God was his Father,— Our Lord's vindication offended the Jews exceedingly, as he claimed a peculiar, proper, and most high relation to God the Father, and, by asserting that he acted like God, set himself on a level with God. The original πατερα ιδιον, is emphatical, and should be rendered his own Father;—his Father in a peculiar manner, as Heylin reads it. The whole nation of the Jews thought God to be their Father, ch. John 8:41. They could not therefore have accounted it blasphemy in Christ, to use the same phrase, had they not interpreted it in so high and appropriating a sense.
Related Commentaries of John 5:18
John 5:18
18 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.