Untitled Sermon (2)

The Healing of a Lame Man (John 5:1–9a)

Jesus was in Jerusalem attending “a feast of the Jews,” probably a Passover (John 5:1). In the city there was a pool called Bethesda, house of mercy. It was located near “the place of the sheep” or sheep gate. It had “five porches” or colonnaded areas (v. 2). Since its waters moved periodically, it probably was fed by an underground spring that flowed intermittently (verse 4 is not in the best texts), something like Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. The Jews believed that when the water stirred, the first person to get into the pool would be healed. Therefore, the place was crowded with the sick, lame, and blind.

For years, some scholars denied that such a pool existed. They held that John’s Gospel was written in the second century by an Elder John from Ephesus. According to them he had only a tourist’s knowledge of Palestine, that the Gospel was only a theological treatise, and that its historical references were not to be trusted.

However, in recent years this site has been excavated by archaeologists. They found the pool exactly where John says that it was. And it has the foundations for five colonnaded areas, one on each of the four sides and one down the middle. This shows that rather than a tourist’s knowledge, the author was familiar with the topography of Jerusalem prior to its destruction by the Romans in A.D. 70. Also, it strengthens the traditional authorship by the apostle John and a date probably A.D. 80–90.

Among those about the pool was a man who had been lame for thirty-eight years. He was probably brought there daily by his family or by friends. Yet in spite of this he was still lame. Jesus asked him, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (v. 6). Of course, he wanted to be healed. That was why he was there. Jesus’ question was designed to get his attention.

The man responded by explaining that due to his condition, with no one to help him, someone else always got into the pool ahead of him (v. 7). Notice that Jesus did not offer to help him at the next stirring of the waters. He was not taken in by this superstition. Instead, He told the man immediately to “rise, take up thy bed [pallet], and walk” (v. 8). Literally the phrase means, “Immediately rise, and immediately take up your pallet, and go on walking about.” This picture comes out in the verb tenses. The same is true in verse 9. The healing and taking up of his pallet were immediate acts. “Walk” expresses the healed man’s progress as he went on walking about.

If the man had refused to obey Jesus’ words, he would have remained a cripple. When he obeyed Him, he found strength in his leg muscles that enabled him to do as Jesus said. His was no gradual healing. It was a miracle. In fact, this is one of seven “signs” or miracles about which John built his Gospel. It was no mere psychological reaction in the man’s mind. It was a miracle of strength in his feet and legs.

Some people deny miracles as being contrary to natural law. Perhaps we need a working definition of miracle. A miracle is an act of God, contrary to natural law as human beings understand it but not contrary to natural law as God understands it, and which He performs in accord with His benevolent will and redemptive purpose.

Humanity knows some of God’s natural laws, but not all of them. It has been my privilege to live during the greatest period of change in the history of the world. Things that are regarded as commonplace today would have been called miracles when I was born. Examples of this are practically endless. Take, for example, the fields of electronics, medicine, and travel.

In the late 1880s, the head of the patent office in Washington resigned. He felt there was no future in his job. He said that everything that could be invented had been invented. How silly these words sound today! He stood on the threshold of history’s greatest period of invention, and he did not know it.

We speak of research, but perhaps we should speak of revelation. Laws known to God from the beginning He reveals to us as He chooses. Who can say what laws of higher dimension still are known to God and of which we, as yet, are ignorant?

I am not denying the miracle. To the contrary, I am pointing out that there is no logical ground on which to question it. If human beings can do what they have done, who is to question what God can do? Once we fully accept the opening words of the Bible—“In the beginning God”—all else in the Bible comes easy. Instead of questioning Jesus’ power to heal this man, knowing Him, we would have been surprised if He had not healed him.

The Problem of the Sabbath (John 5:9b–18)

John 5:9 closes thus: “on the same day was the sabbath.” This was no afterthought on John’s part. Rather it is the heart of the story.

“The Jews” (v. 10) is used by John to refer to Jesus’ opponents. This man, with his pallet on his shoulder, was joyfully walking about—probably in the temple area. Some members of the Sanhedrin, probably Pharisees, accosted him. They said, “It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed” (v. 10). By whose law? Certainly the Fourth Commandment made no such fine distinction (Ex. 20:8–10). The law they referred to was one of hundreds of rules laid down by the rabbis as to what one could or could not do on the Sabbath. One law said that people could not bear a burden on that day. A burden was defined as anything weighing more than two figs.

The Jews did not deny that a miracle had taken place. Perhaps the lame man was a familiar figure. Now he was walking about, bearing the pallet which for so long had borne him. The problem was that he had been healed and was bearing his pallet on the Sabbath Day. None of these Jews congratulated the man on being healed. Apparently that was not important to them. Their tremendous problem was the preservation of their sacred day.

In order to understand this, we must consider the place of the Sabbath in Judaism. Like the Jews, other religions had their temples, scriptures, and traditions. Only Judaism had the Sabbath. So they were especially sensitive at that point.

A multitude of rules had been compiled to regulate life on the Sabbath Day. For instance, a Sabbath Day’s journey was limited to a little less than three-fourths of a mile. But the rabbis defined one’s home as where one had shelter and took meals. So if a rabbi planned to take a trip of five miles on the Sabbath, he arranged beforehand to have little brush arbors built at intervals along the way, with a piece of bread and a small portion of wine at each place. Then on the Sabbath he would travel the allowed distance, sit under the arbor, take a bite of bread, and a drink of wine. Then he would go to the next arbor, and so on to the end of his journey.

Also the rabbis debated whether or not one should eat an egg laid on the Sabbath because the hen worked. Dragging a stick on the ground on that day was forbidden—that was plowing. A woman was not to look into a mirror on the Sabbath lest she see a gray hair and pull it out; that was shearing. Debates were held on many puzzling questions. For instance, suppose a man were riding home at sunset on Friday, the beginning of the Sabbath. Should he remove the saddle from his donkey? That constituted work. Should he leave the saddle on the donkey? Then the donkey worked. Should a man with a sore throat gargle with oil? It was agreed that this was forbidden. But he could drink oil as food. If in the process it helped his throat, that was purely incidental. Jesus never violated the Fourth Commandment, but it is understandable that He ignored such silly rules.

However, John had a purpose in noting that Jesus healed a lame man on the Sabbath Day. The Jewish leaders had opposed Jesus from the beginning (John 2:18–21). Having no particular issue, they opposed Him on general principles. But now they had an issue—Jesus’ ignoring their Sabbath rules—and they played it to the hilt. “Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day” (v. 16).

When they faced Jesus with the matter, He justified His act by saying, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (v. 17). Literally He said, “My Father keeps on working, and I keep on working.” “Sabbath” means “rest.” The Sabbath Day commemorated God’s rest from creating. He did not rest because He was tired but because He had finished His creative work. And He continues to work in providential care and redemption. He does not cease from either of these on the Sabbath Day.

Like the Father, Jesus the Son keeps on doing His work regardless of the day. Literally, Jesus said, “I myself [like the Father] keep on working.” In fact, in John 5:19–38 Jesus showed that He is so identified with the Father that the work of One is the work of the other.

So the Jews sought all the more to kill Jesus not only because He healed on the Sabbath but because He made Himself “equal with God” (v. 18). The charge was true, of course, but not as these Jews intended. Jesus not only was equal with God, He was God Himself in flesh doing the works of God.

The truth is that in their observance of the Sabbath, the Jews had practically made it a substitute for God. As seen in the case at hand, they wanted to make God Himself inoperative on that day. Viewing their attitude toward the Sabbath, we find ourselves in sympathy with the little boy in the following story.

On Sunday the boy was made to dress up for attending Sunday School and church service. He was uncomfortable in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Arriving back home he put on his shirt and overalls. Happy as a bird released from its cage, the boy whistled as he hopped and skipped through the house. In a stern voice the father said, “Son, stop whistling. This is the Lord’s Day!” Crestfallen, the boy wandered out to the barn lot. There he saw the family mule. Its head was down, its eyes were half-closed, its ears were flopped down, and its lower lip sagged. As J. D. Grey was fond of saying, “Its head was long enough to eat ice cream out of a churn.” Seeing this spectacle, the boy put his arms around the mule’s head and said, “Poor old mule! You must belong to Daddy’s church too!”

If the Jews erred in one direction concerning the Sabbath, many today do the same in the opposite direction. We need a balance between the two.

The Lord of the Sabbath

It was on another Sabbath Day that Jesus and His disciples were returning to Galilee following the visit to Jerusalem recorded in John 5 (see Matt. 12:1–8; Mark 2:23–28; Luke 6:1–5). They were passing through a grain field that was beginning to ripen. Farmers left paths in their fields over which travelers passed. The disciples were hungry, so they were plucking heads of grain, rubbing away the chaff, and eating the grain. According to Deuteronomy 23:25 this was permissible so long as they did not use a sickle to cut the grain (Matt. 12:1).

They were accompanied by some Pharisees who apparently had been sent to spy on Jesus. Seeing what the disciples were doing, they said to Jesus, “Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day” (v. 2). Any other day of the week it would have been lawful, but not on the Sabbath.

This is another example of their rigid rules governing observance of the Sabbath. The rabbis defined plucking heads of grain as reaping, rubbing them in their hands as threshing, and blowing away the chaff was winnowing. The entire process involved preparation of food.

In Haifa, Israel, Frances and I went to the dining room one morning for an early breakfast. Our party had paid extra in order to have an American breakfast, such as bacon and eggs. Upon entering the dining room we found a buffet table filled with cold food such as fish, boiled eggs, and the like. I reminded the waiter of the special arrangement for our party. But he said that it was impossible. Somewhat put out, I asked why. He said, “It is the Sabbath.” We had forgotten that it was Saturday. Hearing that, this Baptist preacher and his wife meekly ate a cold breakfast.

In reply to the Jews, Jesus cited two Old Testament passages. He reminded the Pharisees of the event when David and his men ate the shewbread in the tabernacle, bread that by law was eventually to be eaten by the priests (1 Sam. 21:6). Also He recalled how the priests worked on the Sabbath in connection with worship (Num. 28:9–10). Too, He quoted Hosea 6:6, “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice.” In each case He justified the action of His disciples. In 12:11–12, Matthew related that on the following Sabbath in the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus healed a man with a withered hand. Before He did it, the Pharisees asked if it was lawful “to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him” (12:10). In reply, He asked them a question, “What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days” (vv. 11–12).

Looking back at Matthew 12:8, Jesus said, “For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.” Not the Pharisees, the rabbis, or the Sanhedrin were Lord of the Sabbath. Incidentally, since Jesus is Jehovah in flesh, one may see in this claim the idea that the Son as God gave the Fourth Commandment in the first place. In any case, He made clear the divine intent for this Commandment.

By way of summary, in word and example Jesus taught three classes of acts are permissible on the Sabbath: deeds of necessity, deeds of worship, and deeds of mercy. Any deed that fits any one of these categories has Jesus’ approval on the Sabbath Day.

One thing more needs to be said at this point. According to Mark 2:27, just before declaring Himself as Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”

The Jewish religious leaders said that people were made to keep the Sabbath. To them, the person did not count; they made the institution more important than the person. We have seen this in every cited incident. On the other hand, God made the Sabbath for humanity. What God had given to be a blessing, they had made a blight and a burden. But let it be hastily added, this is no scriptural ground for a wide-open Sunday! Such is as great an abuse of the divine intent as the practice of the Jews in Jesus’ day.

Does someone ask, “What does the Jewish Sabbath have to do with me? I am a Christian!” Well, for one thing, what the Bible says about keeping the Sabbath applies to the day set apart for Christian worship. We have noted that “sabbath” means “rest.” It has nothing to do with the number of the day. The Old Testament Sabbath commemorated God’s rest after He had finished His creative work. In the New Testament, the Christians observed “the first day of the week” to celebrate our Lord’s resurrection, or the finish of God’s work of redemption. The word Sunday is not a New Testament word. It just happens to be the first day of the Roman calendar week. One time it is called the “Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10). Pagans observed the first day of each month as Emperor’s Day. In defiance of emperor worship, Christians called the first day of the week the Lord’s Day. In the New Testament, the day on which Christians as such joined in public worship is always the first day of the week (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2).

Like the Sabbath, this day was made for humanity. We need one day out of seven in which to recuperate both physically and spiritually.

Many years ago I read about an experiment made by a railroad company. They purchased two locomotives that were exactly alike. One was used constantly, week after week and year after year. The boiler fires were never extinguished. The other was used six days each week. Then the boiler fires were extinguished. It was allowed to rest on the seventh day. The metal cooled and/or reset itself. It was found that the latter locomot1

1 Herschel H. Hobbs, Basic Bible Sermons on John, Basic Bible Sermons Series (Broadman Press, 1990), 33–41.

1. jesus’ healing of a paralytic (5:1–15).

5:1. Jesus … later returned to Jerusalem for a feast. The feast is not named (some mss. read “the feast”), but it may have been the Passover. Jesus attended three other Passovers (2:23; 6:4; 11:55). John probably intended only to give a reason why Jesus was in Jerusalem.

5:2. To the north of the temple area was a pool … called Bethesda (see the map showing the pool’s location). The excavations of a pool near the Sheep Gate have uncovered five porticoes or covered colonnades, confirming the accuracy of the description given here in the Fourth Gospel. The pool was actually two pools next to each other.

5:3a. The great number of disabled people pictures the sad spiritual plight of the world.

5:3b–4. The earliest manuscripts omit these words which appear to be a late insertion to explain why the pool water was “stirred” (v. 7). People believed that an angel came and stirred it. According to local tradition, the first one in the water would be healed. But the Bible nowhere teaches this kind of superstition, a situation which would be a most cruel contest for many ill people. No extant Greek manuscript before a.d. 400 contains these words.

5:5. Jesus picked a certain invalid on a Sabbath Day (v. 9) at a feast time, a man who had been afflicted for 38 years. John did not say what kind of physical problem he had or if he was an invalid from birth. In any case his condition was hopeless.

5:6. The word learned does not mean that Jesus received facts from others. It means that He perceived the situation by His knowledge (the Gr. is gnous, “knowing”; cf. 1:48; 2:24–25; 4:18). Jesus’ seemingly strange question, Do you want to get well? was designed to focus the man’s attention on Him, to stimulate his will, and to raise his hopes. In the spiritual realm man’s great problem is that either he does not recognize he is sick (cf. Isa. 1:5–6; Luke 5:31) or he does not want to be cured. People are often happy, for a while at least, in their sins.

5:7. The man replied that he lacked not the desire but the means to be healed. Without strength and without friends, he could not be helped when the pool water was stirred. He had tried but without success.

5:8. Jesus then said … Get up! Pick up your mat and walk. His command carried with it the required enablement. As with dead Lazarus (11:43), Jesus’ word accomplished His will. This illustrates conversion. When people obey His command to believe, God works in and through His Word.

5:9–10. God’s supernatural power was evident in the man’s instantaneous cure. He picked up his mat and walked. Muscles long atrophied were completely restored. Isaiah prophesied that in the days of the Messiah the lame would “leap like a deer” (Isa. 35:1–7). Here in Jerusalem was a public sign that the Messiah had come.

The Sabbath was a central issue in the conflicts between Jesus and His opponents (cf. Mark 2:23; 3:4). The Mosaic Law required that work cease on the seventh day. Additional laws were added by later Jewish religious authorities, which became very complicated and burdensome. These human traditions often obscured the divine intention in God’s Law. “The Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27) so that he could have rest and a time for worship and joy. The Jews’ rigid tradition (not the Old Testament) taught that if anyone carried anything from a public place to a private place on the Sabbath intentionally, he deserved death by stoning. In this case the man who was healed was in danger of losing his life.

5:11. The healed man realized this difficulty and tried to evade any responsibility for violating tradition by saying he was just following orders.

5:12–13. The authorities were naturally interested in the identity of this fellow who told the invalid to violate their rules. But the man … had no knowledge of Jesus. This seems to be a case in which healing was done in the absence of faith. The invalid was chosen by Jesus as an act of grace because of his need and also to display God’s glory in him. Jesus then had slipped away into the crowd (cf. 8:59; 10:39; 12:35), so momentarily He was unknown.

5:14–15. Jesus later found the healed man in the temple area. This implied that Jesus sought him out in order to speak to him. The ex-paralytic seemed to have no gratitude to Jesus: his conduct put him in a bad light. Jesus’ warning (Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you) does not mean that his paralysis was caused by any specific sin (cf. 9:3), though all disease and death come ultimately from sin. The warning was that his tragic life of 38 years as an invalid was no comparison to the doom of hell. Jesus is interested not merely in healing a person’s body. Far more important is the healing of his soul from sin.

2. the discourse (5:16–47).

5:16. Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath. In addition to the case of the invalid’s healing (5:1–15), John later recorded the cure of a blind man on the Sabbath (chap. 9). The grain-picking (Mark 2:23–28), the healing of a shriveled hand (Mark 3:1–5), curing a woman who had been crippled for 18 years (Luke 13:10–17), and healing a man with dropsy (Luke 14:1–6)—all these took place on the Sabbath. As seen in these passages, Jesus’ theology or philosophy of the Sabbath differed from that of His opponents. His opponents in the controversy were progressively humiliated while the crowds favored Him. The opponents’ response was to persecute Jesus by opposing Him and trying to kill Him (John 5:16, 18; 7:19, 25).

5:17. God rested on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2–3) from His work of Creation. But Jesus pointed to the continuous work of God as a justification for His Sabbath activity. God sustains the universe, begets life, and visits judgments. It is not wrong for His Son to do works of grace and mercy on the Sabbath. The words My Father should be noted. Jesus did not say “your Father” or even “our Father.” His opponents did not miss His claim to Diety.1

1 Edwin A. Blum, “John,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 288–290.

Jn 5:1–47. The Impotent Man Healed—Discourse Occasioned by the Persecution Arising Thereupon.

1. a feast of the Jews—What feast? No question has more divided the Harmonists of the Gospels, and the duration of our Lord’s ministry may be said to hinge on it. For if, as the majority have thought (until of late years) it was a Passover, His ministry lasted three and a half years; if not, probably a year less. Those who are dissatisfied with the Passover-view all differ among themselves what other feast it was, and some of the most acute think there are no grounds for deciding. In our judgment the evidence is in favor of its being a Passover, but the reasons cannot be stated here.

2, 3. sheep market—The supplement should be (as in Margin) “sheep [gate],” mentioned in Ne 3:1, 32.

Bethesda—that is, “house (place) of mercy,” from the cures wrought there.

five porches—for shelter to the patients.

3. impotent—infirm.

4. an angel, &c.—This miracle differed in two points from all other miracles recorded in Scripture: (1) It was not one, but a succession of miracles periodically wrought: (2) As it was only wrought “when the waters were troubled,” so only upon one patient at a time, and that the patient “who first stepped in after the troubling of the waters.” But this only the more undeniably fixed its miraculous character. We have heard of many waters having a medicinal virtue; but what water was ever known to cure instantaneously a single disease? And who ever heard of any water curing all, even the most diverse diseases—“blind, halt, withered”—alike? Above all, who ever heard of such a thing being done “only at a certain season,” and most singularly of all, doing it only to the first person who stepped in after the moving of the waters? Any of these peculiarities—much more all taken together—must have proclaimed the supernatural character of the cures wrought. (If the text here be genuine, there can be no doubt of the miracle, as there were multitudes living when this Gospel was published who, from their own knowledge of Jerusalem, could have exposed the falsehood of the Evangelist, if no such cure had been known there. The want of Jn 5:4 and part of Jn 5:3 in some good manuscripts, and the use of some unusual words in the passage, are more easily accounted for than the evidence in their favor if they were not originally in the text. Indeed Jn 5:7 is unintelligible without Jn 5:4. The internal evidence brought against it is merely the unlikelihood of such a miracle—a principle which will carry us a great deal farther if we allow it to weigh against positive evidence).

5. thirty and eight years—but not all that time at the pool. This was probably the most pitiable of all the cases, and therefore selected.

6. saw him lie, and knew, &c.—As He doubtless visited the spot just to perform this cure, so He knows where to find His patient, and the whole previous history of his case (Jn 2:25).

Wilt thou be made whole?—Could anyone doubt that a sick man would like to be made whole, or that the patients came thither, and this man had returned again and again, just in hope of a cure? But our Lord asked the question. (1) To fasten attention upon Himself; (2) By making him detail his case to deepen in him the feeling of entire helplessness; (3) By so singular a question to beget in his desponding heart the hope of a cure. (Compare Mk 10:51).

7. Sir, I have no man, &c.—Instead of saying he wished to be cured, he just tells with piteous simplicity how fruitless had been all his efforts to obtain it, and how helpless and all but hopeless he was. Yet not quite. For here he is at the pool, waiting on. It seemed of no use; nay, only tantalizing,

while I am coming, another steppeth down before me—the fruit was snatched from his lips. Yet he will not go away. He may get nothing by staying, he may drop into his grave ere he get into the pool; but by going from the appointed, divine way of healing, he can get nothing. Wait therefore he will, wait he does, and when Christ comes to heal him, lo! he is waiting his turn. What an attitude for a sinner at Mercy’s gate! The man’s hopes seemed low enough ere Christ came to him. He might have said, just before “Jesus passed by that way,” “This is no use; I shall never get in; let me die at home.” Then all had been lost. But he held on, and his perseverance was rewarded with a glorious cure. Probably some rays of hope darted into his heart as he told his tale before those Eyes whose glance measured his whole case. But the word of command consummates his preparation to receive the cure, and instantaneously works it.

8. Rise, take up thy bed, &c.—“Immediately” he did so. “He spake and it was done.” The slinging of his portable couch over his shoulders was designed to show the perfection of the cure.

9. the same day was the sabbath—Beyond all doubt this was intentional, as in so many other healings, in order that when opposition arose on this account men might be compelled to listen to His claims and His teaching.

10. The Jews—that is, those in authority. (See on Jn 1:19.)

it is not lawful to carry thy bed—a glorious testimony to the cure, as instantaneous and complete, from the lips of the most prejudiced! (And what a contrast does it, as all our Lord’s miracles, present to the bungling miracles of the Church of Rome!) In ordinary circumstances, the rulers had the law on their side (Ne 13:15; Je 17:21). But when the man referred them to “Him that had made him whole” (Jn 5:11) as his authority, the argument was resistless. Yet they ingeniously parried the thrust, asking him, not who had “made him whole”—that would have condemned themselves and defeated their purpose—but who had bidden him “take up his bed and walk,” in other words, who had dared to order a breach of the sabbath? It is time we were looking after Him—thus hoping to shake the man’s faith in his Healer.

13. he that was healed wist not, &c.—That some one, with unparalleled generosity, tenderness and power, had done it, the man knew well enough: but as he had never heard of Him before, so he disappeared too quickly for any inquiries.

conveyed himself away—slipped out of the crowd that had gathered, to avoid both hasty popularity and precipitate hatred (Mt 12:14–19).

14. findeth him in the temple—saying, perhaps, “I will go into Thy house with burnt offerings, I will pay my vows which my lips have uttered and my mouth hath spoken when I was in trouble” (Ps 66:13, 14). Jesus, there Himself for His own ends, “findeth him there”—not all accidentally, be assured.

sin no more, &c.—a glimpse this of the reckless life he had probably led before his thirty-eight years’ infirmity had come upon him, and which not improbably had brought on, in the just judgment of God, his chronic complaint. Fearful illustration this of “the severity of God,” but glorious manifestation of our Lord’s insight into “what was in man.”

15. The man departed, and told, &c.—little thinking how unwelcome his grateful and eager testimony would be. “The darkness received not the light which was pouring its rays upon it” (Jn 1:5, 11) [Olshausen].

16. because he had done these things on the sabbath day—What to these hypocritical religionists was the doing of the most glorious and beneficent miracles, compared with the atrocity of doing them on the sabbath day! Having given them this handle, on purpose to raise the first public controversy with them, and thus open a fitting opportunity of laying His claims before them, He rises at once to the whole height of them, in a statement which for grandeur and terseness exceeds almost anything that ever afterwards fell from Him, at least to His enemies.

17, 18. My Father worketh hitherto and I work—The “I” is emphatic; “The creative and conservative activity of My Father has known no sabbath-cessation from the beginning until now, and that is the law of My working.”

18. God was his Father—literally, “His own [or peculiar] Father,” (as in Ro 8:32). The addition is their own, but a very proper one.

making himself equal with God—rightly gathering this to be His meaning, not from the mere words “My Father,” but from His claim of right to act as His Father did in the like high sphere, and by the same law of ceaseless activity in that sphere. And as, instead of instantly disclaiming any such meaning—as He must have done if it was false—He positively sets His seal to it in the following verses, merely explaining how consistent such claim was with the prerogatives of His Father, it is beyond all doubt that we have here an assumption of peculiar personal Sonship, or participation in the Father’s essential nature.1

1 Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 135–136.

Verses 1–9

We are all by nature impotent folk in spiritual things, blind, halt, and withered; but full provision is made for our cure, if we attend to it. An angel went down, and troubled the water; and what disease soever it was, this water cured it, but only he that first stepped in had benefit. This teaches us to be careful, that we let not a season slip which may never return. The man had lost the use of his limbs thirty-eight years. Shall we, who perhaps for many years have scarcely known what it has been to be a day sick, complain of one wearisome night, when many others, better than we, have scarcely known what it has been to be a day well? Christ singled this one out from the rest. Those long in affliction, may comfort themselves that God keeps account how long. Observe, this man speaks of the unkindness of those about him, without any peevish reflections. As we should be thankful, so we should be patient. Our Lord Jesus cures him, though he neither asked nor thought of it. Arise, and walk. God’s command, Turn and live; Make ye a new heart; no more supposes power in us without the grace of God, his distinguishing grace, than this command supposed such power in the impotent man: it was by the power of Christ, and he must have all the glory. What a joyful surprise to the poor cripple, to find himself of a sudden so easy, so strong, so able to help himself! The proof of spiritual cure, is our rising and walking. Has Christ healed our spiritual diseases, let us go wherever he sends us, and take up whatever he lays upon us; and walk before him.

Verses 10–16

Those eased of the punishment of sin, are in danger of returning to sin, when the terror and restraint are over, unless Divine grace dries up the fountain. The misery believers are made whole from, warns us to sin no more, having felt the smart of sin. This is the voice of every providence, Go, and sin no more. Christ saw it necessary to give this caution; for it is common for people, when sick, to promise much; when newly recovered, to perform only something; but after awhile to forget all. Christ spoke of the wrath to come, which is beyond compare worse than the many hours, nay, weeks and years of pain, some wicked men have to suffer in consequence of their unlawful indulgences. And if such afflictions are severe, how dreadful will be the everlasting punishment of the wicked! 1

1 Matthew Henry and Thomas Scott, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997), Jn 5:1–10.

5:1–47 The “festival cycle” in John’s Gospel spans from 5:1 to 10:42 and is characterized by escalating conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities. This cycle begins with yet another sign—Jesus’s healing of a lame man at a feast in Jerusalem (see note at 2:11). The fact that the healing took place on a Sabbath provoked a major controversy. Jesus was accused of breaking the law by telling the man to pick up his mat (5:8–10). The controversy escalated to the point where the Jewish leaders charged Jesus with blasphemy for claiming to continue the work of God (v. 18). This provided an occasion for Jesus to defend his ministry and enumerate evidences for his identity.

5:1 After this marks the passing of an indefinite period of time. Up to a year and a half may have passed after the last recorded festival, the Passover, when Jesus cleared the temple and met with Nicodemus. The unnamed Jewish festival may have been the Festival of Shelters. On Jesus went up to Jerusalem, see note at 2:13.

5:2 Bethesda may mean “house of mercy,” a fitting term given the desperate state of the people who lay there hoping for a miraculous cure; see note at 1:38.

5:5 We do not know the invalid’s age or how long he had been lying there, but he had been crippled for thirty-eight years, which is longer than many people in antiquity lived and roughly as long as Israel’s wilderness wanderings (Dt 2:14). On John’s penchant for selecting “difficult” and striking miracles, see note at 2:11. For a similar healing, see Mt 9:1–8.

5:6 Realized probably indicates supernatural knowledge (see notes at 1:48; 4:19). Jesus’s conversation with the man may have been occasioned by his request for alms (Ac 3:1–5).

5:7 Superstition attributed the stirring of the water to the actions of an angel (see the addition of v. 4 in some later mss).

5:8–9 A mat (Gk krabattos; as distinguished from “bed,” Gk klinarion, e.g., Ac 5:15) was the poor man’s bedding. Made of straw, it could be rolled up and carried. We are not told this day was the Sabbath until the miracle was performed. This sets the context for the tensions with the unbelieving Jews (cp. 9:14).

5:10 In a petty display of religious legalism, the Jewish leaders objected to the man’s picking up his mat on the Sabbath. While not actually breaking any biblical Sabbath regulations, the man was violating a rabbinical code that prohibited the carrying of an object “from one domain into another” (m. Sabb. 7:2). Hence Jesus was accused of enticing the man to sin.

5:11–13 It is interesting that Jesus did not make himself known to the man when he healed him.

5:14 Jesus met the man again in the temple, a short distance from the site of his healing. Jesus’s words may imply that the man’s suffering was due to sin but do not suggest that all suffering is caused by personal sin (see note at 9:2). Something worse may refer to eternal judgment for sin (vv. 22–30).

5:15–16 The man never thanked Jesus. He only reported him to the authorities.

5:17 While Gn 2:2–3 teaches that God rested (Hb shabath) on the seventh day of creation, Jewish rabbis agreed that God continually upheld the universe, yet without breaking the Sabbath. If God was above Sabbath regulations, so was Jesus (Mt 12:1–14). What is more, even the Jews made exceptions to the rule prohibiting work on the Sabbath, most notably in cases where circumcision occurred on a Sabbath (Jn 7:23).1

1 Andreas J. Köstenberger, “John,” in CSB Study Bible: Notes, ed. Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 1674–1675.

Bethesda—house of mercy, a reservoir (Gr. kolumbethra, “a swimming bath”) with five porches, close to the sheep-gate or market (Neh. 3:1; John 5:2). Eusebius the historian (330) calls it “the sheep-pool.” It is also called “Bethsaida” and “Beth-zatha” (John 5:2, R.V. marg.). Under these “porches” or colonnades were usually a large number of infirm people waiting for the “troubling of the water.” It is usually identified with the modern so-called Fountain of the Virgin, in the valley of the Kidron, and not far from the Pool of Siloam (q.v.); and also with the Birket Israel, a pool near the mouth of the valley which runs into the Kidron south of “St. Stephen’s Gate.” Others again identify it with the twin pools called the “Souterrains,” under the convent of the Sisters of Zion, situated in what must have been the rock-hewn ditch between Bezetha and the fortress of Antonia. But quite recently Schick has discovered a large tank, as sketched here, situated about 100 feet north-west of St. Anne’s Church, which is, as he contends, very probably the Pool of Bethesda. No certainty as to its identification, however, has as yet been arrived at. (See FOUNTAIN; GIHON.)

PROBABLE POOL OF BETHESDA. SECTION FROM EAST TO WEST.

(By permission of the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.)1

1 M. G. Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary and Treasury of Biblical History, Biography, Geography, Doctrine, and Literature (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893), 94–95.

The Third Miracle in Johns Gospel

John 5:8

THIS third of the miracles recorded in John’s Gospel finds a place there, as it would appear, for two reasons: first, because it marks the beginning of the angry unbelief on the part of the Jewish rulers, the development of which it is one part of the purpose of this Gospel to trace; second, because it is the occasion for that great utterance of our Lord about His Sonship and His divine working as the Father also works, which occupies the whole of the rest of the chapter, and is the foundation of much which follows in the Gospel. It is for these reasons, and not for the mere sake of adding another story of a miraculous cure to the many which the other Evangelists have given us, that John narrates for us this history.

If, then, we consider the reason for the introduction of the miracle into the Gospel, we may be saved from the necessity of dwelling, except very lightly, upon some of the preliminary details which preceded the actual cure. It does not matter much to us for our present purpose which Feast it was on which Jesus went up to Jerusalem, nor whether the pool was by the sheep-market or by the sheep-gate, nor whereabouts in Jerusalem Bethesda might happen to be. It may be of importance for us to notice that the mention of the angel who appears in the fourth verse is not a part of the original narrative. The true text only tells us of an intermittent pool which possessed, or was supposed to possess, curative energy; and round which the kindness of some forgotten benefactor had built five rude porches. There lay a crowd of wasted forms, and pale, sorrowful faces, with all varieties of pain and emaciation and impotence marked upon them, who yet were gathered in Bethesda, which being interpreted means ‘a house of mercy.’ It is the type of a world full of men suffering various sicknesses, but all sick; the type of a world that gathers with an eagerness, not far removed from despair, round anything that seems to promise, however vaguely, to help and to heal; the type of a world, blessed be God, which, amidst all its sad variety of woe and weariness, yet sits in the porches of ‘a house of mercy,’ and has in the midst a ‘fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness,’ whose energy is as mighty for the last comer of all the generations as for the first that stepped into its cleansing flood.

This poor man, sick and impotent for eight and thirty years—many of which he had spent, as it would appear, day by day, wearily dragging his paralysed limbs to the fountain with daily diminishing hope—this poor man attracts the regard of Christ when He enters, and He puts to him the strange question, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ Surely there was no need to ask that; but no doubt the many disappointments and the long years of waiting and of suffering had stamped apathy upon the sufferer’s face, and Christ saw that the first thing that was needed, in order that His healing power might have a point of contact in the man’s nature, was to kindle some little flicker of hope in him once more.

And so, no doubt, with a smile on His face, which converted the question into an offer, He says: ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ meaning thereby to say, ‘I will heal thee if thou wilt.’ And there comes the weary answer, as if the man had said: ‘Will I be made whole? What have I been lying here all these years for? I have nobody to put me into the pool.’

Yes, it is a hopeful prospect to hold out to a man whose disease is inability to walk, that if he will walk to the water he will get cured, and be able to walk afterwards. Why, he could not even roll himself into the pond, and so there he had lain, a type of the hopeless efforts at self-healing which we sick men put forth, a type of the tantalising gospels which the world preaches to its subjects when it says to a paralysed man: ‘Walk that you may be healed; keep the commandments that you may enter into life.’

And so we have come at last to the main point of the narrative before us, and I fix upon these words, the actual words in which the cure was conveyed, as communicating to us some very important lessons and thoughts about Christ and our relation to Him.

I. Christ Manifesting Himself As The Giver Of Power.

First, I see in them Christ manifesting Himself as the Giver of power to the powerless who trust Him.

His words may seem at first hearing to partake of the very same almost cruel irony as the condition of cure which had already proved hopelessly impracticable. He, too, says, ‘Walk that you may be cured’; and He says it to a paralysed and impotent man. But the two things are very different, for before this cripple could attempt to drag his impotent limbs into an upright position, and take up the little light couch and sling it over his shoulders, he must have had some kind of trust in the person that told him to do so. A very ignorant trust, no doubt, it was; but all that was set before him about Jesus Christ he grasped and rested upon. He only knew Him as a Healer, and he trusted Him as such. The contents of a man’s, faith have nothing to do with the reality of his faith; and he that, having only had the healing power of Christ revealed to him, lays hold of that Healer, cleaves to Him with as genuine a faith as the man who has the whole fulness and sublimity of Christ’s divine and human character and redeeming work laid out before him, and who cleaves to these. The hand that grasps is one, whatsoever be the thing that it grasps.

So it is no spiritualising of this story, or reading into it a deeper and more religious meaning than belongs to it, to say that what passed in that man’s heart and mind before he caught up his little bed and walked away with it, was essentially the same action of mind and heart by which a sinful man, who knows that Christ is his Redeemer, grasps His Cross and trusts his soul to Him. In the one case, as in the other, there is confidence in the person; only in the one case the person was only known as a Healer, and in the other the person is known as a Saviour. But the faith is the same whatever it apprehends.

Christ comes and says to him, ‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk.’ There is a movement of confidence in the man’s heart; he tries to obey, and in the act of obedience the power comes to him.

Ah, brother! it is always so. All Christ’s commandments are gifts. When He says to you, ‘Do this!’ He pledges Himself to give you power to do it. Whatsoever He enjoins He strengthens for. He binds Himself, by His commandments, and every word of His lips which says to us ‘Thou shalt!’ contains as its kernel a word of His which says ‘I will.’ So when He commands, He bestows; and we get the power to keep His commandments when in humble faith we make the effort to do His will. It is only when we try to obey for the love’s sake of Him that has healed us that we are able to obey. And be sure of this, whensoever we attempt to do what we know to be the Master’s will, because He has given Himself for us, our power will be equal to our desire, and enough for our duty. As St. Augustine says: ‘Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.’

‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk,’ or as in another case, ‘Stretch forth thy hand.’ ‘And he stretched it forth, and his hand was restored whole as the other.’ Christ gives power to keep His commandments to the impotent who try to obey, because they have been healed by Him.

II. Our Lord Set Forth As The Absolute Master.

In the next place, we have in this miracle our Lord set forth as the absolute Master, because He is the Healer.

The Pharisees and their friends had no eyes for the miracle; but if they found a man carrying his light couch on the Sabbath day, that was a thing that excited their interest, and must be seen to immediately.

And so, paying no attention to the fact that it was a paralysed man who was doing this, with the true narrow instinct of the formalist, they lay hold only of the fact of the broken Rabbinical restrictions, and try to stop him with these. ‘It is the Sabbath day! It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.’

And they get an answer which goes a great deal deeper than the speaker knew, and puts the whole subject of Christian obedience on its right footing. ‘He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed and walk.’ As if he had said: ‘He gave me the power, had He not a right to tell me what to do with it? It was His gift that I could lift my bed; was I not bound to walk when and where He that had made me able to walk at all chose to bid me?’

And if you generalise that it just comes to this: the only person that has a right to command you is the Christ who saves you. He has the absolute authority to do as He will with your restored spiritual powers, because He has bestowed them all upon you. His dominion is built upon His benefits. He is the King because He is the Saviour. He rules because He has redeemed. He begins with giving, and it is only afterwards that He commands; and He turns to each of us with that smile upon His lips, and with tenderness in His voice which will bind any man, who is not an ingrate, to Him for ever. ‘If ye love Me, keep My commandments.’

There is always something hard and distasteful to the individual will in the tone of authority assumed by any man whatsoever. We always more or less rebel and shrink from that; and there is only one thing that makes commandment sweet, and that is when it drops like honey from the honeycomb, from lips that we love. So does it in the case of Christ’s commands to us. It is joy to know and to do the will of One to whom the whole heart turns with gratitude and affection. And Christ blesses and privileges us by the communication to us of His pleasure concerning us, that we may have the gladness of yielding to His desires, and so meeting the love which commands with the happy love which obeys. ‘He that made me whole, the same said unto me’ and what He says it must be joy to do.

So, ‘My yoke is easy and My burden is light,’ not because Christ diminishes the requirements of law; not because the standard of Christian obedience is lowered beneath any other standard of conduct and character. It is far higher. The things which make Christian duty are often very painful in themselves. There is always self-sacrifice in Christian virtue, and self-sacrifice has always a sting in it; but the ‘yoke is easy and the burden is light,’ because, if I may so say, the yoke is padded with the softest velvet of love, and lies upon our necks lightly because He has laid it there. All the rigid harshness of precept is done away when the precept comes from Christ’s lips, and His commandment ‘makes the crooked things straight and the rough places plain’; and turns duty, distasteful duty, into joyful service. The blessed basis of Christian obedience, and of Christ’s authority, is Christ’s redemption.

III. Our Lord The Divine Son.

And then, still further, we have here our Lord setting Himself forth as the divine Son, whose working needs and knows no rest.

We find, in the subsequent part of the chapter, that ‘the Jews,’ as they are called, by which is meant the antagonistic portion of the nation, sought to slay Christ ‘because He had done these things on the Sabbath day.’ But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’ Unquestionably the form which the healing took was intended by our Lord to bring into prominence the very point which these pedantic casuists laid hold of. He meant to draw attention to His sweeping aside of the Rabbinical casuistries of the law of the Sabbath. And He meant to do it in order that He might have the occasion of making this mighty claim, which is lodged in these solemn and profound words, to possess a Sonship, which, like the divine working, wrought, needing and knowing no repose.

‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’ The rest, which the old story in Genesis attributed to the Creator after the Creation, was not to be construed as if it meant the rest of inactivity; but it was the rest of continuous action. God’s rest and God’s work are one. Throughout all the ages preservation is a continuous creation. The divine energy is streaming out for evermore, as the bush that burns unconsumed, as the sun that flames undiminished for ever, pouring out from the depth of that divine nature, and for ever sustaining a universe. So that there is no Sabbath, in the sense of a cessation from action, proper to the divine nature; because all His action is repose, and ‘e’en in His very motion there is rest.’ And this divine coincidence of activity and of repose belongs to the divine Son in His divine-human nature. With that arrogance which is the very audacity of blasphemy, if it be not the simplicity of a divine consciousness, He puts His own work side by side with the Father’s work, as the same in principle, the same in method, the same in purpose, the same in its majestic coincidence of repose and of energy.

‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore for Me, as for Him, there is no need of a Sabbath of repose.’ Human activity is dissipated by toil, human energy is exhausted by expenditure. Man works and is weary; man works and is distracted. For the recovery of the serenity of his spirit, and for the renewal of his physical strength, repose of body and gathering in of mind, such as the Sabbath brought, were needed; but neither is needed for Him who toils unwearied in the heavens; and neither is needed for the divine nature of Him who labours in labours parallel with the Father’s here upon the earth.

Now remember that this is no abolition of the Sabbatic rest for Christ’s followers. Rather the ground on which He here asserts His superiority over, and His non-dependence upon, such a repose shows, or at all events implies, that all mere human workers need such rest, and should thankfully accept it. But it is a claim on His part to a divine equality. It is a claim on His part to do works which are other than human works. It is a claim on His part to be the Lord of a divine institution, living above the need of it, and able to mould it at His will.

And so it opens up depths, into which we cannot go now, of the relations of that divine Father and that divine Son; and makes us feel that the little incident in which He turned to a paralysed man and said: ‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk,’ on the Sabbath day, like some small floating leaf of sea-weed upon the surface, has great deep tendrils that go down and down into the very abyss of things, and lays hold upon that central truth of Christianity, the divinity of the Son of God, who is One with the ever-working Father.

IV. Lastly, We Have In This Incident Yet Another Lesson.

We have the Healer who is also the Judge, warning the healed of the possibilities of a relapse.

‘Jesus findeth him in the Temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ The man’s eight and-thirty years of illness had apparently been brought on by dissipation. It was a sin of flesh, avenged in the flesh, that had given him that miserable life. One would have thought he had got warning enough, but we all know the old proverb about what happened when the devil was ill, and what befell his resolutions when he got better. And so Christ comes to him again with this solemn warning. There is a worse thing than eight-and-thirty years of paralysis. ‘You fell once, and sore was your punishment. If you fall twice, your punishment will be sorer.’ Why? Because the first one had done him no good. So here are lessons for us. There is always danger that we shall fall back into old sins, even if we think we have overcome them. The mystic influence of habit, enfeebled will, the familiar temptation, the imagination rebelling, the memory tempting, sometimes even, as in the case of a man that has been a drunkard, the physical effect of the odour of his temptation upon his nostrils—all these things make it extremely unlikely that a man who has once been under the condemnation of any evil shall never be tempted to fall under its sway again.

And such a fall is not only more criminal than the former, it is more deadly than the former. ‘It were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it to turn aside.’ ‘The last state of that man is worse than the first.’

My brother, there is no blacker condemnation; and if I may use a strong word, there is no hotter hell, than that which belongs to an apostate Christian. ‘It has happened unto them according to the true proverb. The dog is turned to his vomit again—’ Very unpolite, a very coarse metaphor? Yes; to express a far worse reality.

Christian men and women! you have been made whole. ‘Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto you.’ And turn to that Lord and say, ‘Hold Thou me up and I shall be saved.’ Then the enemies will not be able to recapture you, and the chains which have dropped from your wrists will never enclose them any more.1

1 Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: John 1–8 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 235–245.

Sabbath Cure At Bethesda

John 5:1–14

The miracle here recorded is selected by John because in it Jesus plainly signified that He had power to quicken whom He would (5:21), and because it became the occasion for the unbelief of the Jews to begin the hardening process and appear as opposition.

The miracle was wrought when Jerusalem was full; although whether at the Feast of Tabernacles, or Purim, may be doubted. The pool at the sheep-gate or sheep-market has recently been discovered on the north side of the Temple area, a short distance from the Church of St. Anne. It seems to have been an intermittent spring, which possessed some healing virtue for a certain class of ailments. Its repute was well established, for a great multitude of hopeful patients waited for the moving of the waters.*

To this natural hospital Jesus wended His way on the Sabbath of the feast. And as the trained eye of the surgeon quickly selects the worst case in the waiting-room, so is the eye of Jesus speedily fixed on “a man which had an infirmity thirty and eight years,” a man paralysed apparently in mind as well as in body. Few employments could be more utterly paralysing than lying there, gazing dreamily into the water, and listening to the monotonous drone of the cripples detailing symptoms every one was sick of hearing about. The little periodic excitement caused by the strife to be the first down the steps to the bubbling up of the spring was enough for him. Hopeless imbecility was written on his face. Jesus sees that for him there will never be healing by waiting here.

Going up to this man our Lord confronts him with the arousing question, “Are you desiring to be made whole?” The question was needful. Not always are the miserable willing to be relieved. Medical men have sometimes offered to heal the mendicant’s sores, and their aid has been rejected. Even the invalid who does not trade pecuniarily on his disease is very apt to trade upon the sympathy and indulgence of friends, and sometimes becomes so debilitated in character as to shrink from a life of activity and toil. Those who have sunk out of all honest ways of living into poverty and wretchedness are not always eager to put themselves into the harness of honest labour and respectability. And this reluctance is exhibited in its extreme form in those who are content to be spiritual imbeciles, because they shrink from all arduous work and responsible position. Life, true life such as Christ calls us to, with all its obligations to others, its honest and spontaneous devotion to spiritual ends, its risks, its reality, and purity, does not seem attractive to the spiritual valetudinarian. In fact, nothing so thoroughly reveals a man to himself, nothing so clearly discloses to him his real aims and likings, as the answer he finds he can give to the simple question, “Are you willing to be made whole? Are you willing to be fitted for the highest and purest life?”

The man is sufficiently alive to feel the implied rebuke, and apologetically answers, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool. It is not that I am resigned to this life of uselessness, but I have no option.” The very answer, however, showed that he was hopeless. It had become the established order of things with him that some one anticipated him. He speaks of it as regularly happening—“another steps down before me.” He had no friend—no one that would spare time to wait beside him and watch for the welling up of the water. And he had no thought of help coming from any other quarter. But there is that in the appearance and manner of Jesus that quickens the man’s attention, and makes him wonder whether He will not perhaps stand by him and help him at the next moving of the waters. While these thoughts are passing through his mind the words of Jesus ring with power in his ears, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” And he who had so long waited in vain to be healed at the spring, is instantaneously made whole by the word of Jesus.

John habitually considered the miracles of Jesus as “signs” or object lessons, in which the spiritual mind might read unseen truth. They were intended to present to the eye a picture of the similar but greater works which Jesus wrought in the region of the spirit. He heals the blind, and therein sets Himself before men as the Light of the world. He gives the hungry bread, but is disappointed that they do not from this conclude that He is Himself the Bread sent by the Father to nourish to life everlasting. He heals this impotent man, and marvels that in this healing the people do not see a sign that He is the Son who does the Father’s works, and who can give life to whom He will. It is legitimate, therefore, to see in this cure the embodiment of spiritual truth.

This man represents those who for many years have known their infirmity, and who have continued, if not very definitely to hope for spiritual vigour, at least to put themselves in the way of being healed—to give themselves, as invalids do, all the chances. This crowding of the pool of Bethesda—the house of mercy or grace—strongly resembles our frequenting of ordinances, a practice which many continue in very much the state of mind of this paralytic. They are still as infirm as when they first began to look for cure; it seems as if their turn were never to come, though they have seen many remarkable cures. Theoretically they have no doubt of the efficacy of Christian grace; practically they have no expectation that they shall ever be strong, vigorous, useful men in His Kingdom. If you asked them why they are so punctual in attendance on all religious services, they would say, “Why, is it not a right thing to do?” Press them further with our Lord’s question, “Are you expecting to be made whole? Is this your purpose in coming here?” They will refer you to their past, and tell you how it has always seemed to be some other person’s case that was thought of, how the Spirit of God seemed always to have other work than that which concerned them. But here they are still—and commendably and wisely so; for if this man had begun to disbelieve in the virtue of the water because he himself had never experienced its power, and had shut himself up in some wretched solitude of his own, then the eye of the Lord had never rested upon him—here they are still; for the best part of a lifetime they had been on the brink of health, and yet have never got it; for eight-and-thirty years this man had seen that water, knew that it healed people, put his hand in it, gazed on it,—yes, there it was, and could heal him, and yet his turn never came. So do these persons frequent the ordinances, hear the word that can save them, touch the bread of communion, and know that by the blessing of God the bread of life is thereby conveyed, and yet year by year goes past, and for them all remains unblessed. They begin despairingly to say—

“Thy saints are comforted, I know,

And love Thy house of prayer;

I therefore go where others go,

But find no comfort there.”

This miracle shows such persons that there is a shorter way to health than a languid attendance on ordinances—an attendance that is satisfied if there seems to be still in operation what may be useful to others: It is the voice of Christ they need to hear. It is that voice summoning to thought and to hope that we all need to hear, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Are you weary and ashamed of your infirmity; would you fain be a whole man in Christ, able at last to walk through life as a living man, seeing the beauty of God and of His work, and meeting with gladness the whole requirements of a life in God? Does the very beauty of Christ’s manhood, as He stands before you, make you at once ashamed of your weakness and covetous of His strength? Do you see in Him what it is to be strong, to enter into life, to begin to live as a man ought always to live, and are you earnestly looking to receive power from on high? To such come the life-giving voice of the Word who utters God, and the life that is in God.

It is important to notice that in Christ’s word to the sick, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk,” three things are implied—

1. There must be a prompt response to Christ’s word. He does not heal any one who lies sluggishly waiting to see what that word will effect. There must be a hearty and immediate recognition of the speaker’s truth and power. We cannot say to what extent the impotent man would feel a current of nervous energy invigorating him. Probably this consciousness of new strength would only succeed his cordial reliance on the word of Christ. Obey Christ, and you will find strength enough. Believe in His power to give you new life, and you will have it. But do not hesitate, do not question, do not delay.

2. There must be no thought of failure, no making provision for a relapse; the bed must be rolled up as no longer needed. How do those diseased men of the Gospels rebuke us! We seem always half in doubt whether we should make bold to live as whole men. We take a few feeble steps, and return to the bed we have left. From life by faith in Christ we sink back to life as we knew it without Christ—a life attempting little, and counting it a thing too high for us to put ourselves and our all at God’s disposal. If we set out to swim the Channel we take care to have a. boat within hail to pick us up if we become exhausted. To make provision for failure is in the Christian life to secure failure. It betrays a half-heartedness in our faith, a lurking unbelief which must bring disaster. Have we rolled up our bed and tossed it aside? If Christ fails us, have we nothing to fall back upon? Is it faith in Him that really keeps us going? Is it His view of the world and of all that is in it that we have accepted; or do we merely take a few steps on His principles, but in the main make our bed in the ordinary, unenlightened worldly life?

3. There must be a continuous use made of the strength Christ gives. The man who had lain for thirty-eight years was told to walk. We must confront many duties without any past experience to assure us of success. We must proceed to do them in faith—in the faith that He who bids us do them will give us strength for them. Take your place at once among healthy men; recognise the responsibilities of life. Find an outlet for the new strength in you. Be no longer a burden, a charge to others, but begin yourself to bear the burdens of others, and be a source of strength to others.

Before the man could get home with his bed he was challenged for carrying it on the Sabbath. They must surely have known that he himself, and many more, had that very morning been carried to Bethesda. But we can scarcely conclude from the Jews thus challenging the healed man that they sought occasion against Jesus. They would have stopped any one going through the streets of Jerusalem with a bundle on the Sabbath. They had Scripture on their side, and founded on the words of Jeremiah (17:21), “Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day.” Even in our own streets a man carrying a large package on Sunday would attract the suspicion of the religious, if not of the police. We must not, then, find a malicious intention towards Jesus, but merely the accustomed thoughtless bigotry and literalism, in the challenge of the Jews.

But to their “It is not lawful,” the man promptly answers, perhaps only meaning to screen himself by throwing the blame on another, “He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed.” The man quite naturally, and without till now reflecting on his own conduct, had listened to Christ’s word as authoritative. He that gave me strength told me how to use it. Intuitively the man lays down the great principle of Christian obedience. If Christ is the source of life to me, He must also be the source of law. If without Him I am helpless and useless, it stands to reason that I must consider His will in the use of the life He communicates. This must always be the Christian’s defence when the world is scandalised by anything he does in obedience to Christ; when he goes in the face of its traditions and customs; when he is challenged for singularity, overpreciseness, or innovation. This is the law which the Christian must still bear in mind when he fears to thwart any prejudice of the world, when he is tempted to bide his time among the impotent folk, and not fly in the face of established usage; when, though he has distinctly understood what he ought to do, so many difficulties threaten, that he is tempted to withdraw into obscurity and indolence. It is the same Voice which gives life and directs it. Shall I then refuse it in both cases, or choose it in both? Shall I shrink from its directions, and lie down again in sin; or shall I accept life, and with it the still greater boon of spending it as Christ wills?

But though the man had thus instinctively obeyed Jesus, he actually had not had the curiosity to ask who He was. It is almost incredible that he should have so immediately lost sight of the person to whom he was so indebted. But so taken up is he with his new sensations, so occupied with gathering up his mats, so beset by the congratulations and inquiries of his comrades at the porch, that before he bethinks himself Jesus is gone. Among those who do undoubtedly profit by Christ’s work there is a lamentable and culpable lack of interest in His person. It docs not seem to matter from whom they have received these benefits so long as they have them; they do not seem drawn to His person, ever following to know more of Him and to enjoy His society, as the poor demoniac would have done, who would gladly have left home and country, and who cared not what line of life he might be thrown into or what thrown out of, if only he might be with Christ. If one were to put the case, that my prospects were eternally and in each particular changed by the intervention of one whose love is itself infinite blessing, and if it were asked what would be my feeling towards such a person, doubtless I would say, He would have an unrivalled interest for me, and I should be irresistibly drawn into the most intimate personal knowledge and relations; but no—the melancholy truth is otherwise; the gift is delighted in, the giver is suffered to be lost in the crowd. The spectacle is presented of a vast number of persons made blessed through the intervention of Christ, who are yet more concerned to exhibit their own new life and acquirements, than to identify and keep hold of Him to whom they owe all.

Although the healed man seems to have had little interest in Christ, Christ kept His eye upon him. Finding him in the Temple, where he had gone to give thanks for his recovery, or to see a place he had so long been excluded from, or merely because it was a place of public resort, our Lord addressed him in the emphatic words, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.” The natural inference from these words is that his disease had been brought on by sin in early life—another instance of the life-long misery a man may incur by almost his earliest responsible acts, of the difficulties and shame with which a lad or a boy may unwittingly fill his life, but an instance also of the willingness with which Christ delivers us even from miseries we have rashly brought upon ourselves. Further still, it is an instance of the vitality of sin. This man’s life-long punishment had not broken the power of sin within him. He knew why he was diseased and shattered. Every pain he felt, every desire which through weakness he could not gratify, every vexing thought of what he might have made of life, made him hate his sin as the cause of all his wretchedness; and yet at the end of these thirty-eight years of punishment Christ recognised in him, even in the first days of restored health, a liability to return to his sin. But every day we see the same; every day we see men keeping themselves down, and gathering all kinds of misery round them by persisting in sin. We say of this man and that, “How is it possible he can still cleave to his sin, no better, no wiser for all he has come through? One would have thought former lessons sufficient.” But no amount of mere suffering purifies from sin. One has sometimes a kind of satisfaction in reaping the consequences of sin, as if that would deter from future sin; but if this will not hold us back, what will? Partly the perception that already God forgives us, and partly the belief that when Christ commands us to sin no more He can give us strength to sin no more. Who believes with a deep and abiding conviction that Christ’s will can raise him from all spiritual impotence and uselessness? He, and he only, can hope to conquer sin. To rely upon Christ’s word, “Sin no more,” with the same confident faith with which this man acted on His word, “Rise, take up thy bed”—this alone gives victory over sin. If our own will is too weak, Christ’s will is always mighty. Identify your will with Christ’s, and you have His strength.

But the fear of punishment has also its place. The man is warned that a worse thing will fall upon him if he sins. Sinning after the beginning of deliverance, we not only fall back into such remorse, darkness, and misery as have already in this life followed our sin, but a worse thing will come upon us. But “worse.” What can be worse than the loss of an entire life; like this man, passing in disappointment, in uselessness, in shame, the time which all naturally expect shall be filled with activity, success, and happiness; losing, and losing early, and losing by one’s own fault, and losing hopelessly, everything that makes life desirable? Few men so entirely miss life as this man did, though perhaps our activities are often more hurtful than his absolute inactivity, and under an appearance of prosperity the heart may have been torn with remorse as painful as his. Yet let no man think that he knows the worst that sin can do. After the longest experience we may sink deeper still, and indeed must do so unless we listen to Christ’s voice saying, “Behold thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.”1

1 Marcus Dods, “The Gospel of St. John,” in The Expositor’s Bible: Luke to Galatians, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 5, Expositor’s Bible (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903), 156–158.

10. THE HEALING CHRIST

John 5:1–18

I. THE PITY—vv. 1–5

A. The Passover—v. 1. Most believe it was the Passover Feast.

B. The place—v. 2. This pool was used for both swimming and bathing. The word Bethesda means “house of compassion.”

C. C The problem—v. 3. All types of sick people came to this pool.

D. The power—v. 4. Many believed that an angel came down from heaven once a year and stirred the water. The first one into the water was healed.

E. The person—v. 5. A sick man was at the pool. He had been sick for 38 years. He was crippled and could not get into the pool.

II. THE POWER—vv. 6–9

A. The concern—v. 6. Jesus asked a very simple question, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Jesus showed an interest in and concern for this man. He suffered for the healing of all men—Isaiah 53:5.

B. The complaint—v. 7. This man had no one to put him into the pool when the water was stirred.

C. The Christ—v. 8. Christ said to the man, “Take up thy bed and walk.” This really meant, “Roll up your bed clothes and go on your way.” This man was depending on “getting into the water” to be healed. Christ healed him, “made him whole.” Some feel that keeping certain rules and laws will make them whole!

D. The completeness—v. 9. The man was made completely whole. When Christ does something, HE DOES IT RIGHT!

III. THE PROBLEMS—vv. 10–18

A. The criticism—v. 10. Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath. The keepers of the Sabbath were not happy about this. They were critical of Jesus. Those who were so strict about keeping the Sabbath were the ones who killed Jesus.

B. The confusion—vv. 11–13. The man who was healed didn’t know it was Jesus, who healed him.

C. The command—v. 14. Jesus found this man in the temple. Notice His words, “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” After He heals your soul, live right. Leave all sin and follow Him.

D. The confession—vv. 15–16. The man was not ashamed. He told others about Christ. He was a witness for the Lord.

E. The contempt—vv. 17–18. These people sought to kill Christ because He healed on the Sabbath.1

1 Croft M. Pentz, Expository Outlines on the Gospel of John, Dollar Sermon Library Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1974), 22.

5:1–18 Jesus returns to Jerusalem for another Jewish religious festival and heals a lame man on the Sabbath. The religious leaders are more concerned with the man carrying his mat on the Sabbath than with his miraculous healing.

Miracles of Jesus Table

5:1 After these things Refers to an indeterminate period of time. John shifts to a new scene in his narrative without giving specific chronological details (compare John 6:1; 21:1).

feast of the Jews Most likely one of the other two pilgrimage festivals besides Passover, either the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Tabernacles. See note on 2:13.

Israelite Festivals Table

Israelite Feasts in John’s Gospel

Passover (3 different years)

John 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55; 12:1; 13:1; 18:28, 39; 19:14

feast of the Jews

John 5:1

Tabernacles

John 7:2

Dedication (Hanukkah)

John 10:22

Jesus went up to Jerusalem The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) record only one trip to Jerusalem, but John has several. On Jerusalem, see note on 1:19.

5:2 Sheep Gate A gate on the northern end of the temple complex. It was part of the outer wall of Jerusalem rebuilt under Nehemiah (see Neh 3:1).

Aramaic The Greek term used here, hebraisti, refers to the Hebrew and Aramaic languages.

Bethzatha Greek manuscripts show a variety of renderings for this place name: “Beth-zatha,” “Bethesda,” or “Bethsaida.” The most common English rendering is “Bethesda.” John is the only nt writer to mention this pool.

five porticoes Evidence of a healing sanctuary and pool with five porticoes was found in Jerusalem just north of the Sheep Gate. Porticoes are covered walkways, with the roof supported by columns.

5:3 Some later manuscripts have an additional line in John 5:3 and include v. 4, which explains that an angel would stir the waters of the pool and whoever entered the pool first would be healed. Some translations include this line, some omit it, and some mention it in a note or in brackets.

5:5 thirty-eight years The man’s age is unknown, but he had been sick for longer than many people lived in antiquity.

sickness The Greek term used here, astheneia, refers to any kind of debilitating condition. Since the man is unable to move into the pool on his own (v. 7), it’s assumed that he is either disabled or paralyzed.

5:7 whenever the water is stirred up The additional information provided in v. 4 explains this otherwise enigmatic statement as a divine stirring of the water that results in healing (compare note on v. 3). The pools at Bethesda probably were fed by springs that may have intermittently added fresh water to the pools.

5:8 Get up Compare Mark 2:11.

your mat Probably a lightweight straw mat on which the man was lying.

Miracles Unique to John’s Gospel

Water to Wine, John 2:1–11

Official’s Son Healed, 4:46–52

Paralytic Healed, 5:1–13

Blind Man Healed, 9:1–12

Lazarus Raised, 11:38–44

Great Catch of Fish, 21:1–14

5:9 immediately The Gospels regularly emphasize the immediate nature of Jesus’ healings. Compare Mark 2:12.

Sabbath The seventh day of the week, when Jews were to abstain from work (compare note on Matt 12:1; note on Exod 20:10).

5:10 it is not permitted Physical labor was forbidden on the Sabbath, but biblical law did not explicitly define what qualified as work.

5:12 Who is the man The religious leaders want to find the person responsible for leading this man to sin by working on the Sabbath.

5:14 lest something worse happen to you While nt teaching generally rejects the assumption that all suffering is a result of sin (compare John 9:1–3; Luke 13:2–3), Jesus seems to imply here that the man’s affliction was related to sin. The worse fate that could happen is likely a reference to the eternal consequences of sin and failure to be reconciled with God.

5:16 doing these things on the Sabbath The religious leaders regularly quarreled with Jesus over His apparent lack of respect for the Sabbath prohibitions (compare Luke 6:1–11; 13:10–17; 14:1–6).

5:17 and I am working Because Jesus is “lord of the Sabbath,” He is not limited by their interpretations of what was not allowed (compare Luke 6:5).1

1 John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Jn 5:1–17.

The Third Miracle in Johns Gospel

John 5:8

THIS third of the miracles recorded in John’s Gospel finds a place there, as it would appear, for two reasons: first, because it marks the beginning of the angry unbelief on the part of the Jewish rulers, the development of which it is one part of the purpose of this Gospel to trace; second, because it is the occasion for that great utterance of our Lord about His Sonship and His divine working as the Father also works, which occupies the whole of the rest of the chapter, and is the foundation of much which follows in the Gospel. It is for these reasons, and not for the mere sake of adding another story of a miraculous cure to the many which the other Evangelists have given us, that John narrates for us this history.

If, then, we consider the reason for the introduction of the miracle into the Gospel, we may be saved from the necessity of dwelling, except very lightly, upon some of the preliminary details which preceded the actual cure. It does not matter much to us for our present purpose which Feast it was on which Jesus went up to Jerusalem, nor whether the pool was by the sheep-market or by the sheep-gate, nor whereabouts in Jerusalem Bethesda might happen to be. It may be of importance for us to notice that the mention of the angel who appears in the fourth verse is not a part of the original narrative. The true text only tells us of an intermittent pool which possessed, or was supposed to possess, curative energy; and round which the kindness of some forgotten benefactor had built five rude porches. There lay a crowd of wasted forms, and pale, sorrowful faces, with all varieties of pain and emaciation and impotence marked upon them, who yet were gathered in Bethesda, which being interpreted means ‘a house of mercy.’ It is the type of a world full of men suffering various sicknesses, but all sick; the type of a world that gathers with an eagerness, not far removed from despair, round anything that seems to promise, however vaguely, to help and to heal; the type of a world, blessed be God, which, amidst all its sad variety of woe and weariness, yet sits in the porches of ‘a house of mercy,’ and has in the midst a ‘fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness,’ whose energy is as mighty for the last comer of all the generations as for the first that stepped into its cleansing flood.

This poor man, sick and impotent for eight and thirty years—many of which he had spent, as it would appear, day by day, wearily dragging his paralysed limbs to the fountain with daily diminishing hope—this poor man attracts the regard of Christ when He enters, and He puts to him the strange question, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ Surely there was no need to ask that; but no doubt the many disappointments and the long years of waiting and of suffering had stamped apathy upon the sufferer’s face, and Christ saw that the first thing that was needed, in order that His healing power might have a point of contact in the man’s nature, was to kindle some little flicker of hope in him once more.

And so, no doubt, with a smile on His face, which converted the question into an offer, He says: ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ meaning thereby to say, ‘I will heal thee if thou wilt.’ And there comes the weary answer, as if the man had said: ‘Will I be made whole? What have I been lying here all these years for? I have nobody to put me into the pool.’

Yes, it is a hopeful prospect to hold out to a man whose disease is inability to walk, that if he will walk to the water he will get cured, and be able to walk afterwards. Why, he could not even roll himself into the pond, and so there he had lain, a type of the hopeless efforts at self-healing which we sick men put forth, a type of the tantalising gospels which the world preaches to its subjects when it says to a paralysed man: ‘Walk that you may be healed; keep the commandments that you may enter into life.’

And so we have come at last to the main point of the narrative before us, and I fix upon these words, the actual words in which the cure was conveyed, as communicating to us some very important lessons and thoughts about Christ and our relation to Him.

I. Christ Manifesting Himself As The Giver Of Power.

First, I see in them Christ manifesting Himself as the Giver of power to the powerless who trust Him.

His words may seem at first hearing to partake of the very same almost cruel irony as the condition of cure which had already proved hopelessly impracticable. He, too, says, ‘Walk that you may be cured’; and He says it to a paralysed and impotent man. But the two things are very different, for before this cripple could attempt to drag his impotent limbs into an upright position, and take up the little light couch and sling it over his shoulders, he must have had some kind of trust in the person that told him to do so. A very ignorant trust, no doubt, it was; but all that was set before him about Jesus Christ he grasped and rested upon. He only knew Him as a Healer, and he trusted Him as such. The contents of a man’s, faith have nothing to do with the reality of his faith; and he that, having only had the healing power of Christ revealed to him, lays hold of that Healer, cleaves to Him with as genuine a faith as the man who has the whole fulness and sublimity of Christ’s divine and human character and redeeming work laid out before him, and who cleaves to these. The hand that grasps is one, whatsoever be the thing that it grasps.

So it is no spiritualising of this story, or reading into it a deeper and more religious meaning than belongs to it, to say that what passed in that man’s heart and mind before he caught up his little bed and walked away with it, was essentially the same action of mind and heart by which a sinful man, who knows that Christ is his Redeemer, grasps His Cross and trusts his soul to Him. In the one case, as in the other, there is confidence in the person; only in the one case the person was only known as a Healer, and in the other the person is known as a Saviour. But the faith is the same whatever it apprehends.

Christ comes and says to him, ‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk.’ There is a movement of confidence in the man’s heart; he tries to obey, and in the act of obedience the power comes to him.

Ah, brother! it is always so. All Christ’s commandments are gifts. When He says to you, ‘Do this!’ He pledges Himself to give you power to do it. Whatsoever He enjoins He strengthens for. He binds Himself, by His commandments, and every word of His lips which says to us ‘Thou shalt!’ contains as its kernel a word of His which says ‘I will.’ So when He commands, He bestows; and we get the power to keep His commandments when in humble faith we make the effort to do His will. It is only when we try to obey for the love’s sake of Him that has healed us that we are able to obey. And be sure of this, whensoever we attempt to do what we know to be the Master’s will, because He has given Himself for us, our power will be equal to our desire, and enough for our duty. As St. Augustine says: ‘Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.’

‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk,’ or as in another case, ‘Stretch forth thy hand.’ ‘And he stretched it forth, and his hand was restored whole as the other.’ Christ gives power to keep His commandments to the impotent who try to obey, because they have been healed by Him.

II. Our Lord Set Forth As The Absolute Master.

In the next place, we have in this miracle our Lord set forth as the absolute Master, because He is the Healer.

The Pharisees and their friends had no eyes for the miracle; but if they found a man carrying his light couch on the Sabbath day, that was a thing that excited their interest, and must be seen to immediately.

And so, paying no attention to the fact that it was a paralysed man who was doing this, with the true narrow instinct of the formalist, they lay hold only of the fact of the broken Rabbinical restrictions, and try to stop him with these. ‘It is the Sabbath day! It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.’

And they get an answer which goes a great deal deeper than the speaker knew, and puts the whole subject of Christian obedience on its right footing. ‘He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed and walk.’ As if he had said: ‘He gave me the power, had He not a right to tell me what to do with it? It was His gift that I could lift my bed; was I not bound to walk when and where He that had made me able to walk at all chose to bid me?’

And if you generalise that it just comes to this: the only person that has a right to command you is the Christ who saves you. He has the absolute authority to do as He will with your restored spiritual powers, because He has bestowed them all upon you. His dominion is built upon His benefits. He is the King because He is the Saviour. He rules because He has redeemed. He begins with giving, and it is only afterwards that He commands; and He turns to each of us with that smile upon His lips, and with tenderness in His voice which will bind any man, who is not an ingrate, to Him for ever. ‘If ye love Me, keep My commandments.’

There is always something hard and distasteful to the individual will in the tone of authority assumed by any man whatsoever. We always more or less rebel and shrink from that; and there is only one thing that makes commandment sweet, and that is when it drops like honey from the honeycomb, from lips that we love. So does it in the case of Christ’s commands to us. It is joy to know and to do the will of One to whom the whole heart turns with gratitude and affection. And Christ blesses and privileges us by the communication to us of His pleasure concerning us, that we may have the gladness of yielding to His desires, and so meeting the love which commands with the happy love which obeys. ‘He that made me whole, the same said unto me’ and what He says it must be joy to do.

So, ‘My yoke is easy and My burden is light,’ not because Christ diminishes the requirements of law; not because the standard of Christian obedience is lowered beneath any other standard of conduct and character. It is far higher. The things which make Christian duty are often very painful in themselves. There is always self-sacrifice in Christian virtue, and self-sacrifice has always a sting in it; but the ‘yoke is easy and the burden is light,’ because, if I may so say, the yoke is padded with the softest velvet of love, and lies upon our necks lightly because He has laid it there. All the rigid harshness of precept is done away when the precept comes from Christ’s lips, and His commandment ‘makes the crooked things straight and the rough places plain’; and turns duty, distasteful duty, into joyful service. The blessed basis of Christian obedience, and of Christ’s authority, is Christ’s redemption.

III. Our Lord The Divine Son.

And then, still further, we have here our Lord setting Himself forth as the divine Son, whose working needs and knows no rest.

We find, in the subsequent part of the chapter, that ‘the Jews,’ as they are called, by which is meant the antagonistic portion of the nation, sought to slay Christ ‘because He had done these things on the Sabbath day.’ But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’ Unquestionably the form which the healing took was intended by our Lord to bring into prominence the very point which these pedantic casuists laid hold of. He meant to draw attention to His sweeping aside of the Rabbinical casuistries of the law of the Sabbath. And He meant to do it in order that He might have the occasion of making this mighty claim, which is lodged in these solemn and profound words, to possess a Sonship, which, like the divine working, wrought, needing and knowing no repose.

‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’ The rest, which the old story in Genesis attributed to the Creator after the Creation, was not to be construed as if it meant the rest of inactivity; but it was the rest of continuous action. God’s rest and God’s work are one. Throughout all the ages preservation is a continuous creation. The divine energy is streaming out for evermore, as the bush that burns unconsumed, as the sun that flames undiminished for ever, pouring out from the depth of that divine nature, and for ever sustaining a universe. So that there is no Sabbath, in the sense of a cessation from action, proper to the divine nature; because all His action is repose, and ‘e’en in His very motion there is rest.’ And this divine coincidence of activity and of repose belongs to the divine Son in His divine-human nature. With that arrogance which is the very audacity of blasphemy, if it be not the simplicity of a divine consciousness, He puts His own work side by side with the Father’s work, as the same in principle, the same in method, the same in purpose, the same in its majestic coincidence of repose and of energy.

‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore for Me, as for Him, there is no need of a Sabbath of repose.’ Human activity is dissipated by toil, human energy is exhausted by expenditure. Man works and is weary; man works and is distracted. For the recovery of the serenity of his spirit, and for the renewal of his physical strength, repose of body and gathering in of mind, such as the Sabbath brought, were needed; but neither is needed for Him who toils unwearied in the heavens; and neither is needed for the divine nature of Him who labours in labours parallel with the Father’s here upon the earth.

Now remember that this is no abolition of the Sabbatic rest for Christ’s followers. Rather the ground on which He here asserts His superiority over, and His non-dependence upon, such a repose shows, or at all events implies, that all mere human workers need such rest, and should thankfully accept it. But it is a claim on His part to a divine equality. It is a claim on His part to do works which are other than human works. It is a claim on His part to be the Lord of a divine institution, living above the need of it, and able to mould it at His will.

And so it opens up depths, into which we cannot go now, of the relations of that divine Father and that divine Son; and makes us feel that the little incident in which He turned to a paralysed man and said: ‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk,’ on the Sabbath day, like some small floating leaf of sea-weed upon the surface, has great deep tendrils that go down and down into the very abyss of things, and lays hold upon that central truth of Christianity, the divinity of the Son of God, who is One with the ever-working Father.

IV. Lastly, We Have In This Incident Yet Another Lesson.

We have the Healer who is also the Judge, warning the healed of the possibilities of a relapse.

‘Jesus findeth him in the Temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ The man’s eight and-thirty years of illness had apparently been brought on by dissipation. It was a sin of flesh, avenged in the flesh, that had given him that miserable life. One would have thought he had got warning enough, but we all know the old proverb about what happened when the devil was ill, and what befell his resolutions when he got better. And so Christ comes to him again with this solemn warning. There is a worse thing than eight-and-thirty years of paralysis. ‘You fell once, and sore was your punishment. If you fall twice, your punishment will be sorer.’ Why? Because the first one had done him no good. So here are lessons for us. There is always danger that we shall fall back into old sins, even if we think we have overcome them. The mystic influence of habit, enfeebled will, the familiar temptation, the imagination rebelling, the memory tempting, sometimes even, as in the case of a man that has been a drunkard, the physical effect of the odour of his temptation upon his nostrils—all these things make it extremely unlikely that a man who has once been under the condemnation of any evil shall never be tempted to fall under its sway again.

And such a fall is not only more criminal than the former, it is more deadly than the former. ‘It were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it to turn aside.’ ‘The last state of that man is worse than the first.’

My brother, there is no blacker condemnation; and if I may use a strong word, there is no hotter hell, than that which belongs to an apostate Christian. ‘It has happened unto them according to the true proverb. The dog is turned to his vomit again—’ Very unpolite, a very coarse metaphor? Yes; to express a far worse reality.

Christian men and women! you have been made whole. ‘Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto you.’ And turn to that Lord and say, ‘Hold Thou me up and I shall be saved.’ Then the enemies will not be able to recapture you, and the chains which have dropped from your wrists will never enclose them any more.1

1 Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: John 1–8 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 235–245.

Comment

5:1–5 The Setting. Once again we find a transitional section in John’s Gospel that tells us of time, place, and people involved. These aspects of the setting are seen in verse 1, which describes Jesus’ attendance at an unnamed feast in Jerusalem. Verses 2–5 provide more specifics along these lines, introducing the pool of Bethesda (v. 2), where many sick and lame lie (v. 3). Among the sick was one who had been there thirty-eight years (v. 5). The verse enumerated as verse 4 is typically found in footnotes (so ESV) because the best and most reliable manuscripts do not include it.

Jesus had been in Jerusalem for the Passover feast from 2:13 to 3:21, entering the Judean countryside in 3:22. He then left for Galilee in 4:3, visited Samaria on the way (4:4–42), and arrived in Galilee in verse 46. At the time of the feast, 5:1 says that Jesus again “went up to Jerusalem.” Providing more information on the setting of this episode, John narrows the focus from the city of Jerusalem to a particular location: “… by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades” (v. 2). A colonnade was a series of pillars supporting one side of a roof. Among these five colonnades, John explains, “lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years” (vv. 3, 5).

John has thus introduced the setting: in Jerusalem, at the pool of Bethesda. He has also introduced the people involved: Jesus, and the man thirty-eight years in his weakness. The scene is now set for the key figures in the drama to encounter one another.

5:6–9a The Healing. The two individuals John has introduced now connect: “Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time” (v. 6). Jesus then speaks to a man whom most in his position would have overlooked, saying, “Do you want to be healed?” (v. 6). This question could be a way for Jesus to ask if the desire for healing is why the man is lying there beside the pool. It could also be a prompt for the man to consider whether lying there at the pool is likely to result in such healing.

The ESV footnotes verse 4, which was most likely not originally part of John’s Gospel but sought to explain why people were at the pool. (The information in verse 4 could be inferred from verse 7.) The man apparently hoped to be healed by being first into the waters after an angel stirred them. By means of waiting and watching for something he had no reason to think would happen, he sought the restoration of his own health.

Make no mistake about it: this man deserves our pity. The Bible nowhere indicates that God set up pools in Jerusalem so that people could be healed in this way. The Bible nowhere teaches that angels came down and stirred up waters so that the first person into the pool would get better. John endorses no such belief. We are to understand, then, that this poor man has vain hopes based on ignorant superstitions, and when Jesus gently prods his vain hopes, he is so immersed in them that he does not question their validity.

How has Jesus prodded him to recognize the vanity of his hopes? Imagine someone happening upon a child huddled over a mud puddle, Matchbox car in one hand, washcloth in the other. He dips the washcloth in the mud and furiously scrubs the car. One might ask, Are you trying to clean that car? The question is both an inquiry and an invitation to the child, asking him to examine his actions and evaluate whether they will be effective. The question indicates there are better ways to clean toys. In this way, when Jesus asks in verse 6, “Do you want to be healed?”, it seems to indicate that Jesus is not impressed with the method of waiting by the pool, seeking to be first into the water when it ripples.

The sick man answers the question in a way that reminds us of other replies to questions from Jesus in John’s Gospel, times when Jesus has not been understood: “The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me’ ” (v. 7). John, however, shows what brings true healing, and the only remedy for the man by the pool is the only remedy for us: “Jesus said to him, ‘Get up, take up your bed, and walk.’ And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked” (vv. 8–9a). The man did not need to be the first into the water in order to be healed. He needed the one who spoke the world into existence to say the word and make it so. He did not need some false tale about angels doing a trick with the water. He needed Jesus to say the word. That is all it took.

There seem to be creation and completion-of-work connotations here, for John also notes, “Now that day was the Sabbath” (v. 9b). God spoke the world into existence, and when he had completed his work he rested on the Sabbath day. God rested not because he was weary but because his work was complete and whole; with that accomplished, he rested to relish what he had made. Jesus has now made a man whole, and has done so on the Sabbath, which provokes the controversy John narrates in verses 10–13.

5:9b–13 The Sabbath. How should people respond when they see God perform a surprising and generous work of joyful restoration? Should not hearts soar to see God’s love in action? Or should the authorities start thinking about rules, policies, commandments, and regulations? Jesus has in 5:6–9a just healed a man afflicted with a debilitating illness for thirty-eight years, but look at the response: “The Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed’ ” (v. 10).

Why do they respond this way? Their concern for law-keeping, which is a good concern, has eclipsed their concern for this poor, sick man. Their impulse is to quote commandments first and ask questions later. The greatest commandment is to love the Lord; the second is to love people. These Jews are suspicious of Jesus, and John probably intends his audience to associate them with the Pharisees, who sent priests and Levites to question John the Baptist in 1:19–24. For these Jews, the big idea is not love for God and neighbor but strict obedience to the letter of the law. The Jews do not love this man and rejoice in God’s work in his life. They love conformity to what the law requires, at the expense of regard for people and their situations. This poor man was afflicted for thirty-eight years, but they are worried merely because he has taken up his bed (5:10).

The man answers them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk’ ” (v. 11). This could be rendered more literally, “The man who made me whole” (cf. KJV, NASB). Jesus did not simply heal this man; Jesus made him healthy. The “making” here is significant because Jesus made the man well in the same way God made the world: by speaking it so. The one through whom all things were made (1:3), who spoke the word and it was so (5:8–9a), commanded this man concerning what to do on the Sabbath. The man was right to do what Jesus said. As the one who made the world, as the one who made this man well, Jesus has authority to command obedience on the Sabbath.

The Jews respond, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” (5:12). Notice that these Jews, fixated as they are on the law and its demands, do not ask about “the man who healed me” (v. 11a) but about what Jesus told the man to do on the Sabbath: “Take up your bed and walk” (v. 11b). They are more concerned about regulation than about restoration. They are more concerned about adherence to the law than about the healing of the body. They care more about the letter than about the Lord. They care more about obeying commands than enjoying the presence of the one whose character the commands convey.

Just as Jesus went to a place where he would not be honored in 4:43–44, so now he slips away into the crowd. John explains, “Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place” (5:13). Jesus has a mission and an “hour” (7:30; 8:20; 12:23, etc.), and he does not intend to preempt God’s purposes. He does, however, follow up with the man, as John narrates in 5:14–18.1

1 James M. Hamilton Jr. and Brian J. Vickers, John–Acts, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. IX, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 107–109.

John 5:1–18

A quick glance at religious history reveals that it is not difficult to gather people around reports of the miraculous. The shrines and holy places from Lourdes to Salt Lake City bear eloquent testimony to this. I have personally seen it happen. A housewife in California, near my former home, claimed to have had revelations from St. Joseph. Soon after she first shared her experience, large crowds began to gather around her house. In fact, people made pilgrimages from around the world to see her. In her community bumper stickers touting St. Joseph appeared. Just outside of town, 400 acres were purchased to build St. Joseph’s Hill of Hope. Reports of miracles have also come from there—how St. Joseph appeared and revealed where water was to be found on someone’s property, for example. The neighbors in surrounding housing developments became a bit nervous when devotees of this woman began buying houses in the neighborhood. There were even armed guards at the gate of the Hill of Hope.

All of this makes the legend described in John 5:1–18 very understandable. The ingredients are perfect. The Pool of Bethesda, the setting of this passage, was within the environs of Jerusalem. It periodically rippled because of a subterranean spring, and no doubt usually someone who had a disease was in the pool when the water moved. That individual probably concluded he had been healed, and the news of the “miracle” spread over the city and the surrounding countryside. With the Hebrew preoccupation with angelology, it is quite natural that a legend was born. In fact, we find this spurious teaching in the text of the older New Testament translations, though not in the earliest manuscripts. That doubtful addition reads, “An angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the waters, so that whoever first came in after the stirring might be healed.”

As a result, hundreds of people came from the countryside to the Pool of Bethesda to be healed. Five porticoes were even built so that the infirm could keep out of the sun as they waited for the stirring of the waters. Probably someone thrilled with what was taking place donated the money.

What a pathetic sight the crowd around the pool must have been! According to verse 3, “a great number of disabled people” were there. Not just a few, but hundreds of people gathered around those porches at Bethesda. The sick, including those with undiagnosed diseases. Those who were so feverish they had to stay in the shade because the heat of the sun was unbearable. The blind—some congenitally blind, some newly blind. The sightless huddled close to the edge of the pool, hoping someone would lead them into the pool when the waters quivered. The withered. And the lame, who could not make it to the pool on their own. Their only hope to reach the waters was to crawl over others weaker than themselves.

What a pitiful crowd of broken humanity! It does not take much imagination to see those withered, wasted bodies, to smell the stench, to see the filth, and to sense the pathos of the old and young among that impotent, suffering humanity. It had to be a horrible, distressing sight—except for one thing—Jesus was there.

On this occasion our Lord was alone. Without his disciples Jesus could virtually travel incognito. He stood unnoticed, and his tender eyes surveyed those miserable heaps of humanity around the pool. Finally his gaze rested on one of the worst cases, a man who had been confined to his bed for thirty-eight years. He had never been able to reach the pool in time. But a few seconds later this man’s life was changed. John 5:1–18 describes what happened, how the Lord engaged him in conversation, and how in just moments that man stood—stood—amidst that crowd, completely whole, carrying his bed on his shoulder.

What do you think happened after this man was healed? Do you think he calmly rose to his feet, straightened his robe, and said, “Oh, yes, my bed” as he calmly rolled it up and walked off nonchalantly toward his home? I do not think there’s a ghost of a chance that it was like that.

In the third chapter of the Book of Acts, there is a healing parallel to this healing in John. Peter found a lame man by the Beautiful Gate. He was begging. Peter responded, “ ‘Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God” (vv. 6–8).

What a scene that must have been! The man was leaping into the air! I think he shouted a few “hallelujahs” too!

With a little sanctified imagination I can picture what happened at the Pool of Bethesda. If this man’s personality was anything like mine, when he stood to his feet and felt those muscles become firm and his legs enlarge, he let out a shout that rippled the water. He began to jump and say, “Look at me! Thirty-eight years a cripple, but now I’m healed!” Maybe he did that, maybe he did not, but I doubt that he was nonchalant.

The story of this man’s healing is a marvelous story, and a true one, and there is much more in it than meets the eye. From a careful study of it we can learn much about ourselves and our Savior. Since we have already seen what our Savior did for this man, we need to see what he required and what our Savior got out of it.

What Christ Required of the Paralytic (vv. 6–9)

The first question Christ asked the paralytic was, “Do you want to get well?” That is quite a question. The man had been crippled for thirty-eight years, and Jesus had the nerve to ask, “Do you want to get well?” That sounds like a ridiculous question.

I have learned over the years there are some questions you just do not ask. For instance, when I am out in a boat looking for a spot where the fish are biting, I have learned never to ask fishermen if they are catching anything. If they are, they will say, “I’ve had a few bites,” and if they are not catching anything, they will resent the question. Besides, fishermen by nature are not truthful. Similarly, you never ask a football coach, even during his most successful season and even if next Saturday’s game is against the worst football team in the conference, if he is going to win the game. He will invariably give a glowing description of the opponents, saying their record is not indicative of their ability. He will follow that with a recitation of the injuries on his team. Finally he will make some statements like “We’ll have to get off the ball a little quicker,” or “We’ve got to learn to execute,” and to conclude he’ll utter the cliché, “If everything comes together, we’ll play competitive football.”

I have also learned that when you see a car stalled at the side of the road and a man leaning under the hood, you do not say, “Is there something wrong with your car?” You are liable to hear something like “No, I’m just under here hugging my carburetor.”Or something worse!

And I must confess that in all my years of hospital visitation I have never stood at the side of a bed and said, “Do you want to get well?” I do not think I would have asked it of the paralytic either. If I had, I can imagine his response. “I have been confined to this loathsome shell for years. When the water ripples, I claw my way, and I crawl over others, but I have never been able to get to the water. Someone always shoves me back. I’ve been lying here because I want to be healed—and you ask me if I want to be healed?” A cruel, ridiculous question. But not when it comes from the lips of our Lord.

I believe that is the question Christ asks all of us. I believe it summarizes the great problem in our lives. Do you want to be well? Few things hamper the gracious work of Christ in our lives more than our response to this question.

We hear the promises of God, and at first our hearts are warmed and we respond to them, or at least we think we respond to them. But then we hear the promises again, and we again want to be warmed. This cycle continues in our life, but nothing ever happens. Why? Because although we think and say we want to be healed, in our heart of hearts we really do not. That is why this miracle is so relevant and important to us today.

For the paralytic, Jesus’ query was an eminently significant question. J. A. Findley tells us that in the Middle East—and some places today—a man who was healed would lose a good living. So, in fact, there are invalids whose situations are preferable. As the crippled man lay by the Pool of Bethesda, he was surrounded by misery and sorrow. But if the man looked out from those shaded porticoes, he saw men and women out in the sun carrying their burdens and working. He knew that if he were healed, his life would take on larger responsibilities. And so the question the Lord asked was very relevant: Do you really want to be healed?

That is a great question concerning the salvation of the soul. Pascal, the French philosopher, put it this way: “Men often mistake the imagination for the heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.” In other words, the thought of being converted is what many imagine to be conversion. Why does Pascal believe this? Because Christ and what he offers look so delicious from a distance, and yet when we look at it closely, it may appear in an entirely different light. We begin to see that Christ is an aggressive, requiring Lord. In my experiences I have seen people attend church, even sitting on the front row. They are very respectful, very excited about what they are hearing. They are not converted, but they are listening to the gospel. But there comes a time when they realize they do not want to be healed and they leave. Not to another faith or to another church. They just leave. They do not want to be healed.

That is the great question we must face. If you are not a believer, I am responsible to pass on to you Christ’s question: Do you want to get well? Do you really want to be healed? Do you truly want to be forgiven and made new? Because if you want to, you can be healed right now. If you remain unconverted even though you have a knowledge of Christ in your life, it is because you choose to be lame. You really do not want to be healed. You haven’t said yes to that tenderly aggressive question from Jesus Christ.

For those of us who are already Christians, there is also a question we must keep asking ourselves. Do we really know our own hearts? As we get to know ourselves, we find more and more that needs healing. But the question is, do we really want to be healed?

I am speaking primarily of bitterness, unresolved conflicts, and things that lie hidden within us. Sometimes when we experienced these things, we were aware of them but didn’t deal with them. We cauterized them, layered them over. But they are realities within us, and they do affect our lives. Even though we cannot put a finger on them, they take their toll. As a result we do not feel God’s power; we do not feel the authenticity of grace we know we ought to feel. We know we should be joyful in all the things we confess and while we are doing the right things—reading the Word and praying—but we have little power or inner peace. The question remains, do we really want to be healed? Do we really want to have those things resolved? I believe with all my heart that if we do and if we take the time to ask God to do his work within us, he will reveal to us the things that must be washed away—the refuse, the filth, the sin.

So the question that Christ asked the paralyzed man, the seemingly unnecessary, ridiculous question, was relevant for him and for us. It is the most insistent question people face if they do not know Christ, and it remains relevant in the lives of Christians. Do we want his continued healing? What a blessed thing to have the release, fullness, and joy that come with having things cleared with God, with being healed.

The paralytic wanted to be healed but responded, “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me” (v. 7). He desired to be healed, but he realized he could not do it himself. Thirty-eight years of impotence, of not being able to get to the edge of the pool even though he longed to, had convinced him he was paralyzed, that he needed outside help. If it were only that way with our spiritual paralysis, but we just can’t see it. So we imagine that although we want to be healed, there is something we can do for ourselves. Like the Burger King crowd, we want to have it our way. We want to fix ourselves.

The paralytic wanted to be healed, and he knew he could not cure himself. The third requirement for him was faith. When he realized he could not heal himself, he looked in obedience to Christ, trusting in him. The man stood up, and suddenly he found that his legs straightened out and he had the power to walk! We too, if we look to Christ in faith, can find the power in our lives to do the things we could never do otherwise. In Old Testament times faith healed those who were bitten by the fiery serpents. They were about to die but were obedient and dragged themselves out to look at a serpent impaled on a pole, and they then experienced healing power in their lives.

This is the progression Christ demands of us. First, do we want to be healed? And if we do, do we realize that we cannot heal ourselves? Lastly, are we willing to move to him, to cast ourselves upon him? With that faith comes joy. The paralytic experienced this. Whether he danced physically or not, he danced spiritually, leaping for joy in the Lord at the healing of his paralysis.

There are very few people whom I admire more than a woman known to us all—Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic who was at one time very bitter against God. But now she has the most liberated spirit—joyous, bounding, dancing. In one of her books she talks about how someday she is going to be glorified, and it is a great statement of faith.

Being “glorified”—I know the meaning of that now. It’s the time after my death when I’ll be on my feet dancing.

And of course one day she will. She will have a new body, and she will be dancing. But the beautiful thing is that though she has not yet been healed physically, the paralysis of her soul is gone. Her words are dancing words. Every one of us can experience the same thing. We can be touched by faith, relieved of paralysis, and liberated to rejoice in God. All it takes is the willingness to be healed. Do you really want to be healed? Realize that you cannot do it yourself. Reach out to Christ in faith.

What Christ Got Out of It (vv. 10–16)

The other important question implicit in this passage is, what did Jesus get out of all of this? The paralytic got a great deal, but what did Jesus get out of it?

I would say that he got one thing out of it, and only one thing—a saved sinner. That’s all. Many of the commentators are very hard on this man. Leon Morris says he was an “unpleasant creature.” That is not a very nice thing to say, but I think that although that description may be a little harsh, the man really was not a very noble man. Verse 14 intimates that the reason he was paralyzed was because of some sin early in his life—maybe as a child or a young man. Verse 7 implies he was the kind of man no one wanted to put into the pool. He had been there all that time, and no one would help him into the pool. Maybe it was because he was so disagreeable. I may have to answer to him for that assumption, but I would also point out that we never find him thanking Jesus. He may have, but it is not recorded here that he did. And I think, above all, that we see his character as he goes out to the censorious, nit-picking Pharisees who are after Jesus’ hide. Did he stick up for Jesus? Not really. He did not say a good word for him but just said Jesus was the man who healed him.

Still, to his credit, Jesus found him in the temple. But the words that Jesus spoke, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (v. 14), might indicate that our Lord was not very confident this man was going to follow through with the new realities he had experienced. Through it all this individual seems to be a weak man without spiritual conviction.

Then again, we may find that to be a great comfort. When we honestly look at ourselves, we say, “Oh, why did Jesus save me?” And after we have known Christ for a while and have come to see our inconsistencies and lack of thanksgiving, we marvel that he did not drop us along the way.

I cannot pray, except I sin;

I cannot preach, but I sin;

I cannot administer, nor receive

the holy sacrament, but I sin.

My very repentance needs to be repented of;

And the tears I shed need washing

in the blood of Christ.

That is true. Those are the words of William Beveridge, but they are my words too. The amazing thing is that all Christ got out of his work was you and me—a bunch of saved sinners. But one day we are going to be glorious and radiant.

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish; but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

One day, paralytics all, we will be dancing with him. What a time that is going to be!

Now, when Jesus did this miracle on the Sabbath and commanded the paralytic to carry his bed on the Sabbath, he widened the breach between the Pharisees and himself. At that time the Pharisees decided they were going to have to do away with Jesus. So humanly speaking, our Lord sealed his death warrant with this miracle. It sent him to the cross. He loved the paralytic that much. He loves that much.

Matthew 13:45–46, two marvelous verses, tell us: “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he had found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” To Jesus, the paralytic was the pearl of great value. We are the pearl of great price. Was that paralytic really a pearl? Maybe he was the beginning of one, a bit of sand, an irritation, an ignoble, faltering irritant to many people. But what happens to a bit of sand within an oyster? In the confines of its environment it is smoothed over with mother of pearl. In fact, I think the bigger and more irregular the irritation, the more chance the mother of pearl will surround that bit of sand until finally it becomes smooth. We are pearls of great price. We may be in a rough state now, but one day we are going to be the bride of Christ—beautiful, wonderful to the eye, pleasing to God in every way. The pearl of great price.

What do we need to experience this? The realization that we can’t make ourselves into pearls. The realization that we have been lying here all these years in our sin and we cannot do it. Also, whether we are sixty, forty, thirty, or whatever, we have to want to get well. If you are not a Christian, the question is, do you really wish to get well? If you are a Christian, the question is still, do you wish to get well? Do you wish to be conformed to him? If so, reach out in faith. Obedience will bring the strength you need. May God grant this for each of us. May his Word bear fruit in our lives in power.1

1 R. Kent Hughes, John: That You May Believe, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 145–152.

(1) The Cure of a Lame Man (5:1–9a)

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes.3 In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed.5 One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years.6 When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.”8 Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.”9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked.

An unnamed feast of the Jews provided the occasion for Jesus to leave behind his popularity in Galilee (4:45, 54) and go up to Jerusalem as a prophet with “no honor in his own country” (4:44). In both places, his word brought life to those as good as dead (4:50; 5:8), but in the pagan north such healing prompted faith (4:53) whereas in the pious south it provoked persecution (5:16)—and that during a sacred season of religious celebration!

The description of the site in Jerusalem where this incident occurred is difficult to understand, both because the ancient manuscripts exhibit numerous variations in the wording of v. 2 and because any text chosen still leaves the syntax ambiguous. The RSV translation assumes that there was a pool with the Hebrew name Beth-zatha which had five porticoes around it, and that this pool was located by the Sheep Gate. The NEB translation, however, assumes that “Sheep” was the name of the body of water rather than of a nearby gate (there is no word for gate in Gr.), that it was the building “with five colonnades” rather than the pool which had the Hebrew name, and that this name should be spelled “Bethesda” (as in the RSV marg.) rather than Beth-zatha.

On all three of these differences the more recent NEB translation is probably to be preferred.19 It seems likely that just north of the Temple area was located a large “Sheep-Pool,” so named in folklore either because it lay on the route of the sheep destined for sacrifice at the Temple or because a red coloration of its water suggested the blood of animal slaughter. To this twin basin (one side for men, the other for women), used perhaps by Temple pilgrims for ritual lustrations, Herod had added five elaborate porticoes which surrounded the four sides and divided the two sections across the middle. In the time of Jesus, this entire structure may well have been the most impressive public bath in Jerusalem.

Because the waters were famous for their curative powers, however, the pool had attracted a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. One man who lay beside the ornate columns near the edge of the pool had been ill for thirty-eight years-the length of Israel’s wilderness wanderings (Deut. 2:14). With characteristic sensitivity (cf. 2:25), Jesus recognized that he had been lying there a long time; and so he sought to engage the will and to quicken hope with the question, Do you want to be healed? A sense of need, however acute, is never sufficient as the sole impetus to seeking help; for need coupled with frustration can quickly lead to futility as a settled way of life. Only when desperation is linked with desire does a person seek help at whatever risk may be involved. Further, illness may allow one to escape from responsibility, or it may give one the attention which he might otherwise miss. It is far from axiomatic that every sick person really wants to be well.

The forlorn answer of the invalid suggested how easily despair could have become second nature. Not only was he physically helpless, but apparently he was bereft of friends as well for he had no man to help him into the pool when the sudden stirring of the water invited an immediate response. As a result, while he struggled to drag his body into the water someone else not invalid or lame would step down first. It is interesting to observe that none of those who received a cure in this fashion either remained or returned to help those less fortunate companions with whom they had so recently languished.

Despite so many disappointments, at least the man had stayed there and continued to try for a cure. Jesus challenged this spark of hope with the command, Rise, take up your pallet, and walk (cf. Mark 2:9–12). Whereas the water about him was only of limited potency (cf. 4:7–15), true restoration could come in obedience to this word of a stranger (cf. 4:50). Nor had Jesus misjudged the intensity of his longings. Lacking any tangible proof that the surge of strength which he now felt would be adequate, and without any favorable omen from the waters which had fascinated him so long, the cripple nevertheless leaped to his feet, took up his pallet and walked away.

(2) The Criticism of the Jews (5:9b–18)

Now that day was the sabbath.10 So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet.”11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me said to me, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk.’ ”12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk’?”13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.14 Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall 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 persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the sabbath.17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working still, and I am working.”18 This was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal with God.

For the Jews,the healing of a lame man had an entirely different significance because the day on which it occurred was the sabbath.This observance served both as a weekly remembrance of God’s rest on the seventh day of creation (Ex. 20:11) and as a ritual anticipation of the promised rest of the messianic age (cf. Heb. 4:1–10). The Hebrew word shabbath meant a cessation of activity or abstinence from labor. Thirty-nine main classes of work were prohibited in the Mishnah, the last of which was “taking out aught from one domain to another” (Shabbath 7:2; cf. Jer. 17:19–27). Since these regulations were probably enforced during the New Testament period, it was not lawful for the man to carry his pallet on the sabbath.

So concerned were his accusers with this breach of the Jewish legal tradition that they showed no interest in the reason for the man’s behavior or in the good fortune which had suddenly overtaken him (cf. Mark 3:1–6). Obviously intimidated by the threats of the religious leadership, the man quickly shifted responsibility for his actions to Jesus, yet in so doing bore indirect witness to the one who had healed him. After 38 years of helplessness he was ill-prepared to argue with trained theologians over the elaborate sabbath regulations which they had developed (contrast 9:24–34). This was especially the case since he did not even know who had healed him (cf. 9:12, 25, 36), Jesus having withdrawn from the excited crowd that thronged the porticoes around the pool (cf. v. 41).

Perhaps because the man had been charged with sin as a sabbath lawbreaker, he later made his way to the temple where Jesus (deliberately? cf. 9:35) found him and reminded him of his cure: See, you are well! In gratitude for this divine gift the man was enjoined to sin no more; i.e., he should not let the bitter memory of 38 tragic years continue to separate him from God. Bad as it had been to lie on a mat for most of his life, it would be even worse to be spiritually deformed, for God does not judge sickness, but he does judge sin. Notice that Jesus was just as concerned over whether a person were a cripple on the inside as on the outside. The man, however, apparently was more concerned about the accusation which had been leveled against him by the religious authorities, and so he went away in fear or confusion to tell the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

Now that the instigator of this sabbath infraction had been identified, the Jews began to persecute Jesus, not merely for a single offense but because he repeatedly (as suggested by the imperfect tense of the Greek verb) did this sort of thing on the sabbath. How could an unknown and unaccredited “young rebel” be allowed to free men from the restraint of those venerable laws that had shaped the very character of Jewish life for centuries? Since society never knows how far a lawbreaker intends to take his freedom from accepted conventions, the safest course is to suppress him entirely before the fragile system of public order is threatened with collapse.

In responding to this attack, Jesus did not defend himself by contending that he had broken no sabbath laws. Rather, he turned the tables by insisting that he was doing the very tilings on the sabbath that God himself did and therefore was observing the day better than his antagonists! Jewish theologians realized that God’s creative activity had not stopped when he “rested” on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2). The rabbis taught that the works of divine providence continued unabated on the sabbath (e.g., rain, birth, death). Philo advanced a more subtle argument to the effect that God could actually labor while “at rest” since his work did not make him weary (On the Cherubim, 86–90). Elsewhere he contended that God, having finished the creation of mortal things, began on the seventh day to shape things “more divine” (Allegorical Interpretation, I, 5–6). Jesus may have alluded to such notions in the affirmation, My Father is working still (i.e., even on the sabbath).

The distinctive feature in this rebuttal was not some novel view of the sabbath but the linking of his own labors as coordinate and continuous with those of God: and I am working (too). By thus identifying himself with the One who had given the sabbath and its laws, Jesus dared to put himself beyond the reach of the established legal system. The Jews immediately sensed in this argument an implicit claim to be equal with God, a conclusion which seemed confirmed by the way in which he called God his own Father. Therefore, they sought all the more to kill him as one guilty of blasphemy.1

1 William E. Hull, “John,” in Luke–John, ed. Clifton J. Allen, Broadman Bible Commentary (Broadman Press, 1970), 261–264.

5:1–18 The healing of a lame man

The feast of the Jews in v 1 is unnamed. If it was the Passover, this could indicate that the total period of the ministry exceeded three years. It seems that the reason why a feast is mentioned is to account for Jesus’ presence in Jerusalem, although John stresses several feasts in the ministry of Jesus. There have been excavations of a double pool in the north-east quarter of the city which is thought to be the pool described here as being near the Sheep Gate. There are variations of the name, but Bethesda is the best attested. The most important detail is the number of the five colonnades, whose existence archaeology has confirmed. These areas would hold a great number of people waiting to take advantage of the medicinal waters. The additional text which appeared in vs 3–4 is not well attested and is rightly omitted from the niv (see mg.). Nevertheless, v 7 confirms that there was some movement of the waters, possibly due to springs. The fact that John mentions that the lame man had been there for thirty-eight years suggests that this was common knowledge. He was probably notorious for the time he had been begging there. The word learned (6) implies that Jesus had been informed by the bystanders. The question Do you want to get well? may have been intended to jolt the man out of his apathy, but the answer does not reveal any faith on the man’s part. Clearly he thought in rather magical terms, as v 7 shows, for he believed the commonly held view that only the first to get into the water had any chance of healing. He seems to have thought Jesus’ question not worth the answering. It must be conceded, however, that his immediate response to Jesus’ command to walk was surprisingly prompt.

The problem for the Jews at first was not the healing, but the fact that it had happened on the Sabbath. The carrying of the mat was considered an act of work. According to the Mishnah, a couch could be carried only if it had a man on it. At this point it was the man who was held to be at fault, but in vs 16–18 it was Jesus. The discussion between the healed man and the Jews sheds light on the ignorance of the man, who had no idea of the identity of his healer (13), and the obstinacy of the authorities, whose chief concern was the ignoring of their rules. There is an implied contrast here between the compassion of Jesus for the poor man and the lack of interest in the man on the part of the Jews. Jesus’ withdrawal (13) followed his consistent policy in this gospel of avoiding popular acclaim.

Do the words of Jesus (14) suggest that the man’s illness was the result of a specific sin? Even if the answer is ‘Yes’, this would not imply that all physical illness has a specific moral cause. However, it may be that Jesus was warning about a moral lameness which would be worse than the physical lameness from which the man had just been delivered. The imperative is in the present tense with the sense, ‘Do not continue to sin’. Why did the man at once go and inform the Jews, knowing their hostility? It showed little appreciation of the benefit Jesus had brought him but reflects rather a slavish sense of duty.

The incident led into a statement by Jesus of his relationship to the Father. The Jews’ attitude sharpened into persecution (16). But Jesus used the circumstances to testify to the Father’s work. The connection of thought seems to be that the healing was a divine act and was not, therefore, subject to human rules. In this gospel there is the closest relationship between the works of Jesus and the works of God. V 17 concisely sums up the mission of Jesus. To the Jewish mind the idea of anyone making himself equal with God would have been a more serious offence than breaking the Sabbath law (18), for it would have challenged the basic belief in monotheism.

Popular debate today tends to focus on the evidence, or otherwise, for physical healing, rather than on its source. Thus the Jews of Jesus’ time and the media of today avoid the central question by being taken up with details of secondary importance.1

1 Donald Guthrie, “John,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 1035–1036.

Bethesda

“Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water” (vv. 2, 3).

The porches spoken of in the text were once places of luxurious indulgence; rich, self-indulgent people were in the habit of using them for purposes of self-enjoyment. They lingered there, luxuriating in ease and quiet and pleasure. In process of time the porches became hospitals, and in these hospitals lay a great multitude of people who had lost their power—power of sight, power of limb, power of brain, power of hearing—some kind of power; and there they waited for the moving of the water. There are gathering places of human pain, and want, and sorrow. Say that all the pain in the world is scattered over the greatest possible surface, it is still there, and still a fact—for the man who has mind enough to take in the fact—that this pain, though widely diffused as to area, still exists. But there are gathering places, focuses of suffering. We do not see them in walking down the public highroads; we see nothing of them, but they are just off at one side a little. If you would turn down a back street and open some door, there you would see numbers, almost multitudes, of suffering, sorrowing, dying creatures. It does us good, now and then, just to look into one of those places; it makes us sober, it makes us thankful, it sometimes makes us sad. But think of sorrow focalised, of pain, suffering, distress brought to a head—a throng of sufferers. Surely the place would be a place of weeping! Such a place is described in the text. The people were a great multitude. Sorrow has always been in the majority. There is hardly one healthy man on the face of the earth. I think I may go further, and declare that there is not a man in perfect health in existence. Pain has always been in the majority. It is a world of pain! Sometimes when we are inclined to be a little verbally poetic we say, “Surely no; it is not a vale of tears; it is a vale of light, of beauty, of song!” Thou didst speak in thy haste, my friend. It is, now’ that I have seen more of it, a vale of tears, and man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward!

A great multitude of folk represented a great multitude of diseases. Understand that the people referred to in this census of sorrow were not afflicted with one affliction. They were blind, halt, withered, and had “all the ills that flesh is heir to.” Some painstaking student has counted some thousands of diseases to which the human frame is subject. I cannot undertake now, quoting from memory, to say how many thousands; but I give it you on good authority that diseases have been counted by the thousand. But let us say one thousand. Think of there being a thousand ways of taking a man to pieces; a thousand ways of whipping him to the grave. Think of God having a thousand scourges by which he can lay his hand of punishment and trial upon the sinner! It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! Viewed in the light of this fact, health is a mystery, not disease. Think of a ship having to go over waters, where there are so many sunken rocks, or sandbanks, or whirlpools, or other impediments, difficulties, and dangers; the mystery is that it makes headway at all. Have you fire? I can run away from it. Water? I can escape inland. But who can wholly deliver himself from the hand of the Almighty? He can smite the head and the foot, the strong limb, the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the thinking brain; he can cover the skin with blotch and plague and death! Oh, who can escape the living One? My friend, hast thou health? It is a mystery; it is the beginning and the basis of true enjoyment. Without it life is a burden, and only by the highest ministries of divine grace can pain itself be said to be a discipline and a hope.

The world is an hospital, the whole earth is an asylum. Understand, that the man who is, popularly speaking, in the robustest health to-day may be smitten before the setting of the sun with a fatal disease. In the midst of life we are in death; our breath at best is in our nostrils. Man respires and cannot get his breath again, and. he is gone—we call him dead. Life is a perpetual crisis. We are always walking on the cobweb string; it is snapped at any moment. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Blessed is that servant who shall be found when his Lord cometh, waiting and watching and working. Great God, we are all waiting, doing nothing! There they were waiting, groaning, sighing. That was a prayer meeting, if you please. A sigh was a prayer, a groan was an entreaty, a cry of distress was a supplication. All the people in the porches were waiting. Are we not all doing the same thing? The thing we want most seems not to have come yet—it never does come. We shall have it to-morrow, and in the inspiration of this hope we are comparatively strong and joyful to-day. To-morrow comes, and the cry is repeated, “It will come to-morrow.” Thus God trains us by hope and by expectation. “Man never is, but always to be blessed.” We are waiting for help, waiting till we get a little round, waiting till the ship comes in, waiting for sympathy, waiting for a friend without whose presence there seems to be nobody on the face of the earth, waiting for light, waiting for relief. There are two methods of waiting: The method which means patience, hope, content, assurance that God will in his own due course and time redeem his promises and make the heart strong; the other method of waiting is a method of fretfulness, and vexation, and impatience, and distrust, and complaining,—and that kind of thing wears the soul out.

“Waiting for the moving of the waters.” Every life has some opportunity given to it. “There is a tide in the affairs of men.” Every one of us has had a door opened, has seen the index-finger lifted, has beheld an angel beckoning. Hast thou not? Look, then, the finger is here now, the angel present to-day! We are always living in expectation. Expectation will save us from vulgarity and lift us from the dust; will mean heaven in promise, in reversion. We do not know who are suffering. There are people suffering who are not in the porches, not in public places; and there are people suffering who have a way of keeping in their breath, and saying nothing about it to anybody. It is a suffering world. Some suffer in fatness and plenty; others suffer in leanness and want. A minister came to me the other day and said, “I am laid aside; the physician says there is a poison being manufactured within me which is taking away my life.” Another minister wrote to me, “The physicians have ordered me to Germany to drink waters which are efficacious for my disease.” Physicians sometimes order a man into Germany who has not a penny in his pocket, who has several little children that call him father, and who, when he ceases to preach, must cease to eat! I have sometimes been grimly amused at doctors who order a man who has perhaps eighteen shillings a week to drink port wine thrice a day, and to take nourishing things, and in other ways to take care of himself. It is a sad world. There are not five porches in it. It is one porch, and there is nothing in it but death till the angel comes or the Son of God!

“For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had” (v. 4).

So troubled waters are sometimes healing waters. Not the little puddles you make with your own foot, but the troubles that God makes by his angels and by a thousand ministries, by which he interposes in the affairs of men. I thank God for some troubles in my life; they were the beginning of health and hope and joy. O aged one, when you look back you see now, do you not, that the trouble began it—began your better life, made you mellow, chastened you, ripened you, took the rough tone out of your voice, and infused a new music into your expression? Listen! The favoured ones who were upon the mount of light, called Transfiguration Hill, feared as they entered into the cloud; and a voice came out of the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.” What if thou hast heard a voice in the cloud? What if thou hast met God in the troubled deep or in the storm? Thou hast had interviews with God which could not have been held if everything had been in a state of hush and quietness, and the people miles away could have heard the tones of your respective voices. What if God has created collateral noises that he may the more quietly speak to thee; finding in publicity secrecy, in the very tumult of the tempest a little space of quietness and stillness, in which to talk his deepest things to thee? I do not deprecate trouble; I have known it. You may take hold of trouble by the wrong end; you may abuse trouble, or you may make a place of weeping a place of thought, religious review, Christian vow, and anticipation. So all have trouble? “No.” It is indeed a very young person who says, “I have no troubles.” Well, poor little child, we know’ that, but you may have them by-and-by; and we are now talking not about this little day only, but about all the days, for all the days are sometimes spoken of by wise men as thy day—The day. As if life were only a flash, having one rising of the sun and one setting of the same.

“And a certain man was there which had an infirmity thirty and eight years” (v. 5).

In all classes of people there is a special man. I am groaning over something I have had ten years; and there is a man behind me that has had something for twenty-five years and never made half the noise about it. I have only one loaf in the house. Another man says he has not tasted bread for three days. There is always somebody worse off than you are. This is the beauty of pastoral visitation. If I were now addressing a consistory of preachers I should say: This is one of the blessings of pastoral visitation; when you are a little inclined towards grumbling and dissatisfaction and hypercriticism—about domesticities say—you go out for an afternoon into back slums, into dark, poor places, into hospitals, or infirmaries, or other asylums, and visit the poor in their houses,—see what a tea you make when you come back! Oh, it has been medicine to me many a time! I have just got a little dissatisfied with things; this was not smooth enough, and that was not fine enough, and there was a little black upon the toast at one corner, and life was becoming such a pain to me. I have gone out for an hour, and come back without seeing the little black upon the toast. Ah, if you could have seen this man of eight-and-thirty years’ experience in suffering, you would have felt that God teaches us by contrast, and shows that even extremes may have great social influences for good connected with themselves. Richard Baxter exclaimed, who had been an invalid more than half a century, “Thank God for fifty years’ discipline!” Some of us are so coddled we cannot spell the word discipline, we have to ask somebody what it means: thirty-and-eight years, and he had not got used to it; he was still there, still wanting relief. We cannot get used to pain. The mystery is that we cannot get used to its cause. We cannot get so accustomed to pain as to care nothing for its presence, but we get accustomed to the sin that makes it. Without sin there is no pain. Sin opened the door, and death rushed in, and death will never go out again. He will be abolished, but he will never go out. So we shall have no controversy about the matter; because I should instantly step into the witness-box and settle the case, so far as one fact is concerned. Do we not all talk more about the effect than about the cause? We talk much of pain; do we ever talk of sin?

“When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?” (v. 6.)

When did Jesus ever say to a man, “Wilt thou be made sick?” The physician is not sent to those that be whole, but to those that are sick. “The Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” Wherever Jesus went he sought the piece that was lost; he lighted a candle and searched the house diligently, and said, “I am seeking the lost piece,” that he might put it in its place again. He is going up and down the earth to-day looking at us, his poor, broken-hearted, wounded, dying sinners, and saying to each of us, “Wilt thou be made whole?” and the very asking of the question has healing in it. Some people ask about our sicknesses and make us worse, and we are very sorry they ever came near us to make any inquiry. Other people ask how we are, and we seem to be almost better by the kind, gentle tone in which their inquiry is addressed to us. “Wilt thou be made whole?” is the inquiry of Jesus Christ to every one of us. Lord, heal me.

Let the man now speak for himself,—

“Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me” (v. 7).

See the selfishness of pain! When was pain magnanimous? When was suffering self-forgetful? It is here we come again upon the subtle working of sin. Sin works pain; pain is in our frame as sin. Does anybody say to this man who has been lying in pain thirty years, “Now you are worse than I am, I shall give you a turn this time”? Does any man say, “You have been ill thirty years, and I have been ill only seven years; you shall have my turn. The moment I see a ripple upon the pool I shall put you in, and wait till the next movement of the waters”? No. Is there not an ingratitude sometimes, an ingratitude even on the side of health? The man had been lying there a long time; he had suffered from his disease eight-and-thirty years. Great numbers of people had been healed; did any man of them say, “I will stand by you now that I am healed myself, and you shall have a turn”? See how blessing, unsanctified, may but increase our selfishness. One of them might have remained; but who can be grateful when health has been restored, when strength comes back again? Is there not a tendency to do the old deeds, and to be as atheistic as ever? See to it that our privileges do not deepen our atheism!

“Jesus said unto him, Rise, take up thy bed and walk” (v. 8).

He has all power; his instruments are not secondary, but primary; he speaks, and it stands fast; he commands, and it disappears; he breathes, and the sun is dim; he breathes again, and the sun increases in lustre; he says, “Let there be,” and there is. Jesus is Sovereign, Jesus is King.

Let us apply this whole thing to the matter of salvation. It was an angel that troubled the water. It is the Son of God that provides the fountain opened in the house of David for sin and for uncleanness. The water was moved at a certain time only. This atonement of the Son of God is open to our approaches night and day. Whosoever first stepped in was the case at Bethesda; but here the world may go in all at once. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. Let us go to the fountain, and one thing we shall never find there,—we shall never find at the fountain of God’s grace one dead man!1

1 Joseph Parker, Mark-John, vol. 21–22, Preaching through the Bible (Baker Publishing Group, 2018), 514–520.