Did Jesus claim equality with God?

"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." John 5:18

Often, you hear people say that Jesus never said that He is God, but the Jews of His day believed differently. On a certain Sabbath day, Jesus healed a man and asked him to take up his bed and go home, and the Jews accused Him of breaking the Sabbath because He healed a man on the Sabbath day. In response, Jesus told them, "...My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." John 5:17. How did the Jews respond to His answer? They accused Him of blasphemy, saying that in saying that God was His Father, He was making Himself equal to God. They understood something that modern readers don't know, it is that any claim of being the Son of God, was a claim of equality with God.

Elsewhere in John 10, Jesus told the Jews that He and the Father are one, and they took up stones to throw at Him. When Jesus said that God is His Father, He was clearly saying to them that He is equal with God in nature, though the Father is greater than Him in authority. In this regard, He said, the Father that sent Me is greater than Me. In everything that Jesus said and did, He never left those hearing and seeing Him in doubt that He meant He was the Son of God. Indeed, it was upon this claim that the elders of Israel condemned Him, saying that He blasphemed because when they asked Him if He was the Son of God, His answer was in the affirmative.

Did Jesus ever say, "I am God"? Not in those exact words, but in everything that He said about Himself, His audience knew that He said that He was God, and on each of such occasions, they tried to kill Him. For example, when He said, "Before Abraham was, I Am", they took it to be a claim of divinity, and their response was the charge of blasphemy. 

The Jesus that came to save humanity from sin, by dying on the cross, is 100% God and 100% man. Only by this could He be a perfect mediator between God and man. This is the Jesus that saves, and yes, He made claims that could only be intelligently understood as meaning that He was God. Any Jesus less than God cannot save from sin, and it is futile trusting such a one for salvation.

Toni