Do You Want to Be Healed?

After these things there is a feast of the Jews, and Jesus goes up to Jerusalem (John 5:1). John does not name the feast. He names the place. Near the Sheep Gate there is a pool called Bethesda, surrounded by five covered colonnades (John 5:2). Under them lies a great crowd of sick men: blind, lame, and withered (John 5:3).

That is the scene. The holy city is full for the festival, and in its shadow is a ward of the hopeless.

John 5:3-4 — A note on the water

Some later Bible manuscripts add a line about an angel who stirred the water from time to time, and about the first man in being healed. The earliest and best manuscripts of John do not have it, and most modern translations set it in a footnote or brackets. The likeliest explanation is that a copyist added it to explain what the sick man says a few verses later. You do not need it to read this passage. What matters is plain from the man’s own mouth: the people at that pool believed the stirring water could heal, and they waited for it (John 5:7).

John 5:5-6 — One man out of many

One man there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years (John 5:5). Jesus sees him lying there and knows he has already been in that condition a long time (John 5:6). John does not say anyone told Him. The Son who knew Nathanael under the fig tree and knew the Samaritan woman’s whole life knows this man’s years too (John 1:48, 2:25, 4:18).

Then Jesus asks him whether he wants to be made well (John 5:6).

Notice what John does not say. He does not say Jesus healed the crowd. He does not say this man called out, or believed, or was more deserving than the blind man beside him. Out of a great multitude, Jesus goes to one. John gives no reason in the man. The reason is in Christ.

That is how grace works throughout Scripture. God told Moses that His mercy is His own to give, to whomever He chooses (Exodus 33:19) (Romans 9:15-16). Jesus Himself said there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s day and many lepers in Elisha’s, yet the prophets were sent to a widow of Sidon and a Syrian commander (Luke 4:25-27). Later in this same chapter, Jesus says the Son gives life to the ones He chooses (John 5:21). Mercy that could be claimed would not be mercy.

John 5:7 — The answer he gives

The man does not answer the question. He explains his problem. He tells Jesus he has no one to put him into the pool when the water is stirred, and while he is still trying to get there, someone else goes down ahead of him (John 5:7).

Hear what that answer reveals. He has a method, and the method has failed him for decades. He has a theory about the water, and he has no help. He does not ask Jesus for anything. He does not know who Jesus is (John 5:13). His hope is still in the pool and in some man who might carry him there.

Every man without Christ answers the same way. Ask him whether he wants to be whole, and he will tell you about the system he is waiting on and the help he cannot find. He is not wrong that he is helpless. He is wrong about where help comes from (Psalm 121:1-2) (Jeremiah 17:5, 7).

John 5:8-9a — The command that carries its own power

Jesus does not carry him to the water. He does not wait for the stirring. He does not teach the man a better technique. He commands him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk (John 5:8).

A command to a man who cannot walk is either cruelty or creation. Here it is creation. At once the man is made well, picks up his mat, and walks (John 5:9).

The power to obey came with the word to obey. That is the pattern of the gospel. Lazarus did not decide to come out of the tomb before Jesus called him (John 11:43-44). On the first day God spoke light into the dark, and it obeyed (Genesis 1:3). God commands dead men to live, and the command gives the life it requires (Ezekiel 37:4-5, 10) (Ephesians 2:4-5). The man contributed nothing but his helplessness, and even his standing up was the fruit of the word.

Thirty-eight years of waiting ended in a moment, not because the man finally reached the water, but because the Lord of the water reached him. Nothing about the timing was an accident. The years by the pool were not wasted from Heaven’s side. God had appointed the day, the hour, and the Man who would walk past the colonnades and stop (Psalm 31:15) (Acts 17:26).