, burst out with a protest, charging him with blasphemy,
saying that God only could forgive sin.

And they were right.

No mere man can forgive sin. Again and again the Scriptures teach us
that forgiveness is with God that he may be feared.

In announcing the man's sins forgiven, Jesus clearly claimed the
prerogative, power and authority, which belong to God.

He claimed this equality by declaring himself to be the Son of God.
To the Jews, "Son of God" was equivalent to "God the Son." It meant
to them, the moment he styled himself by that name, an unqualified
claim to essential equality with the Father. Because of this they
raged against him and would have killed him, crying out that he had
made himself equal with God.

He made this claim in terms which admit of no misunderstanding. He
said:

"I and my Father are one."

When Philip said, "Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us," he
answered and said:

"Hast thou been with me so long time and hast thou not known me,
Philip? From henceforth ye know him and have seen him."

To Philip he had also said:

"I am the way and the truth and the life--no man cometh unto the
Father but by me."

By this statement he deliberately shut out all other men as the
ground and means of approach to God. He declares that God, the
Father, can be found in and through him alone; that he is the
supreme way, the very truth and the very life; not that he knows
some truth and has a measure of life in common with men, but that he
is _the_ truth--the _absolute_ life. Such attitude, such claimed
rights, privileges and powers, belong alone to God.

But he goes beyond this.

He testifies that he has been from all eternity the manifestation of
the very selfhood of the Father. Hear what he says:

"And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the
glory which I had with thee before the world was."

He traces his personality backward beyond the hour when the world
was launched into space, before the stellar systems were created. He
goes beyond time, he takes us into eternity, and in that unbegun and
measureless distance declares with all the calm assurance of
accustomed truthfulness that he had the glory, the visibility, the
outward manifestation and splendor of the Father's own essential
selfhood; that his relation to him was that of one who was from all
eternity his determination, definition and utterance.

Such claims as these are the claims of one who declares himsel