, it is filled with people from every nation, tribe, tongue and religion. Religion thinks peace comes once there is uniformity of belief and practice, but the Body of Christ is where total diversity and complete unity coexist in perfect peace and freedom in God.

This is the work of the Father, that is I AM working. Ask yourself: “How successful is my faith in God apart from this religious apparatus? If all of a sudden I was on a deserted island with ten others, and only had the book of Ecclesiastes, how would my faith change? This helps us see the cultural conventions, and the true work of “I AM working.“