This man along with the soldiers boy in the previous episode are all but dead until Christ enters the picture. That’s what John wants us to see in Christ, and what he wants to see of ourselves outside of him.
You are -spiritually speaking- lame and crippled with no one to help you from the womb. You have no one to let you into the water that you be healed. The Christian is a beggar, and he lives the life of a beggar. Not from man, but from God.
