John 5:1–18

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.

5:14–18 The Maker. Verse 14 mentions a slightly new time and place for the interaction to follow: “afterward” provides the time and “in the temple” describes the place. Under the old covenant, those with physical deformity could not serve as priests (Lev. 21:17–23), and those with certain conditions had to remain outside the camp. Any kind of physical imperfection was a result of the fall, the ramifications of which could not be tolerated in the presence of God. But now this man who had been physically debilitated for thirty-eight years could enter the presence of God at the temple. He had been restored to wholeness by Jesus, and he entered God’s presence to worship at the temple.

Jesus found him in the temple and exclaimed to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14). Sin is cause for exclusion from God’s presence, and those who continue in unrepentant sin are eternally separated from God. Jesus made this man whole, enabling him to return to God’s presence, and now Jesus warns him not to continue in unrepentant sin lest he experience everlasting separation from God.

It is difficult to imagine that one who had been healed by Jesus would intend him harm, so perhaps the man reported Jesus to the Jews because he felt obligated to the authorities and did not realize their intentions against Jesus. In any case, his report leads to the authorities’ “persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath” (v. 16). The law is here turned against the Lawmaker: Jesus, being very God of very God, was the source of the commandment about the Sabbath, which ultimately finds its realization in the rest that Jesus will provide for those who trust him (Hebrews 3–4). And yet the Jews are so blind that they think it righteous to use God’s command to condemn incarnate God because of what he did on the Sabbath.

What is ironic and tragic about this is that the Sabbath itself concerns the wholeness God meant for his image-bearers to enjoy in his completed creation. Jesus exposes this irony: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). He asserts the fact that God the Father continues to work, and the context seems to imply that even though the Father rested on the seventh day of creation, Jesus is not constrained on the seventh day of each week. After all, the universe continues to be held together by God’s power on Sabbath days. Jesus adds to this that he too is working.

This understanding of the logic of Jesus’ assertion in verse 17 seems to be the Jews’ understanding as well: “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” (v. 18). In the opinion of the Jews, Jesus was in the wrong because of what he did on the Sabbath. The argument Jesus made in verse 17—that he had the right to do as he pleased on the Sabbath because God does as he pleases—did not persuade them that Jesus was innocent but rather convinced them that he was even more guilty. After all, in their view Jesus was not God, and anyone who claimed to be God was blaspheming. This is clearly how they understood Jesus.

Jesus created wholeness for the lame man and gave him instructions relieving him of his burdened condition, even as he used his new abilities to take up his bed and walk. Ironically, obeying the commands of Jesus is more of a fulfillment of the Sabbath than doing nothing. Obedience is restful.

The man then went into the temple in his restored state. The Jews, meanwhile, used God’s law to attack God’s Son. The Jews sought to persecute and kill the one John’s Gospel has identified as the Word incarnate. Clearly the Jews loved the commandment more than they loved the man who had been healed, and they clearly loved the commandment more than they loved the God who gave the commandment.