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HG Wells, historian and author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds once commented: ‘I am an historian. I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history’.
Many agree that Jesus was a great man, perhaps the greatest teacher who has ever lived. Who would want to quarrel with his ethic, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’? Furthermore, the quality of his life was exemplary. But is he more than this?’
In the opening scene of John chapter 5 we are taken to a pool in Jerusalem that is most likely to be found today beside St Anne’s Church in the Arab quarter in the Old City.
Known in Aramaic as Bethzatha, it is a pool bounded by five porches or porticos. In Jesus’ day the waters in the pool, fed by distant springs, would regularly bubble up. It was reckoned there were special healing qualities when the waters were disturbed.
John notes the sad scene of the sick, the blind and the lame around the edges of the pool. One day Jesus approached a man there and asked, “Do you want to be made well?”. To which he received what seems to be an evasive reply, “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the waters stir”. He had been there thirty-eight years and seems to have become accustomed to the lifestyle.
“Get up. Pick up your bed and walk,” Jesus said. Unless one is absolutely sure their words have the power to restore life to paralysed limbs, it would be utter folly to say this. But Jesus had no doubts. Calmly and deliberately, he spoke. Instantly the man must have sensed Jesus’ extraordinary healing power at work. Without a word, he picked up his bed and walked.
We need to think about this. At the time I am writing, going back thirty-eight years would take us back to 1986. Assuming we were alive then, imagine how atrophied our muscles would be if we had not used them all that time. Yet this man now had the strength to get to his feet, bend down, pick up his bed and walk away with it.
In today’s world of computer design, a Hollywood film would digitally portray vitality surging down through the whole of the man’s body. The withered limbs would be taking on renewed shape and strength.
And if we had been there that day, we can only begin to imagine how astonished, perhaps dumbfounded, we would have been. We may have wanted to shout or, if we ourselves were disabled, we may have felt envious. We would certainly have been intrigued to find out more about Jesus.
But John portrays the high drama of this healing quite simply. There’s no ostentatious show. Jesus simply spoke. Furthermore, Jesus didn’t look for any expression of faith on the part of the man. He simply intervened and acted.
Now we mustn’t confuse this with any gracious act of God in healing someone who is sick today. The miracle that day was another sign that John records, pointing to the transcendent power of Jesus.
But John sounds an ominous warning: there were people around that pool that day who weren’t impressed. It was the Sabbath (5:9).
In verse 10 we read: So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’ ”
John’s expression, the Jews is a reference to the Jewish religious leadership. They weren’t in the least interested to know that someone who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years had been healed. They were only interested in insisting on keeping rules about the sabbath they themselves had developed. “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” they asked (5:12). The man didn’t know. Jesus had slipped into the crowd.
Jesus, in finding the man later in the temple, said to him: “See, you have been made well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
Jesus was saying that the man’s healing was permanent: it wasn’t a 24-hour wonder.
Furthermore, you have been made wellindicates the man had nothing to do with his restoration – it had come from an external greater power.
Jesus’ “Sin no more…” is a challenge to the man to consider the power that had made him well: his healing could only be attributed to the restorative power of the creator God. ‘Don’t sin in not giving thanks for God’s wonderful mercy to you today. Rather, ‘Rejoice in the Lord.’
Yet what did the man do when he found out who it was who had healed him? He reported Jesus to the Jewish leaders (5:15). John records their response in verse 16: Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.‘You don’t heal on the sabbath,’ they were saying. ‘And you certainly don’t encourage people to carry around their beds on the sabbath.’
To which Jesus responded: “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.
Jesus’ words exploded in their ears. They were furious. He was not only breaking the sabbath law – a capital offence – he was claiming to be equal with God. That was blasphemy. If they could swing it past Pilate, they’d hang him for this.
Many people say they believe in God; but who is this God they claim to know? Is he the God who is the eternal Father of the Lord Jesus?
The Jewish leaders misunderstood Jesus when they heard him say he was equal with God. They refused to bend their minds to understand his explanation.
Many today might agree that Jesus is a good teacher and a great example, but they’re not prepared to listen when he claims to be divinity who has come amongst us. Jesus wants us to know this: that he is the all-important One for everyone of us to know and to trust, to honor and to live for.
As John records, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life(3:16).
Prayer. Lord, open my eyes so that I may see the wonderful truth found in your Word – truth that enables me to know you and that gives me hope. Amen.
© John G. Mason
