John 5:1-18 Notes

John 5:1–9 “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 Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 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.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked...

John 5:9–18 “9 ... Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So 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.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well!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 may happen to 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 were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” 18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

1-18 is the sign and the fallout

19-46 is the commentary from Jesus on the sign.

1: We are not told the feast probably because it does not matter to what John is about to tell. The other times he labels the feast because it has to do with the teaching and/or work that Jesus is about to perform.

4: This would be a truly sorry sight to be avoided by the mass of people. But Jesus goes to this deplorable area and sets it up as a theater of God’s loving provision to miserable people.

5: 38 years perhaps points to the hopelessness of Israel’s long wanderings

Deuteronomy 2:14 “14 And the time from our leaving Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the brook Zered was thirty-eight years, until the entire generation, that is, the men of war, had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them.”

From 7 we get the man’s total inability to help himself, then in 8 Jesus gives this man the ability to stand up on how own.

8: and at once is not used very commonly in this gospel.

9: Just as the 38 years revealed the gravity of the illness , so the man’s ability to carry his mat shows the completeness of the cure.

9: Now it was the sabbath marks a dramatic transition of joy for healing and serious blow back because of the sabbath.

10: They are referring to the following passages:

Exodus 20:10 “10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.”

Jeremiah 17:19–27 “19 Thus said the Lord to me: “Go and stand in the People’s Gate, by which the kings of Judah enter and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, 20 and say: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who enter by these gates. 21 Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. 22 And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers. 23 Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck, that they might not hear and receive instruction. 24 “ ‘But if you listen to me, declares the Lord, and bring in no burden by the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but keep the Sabbath day holy and do no work on it, 25 then there shall enter by the gates of this city kings and princes who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their officials, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And this city shall be inhabited forever. 26 And people shall come from the cities of Judah and the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin, from the Shephelah, from the hill country, and from the Negeb, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and frankincense, and bringing thank offerings to the house of the Lord. 27 But if you do not listen to me, to keep the Sabbath day holy, and not to bear a burden and enter by the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched.’ ””

Nehemiah 13:15 “15 In those days I saw in Judah people treading winepresses on the Sabbath, and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys, and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them on the day when they sold food.”

12: Notice they do not ask who it was that healed him, but they are only interested in their painful zealousness for their law. They even omit your "mat” since such a burden was hardly considered a burden.

These people are blind to what was displayed before them, a healing. instead in their blindness they just see their law broken. This theme of their blindness though they think they see is explicitly stated in:

John 9:39–41 “39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”

14: Jesus shows his concern beyond the physical to the very soul of this person.

Jesus is not telling him that he sinned 38 years ago to cause this and not to do it again. But instead, Jesus is telling him to stop his current lifestyle of sin, unless something worse (eternal damnation?) happens to him. Thus his calamity was a picture of what sin does to people, bringing them under the wrath of God, and the healing of Jesus is a picture of the life that Jesus brings to the soul, to no longer be under the wrath of God.

John 9:3 “3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Something worse is the final judgement which the sickness revealed:

John 5:29 “29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”

14: This man is using his new health to do something he could not do before, spend time in the temple.

15: The man tells them it was Jesus who healed, notice he does not do the same thing they do by not referring to the healing at all.

17: The day is not one of idleness but one of salvation (redemption and preservation) that the Father continued with Israel even to this day (they are still in the land).

18: Their hatred for Christ which lead the cross had to do with his lack of conformity to their law, and also his conformity, even as divine Son, to the Father. They rightfully saw in Jesus’ words the claim to divinity. Either he was a liar in need of death or told the truth deserving of belief and worship. They chose the former.

18 Although the Jews rightly see Jesus making a substantial claim about himself, they are blind in thinking Jesus is saying he is another competing god. Instead, as Jesus explains in the following, he is equal with God as a Son. Sameness yet distinction in person.

God works in providence even on sabbath, and Jesus is equating himself with working as well on sabbath, the needed work for creation.

The Jews use this and the fact that Jesus calls God his Father for the more serious charge of blasphemy which is what’s used to charge and crucify him, and the focus of discussion for the rest of this chapter.