What Does John 5:17 Mean?
But Jesus answered them, My Father works until now, and I work.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.THE KEY
The Father’s work reaches “until now,” and Jesus names his own work as part of that living activity.
THE MEANING
The Father is at work up to this very moment, and Jesus is at work in that same present. The verse brings divine action into the reader’s now: life is not sustained by a finished past alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that God’s work belongs only to a finished past: the Father works “hitherto,” and Jesus works now.
THE ROOT
ἐργάζεται
ergazetai
GROWS FROM
ἐργ- (erg-), from ἔργον (ergon)
To do or labor; the activity or deed itself.
“works” in this verse is ergazetai. English can make “work” sound like a bounded task. The Greek form is present tense, and its erg- word family holds both the act of working and the deed produced; “hitherto” brings that activity right up to now. Jesus places his own work alongside the Father’s ongoing work.
ALSO GROWS
ergon: Work, deed, action.
ἔργον
The related noun shows that work includes both the ongoing activity and what that activity does.
synergos: Co-worker, fellow worker.
συνεργός
The shared erg- root lets work carry a sense of joined activity, echoing the Father and Jesus named together here.
energeia: Working, activity, operation.
ἐνέργεια
This branch keeps the focus on active operation, not merely a task that has already been completed.
πατήρ
patēr
GROWS FROM
πατρ-
patr-
Father as source and progenitor.
Greek father-language branches into lineage and homeland, joining origin with belonging. Here, “My Father” names the source of the work Jesus says continues now, holding origin and action together.
ALSO GROWS
patria: Family, lineage.
πατριά
This branch carries fatherhood into the line of people who share an origin.
patris: Homeland, native land.
πατρίς
This branch connects a source to the place and belonging associated with it.
THE PATTERN
The Creator’s work continues as the renewal and sustaining of life.
You send out your breath, and they are created; you renew the face of the ground.For in him we live and move and are; as some of your own makers have said, for we are also his offspring.Who, being the radiance of his weight and the exact stamp of his foundation, carrying all things by the word of his power, when he had made the cleansing of shortcomings, sat down at the right hand of the Greatness on high.THE THREAD
Do you not trust that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak from myself. But the Father who remains in me does his works.Here Jesus makes the relation in John 5:17 explicit: the Father’s work is active in him, and the deeds he does are named as the Father’s. Both verses use the ἐργ- (erg-) word family for working and deeds, joining a shared root with a shared source.
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