John 5:1–47 · NIVAC

Original Meaning

The Crime (5:1–15)

THE STORY OPENS with Jesus coming to Jerusalem during a feast (which is Sabbath, 5:9) and arriving at a gate in the city’s northeast wall called the Sheep Gate.7 It is interesting that this northeast section of the walled city has continued to sponsor a sheep market one day per week just outside St. Stephen’s Gate. The NIV refers to the name of a pool there called in Aramaic “Bethesda,” but this has posed innumerable problems for the translator. Greek texts offer many alternatives for the site: Bethzatha, Bethsaida, Belzetha, and Bethesda; some suggest a new word, “Bethseta,” which means “house of sheep.”

The manuscript tradition is so divided it is clear that later scribes, who did not know the place, easily made errors and postulated corrections. Bethsaida, for instance, is likely a confusion with the city in Galilee. However in Qumran we have located a reference to “Beth ‘esda” [in its dual form, beth ‘esdatayin], which means “house of flowing.” Bethesda is the Greek transliteration of it. John refers to the word (lit.) as Hebrew, but throughout his Gospel he regularly means “Aramaic,” the familiar language of Jesus (19:13, 17, 20; 20:16). In Jewish literature, the words are interchangeable. Today this pool, complete with five porches, is located adjacent to the Church of St. Anne inside Jerusalem’s Old City.

We learn in the story that many people viewed the pool as a healing sanctuary (5:3). Such places were not uncommon in antiquity, and once a site was identified as a sanctuary of healing, the tradition was impossible to stop. Excavations at the site show that after the New Testament era, the pools continued to be used as an Asclepion (a healing sanctuary8), which confirms the tradition. One explanation for the crowd at the pool has slipped into the text (5:3b–4), which most of the manuscripts of John leave out (cf. the NIV); it was likely inserted to explain the “stirring of the waters” in 5:7. The people understood that occasionally an angel would descend and stir the water of the pool, and the first one to touch the water would be healed. The man Jesus meets had been ill for thirty-eight years (in 5:8–9 John indicates he was paraplegic, having lost the ability to use his legs). This area was likely a regular place for him to spend the day. Here he could beg from people coming to the pool and take his chances at being healed.

Jesus takes the initiative with the man (as he generally does in the Gospel) with words whose meaning likely goes beyond the mere miracle at hand: “Do you want to get well?” (5:6). These same words could have been used metaphorically for Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. The man, of course, does not recognize Jesus and cannot understand his healing powers. The man then appeals to his dilemma: As a paraplegic, he cannot outrace the others getting into the pool for healing (5:7). But Jesus ignores both the superstition surrounding the pool and the man’s complaint. The Greek tenses of his commands in 5:8 unveil his interest: Pick up your bed (an aorist imperative, a single event), get yourself up and start walking (present imperatives, continuous events). The healing is immediate. The man makes no testimony of who Jesus is and provides no orthodox confession; he simply obeys and is healed.

The importance of the story comes to us in 5:9b. It is the Sabbath when Jesus heals the man, and immediately the story takes an abrupt and unsettling turn. Jerusalem had always been a place of religious zeal (as it is today), and now a self-appointed enforcer of Sabbath law upbraids the man (5:10). The Jews protected the Sabbath and held it aloft as a vital symbol of Jewish culture and religion.9 The oral laws of Judaism at this time (reflected in the Mishnah) outlined thirty-nine categories of things that were forbidden on Sabbath, and carrying something such as a bed from one place to another was prohibited (Shabbath 7:2).

The man does not know Jesus. He simply points to his own healing, and no doubt with joy that matched his inquisitors’ zeal, he says that a man with the authority to heal told him to do this. Any reader of the story can sympathize with him. The man’s life has been transformed! The joy of new life obliterates the legalism he now must debate. It is only later when Jesus meets him in the temple (5:14–15) that the man identifies Jesus to the authorities.

The story has taken an ominous turn. For the first time in the Gospel, Jesus’ opponents show themselves in all their hostility. Their question shifts rapidly from the error of the healed man to the identity of the healer who has incited this breach of law: “Who is this fellow?” (5:12). Jesus has slipped away (5:13b), as was his pattern following miracles (cf. 6:15). In 5:16–18 these opponents will summarize their complaint against Jesus.

When Jesus meets the former paraplegic in the temple, there is an important exchange that requires explanation (5:14). We can surmise that the man has gone to the temple to offer praise to God for his healing (cf. Luke 17:14) or perhaps to confirm his healing with priests. When Jesus sees him, he says two things. “See, you are [lit., have become] well” is no doubt a recognition that his cure was not short-lived, as many supposed cures were. But then Jesus remarks, “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

Is Jesus making some link between sin and physical ills? Interpreters have struggled with the meaning of this verse. No doubt Jesus’ exhortation must be connected to his warning here. The man’s sin and his condition are linked. Scripture indicates that some tragedies may be the result of specific sins (1 Cor. 11:30), and this may be why Jesus has chosen the man for healing. There were two levels at which God needed to work in him (cf. Mark 2:1–12). But those with an infirmity have not necessarily sinned, and those who sin do not necessarily endure suffering as a consequence. Luke 13:1–5 and John 9:3 provide Jesus’ correction of that sort of thinking. Suffering is not an index of a person’s sin. But having said that, specific suffering may still come from specific sins. The most natural reading of the verse suggests that Jesus is pointing the man to repentance because in his case there is such a link.

Bridging Contexts

THIS IS A LONG and complex chapter, and one can get bogged down in the details of its debate and the intricacies of Jesus’ argument. Interpreters have often been tempted to allegorize the story in order to find some relevance for present generations. For instance, Augustine and many others have looked at the pool with five porches at Bethesda as a symbol of the Torah, the five books of Moses.15 The man, as it were, is trying to be cured in Judaism, but Jesus must redirect him another way. Patristic interpreters such as Tertullian and Chrysostom thought that the water of the pool represented baptism, which, when stirred by heavenly beings, could heal. Similarly, the thirty-eight years of illness reminds some of Israel’s thirty-eight years of desert wandering in the Old Testament. Jesus has come to bring the man to the Promised Land.

But such allegorizing is unnecessary and likely inappropriate. There once was an era when archaeology could not find any such pool in Jerusalem, and the Fourth Gospel was severely criticized as not representing historic Judaism. Then in the twentieth century a pair of twin pools was discovered in the northeast section of Jerusalem (inside St. Stephen’s Gate, at St. Anne’s Church).16 The “five porches” resulted from an expansion of a pool that had been under heavy demand. Bethesda was fed by aqueducts, and each side had steps leading to the water and porches and platforms for people coming for water. When the pool was expanded, instead of making the original pool larger, an adjacent pool was dug, separated from the first by a wall and steps. This “double pool” then had “five” porches, with one porch separating the two main pools.

A time of trial and conflict. John 5 is a story about trial and conflict. The paraplegic in the story plays a role smaller than that of the woman in chapter 4. Once he identifies Jesus, he exits the stage, only to make way for the opponents of Jesus to accuse him and for Jesus to provide his defense. Thus, the story becomes a model for us to explain something about Jesus—why he died and how he should be defended.

But more than this, this story also should tell us something about our lives before the world. John’s Gospel is clear that no disciple will be exempt from persecution if he or she is following the Lord. In the Upper Room Jesus warns, “Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (15:20). This verse tells any would-be disciple that the account recorded in chapter 5 may well be the story of their own lives.

Why is this trial motif displayed in chapter 5 so interesting to John? Why does he take the time to weave it so carefully into the fabric of his Gospel, suggesting, as it were, that Jesus spent his whole life on trial? The answer is simple: John himself and his congregations are experiencing this sort of examination and trial as well. A gospel that speaks of Jesus’ life in this way will greatly encourage people living under serious threats.

Paul does the same thing in 1 Thessalonians 2. He understands that these Greek Christians have suffered greatly for their faith. Thus he encourages them, saying that they are not only now walking in the steps of the earliest church of Judea (2:14), but in the very steps of Jesus when they suffer (1 Thess. 2:15). John has the same pastoral interest, but he is bringing this encouragement by putting in high relief this one dimension of Jesus’ life.

The church in John’s day is being questioned about the validity of Jesus. They are being forced to produce evidence of their convictions and offer the names of witnesses to validate their beliefs. We get a glimpse of this in a number of ways. John’s view of the “world” is consistently negative, as if it were a place of hostility and conflict. The opponents of these Johannine Christians are likely Jewish leaders in a rival “synagogue,” since the Johannine church is likely viewed as a “Christian synagogue.” This explains the many uses of “Jews” in a derisive way. The language of conflict known so well in the Johannine church is appearing in the Gospel itself. John 9 later will become a test case of a man whom Jesus heals and who then experiences interrogation and excommunication. Any Johannine Christian who reads this story will be relieved to learn that he or she is not alone, that people healed by Jesus have experienced the same thing.

Or consider the theology of 15:18–25. Jesus begins by saying, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” These are potent words to Jesus’ apostles. But they are also precious words to John’s followers, who are being hated as well. Imagine a sermon in the first century based on this passage, directed to the same people reading 1 John! This is a community under siege, a community that knows suffering and conflict. This is a community that needs to be reminded that Jesus walked the same path. Therefore one theme that deserves exploration centers on the nature of persecution and the Christological center that must be protected.

There is another level of meaning in this “trial motif.” John is aware that he is not simply recording a story for the sake of an archive; rather, he is writing for us. He is conscious that his reader is being exposed to Jesus on every page and therefore we too are caught up in this trial. We are seeing the evidence for and against Jesus. As we read, we too must come to a verdict. Will we believe or will we condemn? Just as the Fourth Gospel shows people coming into contact with Jesus and either believing or denying him, so too we must make the same decision.

The character of Jesus’ opponents. This brings us to the most serious level of reflection for this chapter. At some point we must reflect on the description of the character of Jesus’ opponents at the end of chapter 5. It is far too simplistic to say that these paragraphs outline what is wrong with “Judaism.” A simplistic reading of John 5 has led too many Christians to be critical of Judaism and Jews. Being Jewish is not the problem. Jesus was Jewish as were his early followers. Jesus’ opponents consist of Jews who have turned their otherwise excellent faith into something deadening, soul-destroying. John invites us to reflect on the spiritual malady that brings darkness and death to those interrogating Jesus throughout this Gospel.

But today I cannot help but wonder if we have not recreated this same context in our own religious settings. Is Jesus not still on trial today? A quick answer points an evangelistic finger to the world and its unbelief. But I ask: Are there no religious contexts in the church where Jesus is on trial? No religious systems that are so well-defined, so comfortable, so safe that Jesus himself would have difficulty being accepted? Is there no one in our churches who has “lost the love for God” in his or her heart, but nevertheless remains consistently and vigorously religious?

Contemporary Significance

MINISTRY TO THE SUFFERING. A couple of years ago, Dr. Dwight Peterson spoke at a meeting of professional biblical scholars about the episodes where Jesus heals paraplegics.17 I say “paraplegics” because in the contemporary idiom, we have to see the healed man as among us. No one uses “paralytic” today for people in a wheelchair. The lecturer had many good ideas, but one feature of his presentation stood out: He himself was in a wheelchair, he too was a paraplegic. Even though I recognize that the thrust of John 5 is aimed at disclosing to us the Christological identity of Jesus, this scholar reminded us that we have to recognize the person whom Jesus touches in these stories.

Peterson spoke at length about things we rarely consider. The challenges of a paraplegic in the twenty-first century (which are considerable) pale by comparison with a person in the first century. Problems of mobility and livelihood and social isolation just begin the list. Consider the problem of personal hygiene (which Peterson described graphically). Paraplegics frequently do not have bowel and bladder control. Taking these issues together, we can build a portrait of this man’s life: People moved him from place to place unless he crawled; most of his income came from begging or from the charity of friends and family; and if he did not have bladder or bowel control, his hygiene problem would have been enormous. People stayed away from him. His hands (used for mobility) were rough and torn from the streets. I have seen these people in rural Egypt, where they live a step below the poorest of the poor. Their life is agony.

Among the many at Bethesda looking for healing that day, Jesus selects a man who is a particularly difficult “case.” He does not reach out to those who are spiritually on the margin but socially “safe.” Instead, he reaches out to someone whose suffering and isolation are beyond measure. I cannot help but think about the ministry of Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity in this regard. She is now deceased, but since her death in September 1997, story upon story have swept over us telling us how she touched, embraced, loved, and inspired the poorest in Calcutta’s streets. She told her sisters, “Let the poor eat you up.” Their neediness looks so overwhelming, but this is exactly the place Jesus likes to go.

What implications does this have for where the church “goes” today? What social risks does John 5 insist that we take? The same theme could be sounded from John 4 and, together with this chapter, a convicting message of vision for ministry could be articulated.

Spiritual heroism. A second theme centers on the identity of Jesus as it springs from the debate of the passage. Jesus is claiming a remarkable authority here. There is an ethical dimension to his claim. He claims he can break the law. Of course, we rightly say that first-century society had distorted the intent of God’s law and Jesus correctly refocuses it. But there is something else that is interesting here. Does this mean that societal laws that distort or twist God’s law deserve to be broken? John 5 may be an indirect argument for civil disobedience that makes many of us uncomfortable. Rabbinic law was the law of the land; it was the glue that held society together. Yet Jesus challenges it.

Of course we cannot claim to have the authority of Jesus, but here Jesus models something that we, bearing the name and Spirit of Jesus, ought to consider. Are there areas of modern life that need to be violated in the name of God so that God’s person and justice can be seen by everyone? When I think of past examples of this, such as the Abolitionist Movement to end slavery, I am comfortable and show open support for their heroism. But rarely do I have the courage to recreate the spiritual heroism demanded today. What would it take for evangelicals to break the law in the name of God in the present century?

The identity of Jesus. Jesus’ remarkable claims in this chapter lead us to a line of thinking that has to do not with ethics but with theology proper. Too often Jesus is described in the church or in the world as simply a nice man. Some may call him a charismatic teacher, and some may elevate him to a dispenser of religious wisdom or a prophet. One scholar sees him as a “peasant rebel” offering a “brokerless kingdom of God” to the world. Some prefer to see in him a model of the spiritual life. The trouble with these descriptions is that they omit a key ingredient to the New Testament’s message about Jesus.

Jesus Christ makes ultimate claims for himself in the Gospels. Nowhere is this more obvious than in John 5. It is not simply that Jesus is doing the Father’s business that makes him unique; it is that Jesus has a relationship with the Father that goes beyond anything humanity has seen before. John reaches for language to express this (sonship, agency), but in the end he is uncompromising. In one of the climaxes of Jesus’ farewell, Jesus remarks to Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9). This unflinching affirmation reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s words penned so long ago:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish things that people often say about Him: “I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher.18

But to make an absolute claim about Jesus is to invite precisely the thing that John 5 describes: persecution. A strong witness to Jesus as Lewis describes it necessarily offends. This is as true today as it has ever been. We live in a world of pluralism and tolerance that exerts enormous pressure on us to refine away the distinctives of our faith that might offend. We will hear: It is fine to make Jesus one way to God, but do not make him The Way. It is fine to affirm Jesus as one version of the truth, but make no claim that he is The Truth against which all other truths must be weighed.

In my academic community, the Jewish/Christian dialogue is predicated on the notion that together we will find religious commonalities that do not offend the other party. To speak otherwise is to “blaspheme” the process of interfaith discourse (cf. John 5:18). In the university marketplace of ideas, Christian religious belief is generally held suspect because most assume that lurking beneath the surface is an absolute argument for truth that wants to upend secular systems of thought and faith. They are right.

In a pluralistic society it is a truism that absolute claims to religious truth will lead to certain conflict. More precisely, the “higher” my claims for Christ—that is, the more I affirm his divinity, his exclusive relationship with God—the more separation and alienation I will feel. It is foolish to think I can have it otherwise. Jesus was judged as a blasphemer, the incriminating designation of someone who trampled on pure religious truth. Jesus was crucified for the strength of his disclosure about himself. But the same is true of Jesus’ followers as well as the church of John that cherished (and lived out) this chapter.

John 5 poses a terrible question for me: Am I willing to be labeled as a blasphemer to the religious canons of my day when my hour comes? Is my church equipped to do this? Are we ready to be judged and expelled, to experience social shame and public damning in the name of religion because we are holding on to an absolute faith in Jesus, the Son of God? As Hoskyns says, we will be charged with religious “egotism.”19

Spiritual sickness. The final matter that must attend us concerns the spiritual sickness of Jesus’ opponents. It is an uncomfortable theme to preach, but it is as necessary for a pastor to discuss it as it is for a physician to mention the prospects for cancer in a patient. It will not go away if we simply deny its existence. Every believer is susceptible to it. I suggest that men and women in religious leadership (like the opponents in John 5)—pastors, priests, teachers, Sunday School leaders, professors, elders, deacons—are uniquely vulnerable.

As noted above, it is incorrect simply to use 5:39–47 as a criticism of Judaism. First-century Judaism had countless people whose hearts were truly open to God. The same is true today. Jesus is describing the perversion of religion that can no longer hear God’s voice. Jesus’ inquisitors represent the “religious establishment” for whom the vigorous preservation of religious tradition counts more highly than the spontaneity and openness of faith. These people know their Scriptures and use them to defend all of the wrong things.

Karl Barth provides a harrowing description of this sickness in his famous 1919 commentary on Romans (see his remarks on Rom. 2). Barth thinks about people who live in a wilderness alongside a canal. The canal was there to bring them water and life, and it was with great effort and cost that the project was built for their place in time. Great sacrifices were made, and many died as the canal was cut through mountain and desert. But the great irony is that the canal has become dry, and while its walls still convey evidence of the coursing of water, there is nothing there that can give life to anyone. Nevertheless, the people continue to service it, to defend it, to name their children after its architects and engineers; but it is only an historic thing. A canal meant to convey something—water and life—now has become static, an end instead of a means. Something for the museum. People tell stories about it instead of drink from it. The older ones treasure the stories most; the younger ones have to be initiated deliberately; but each generation seems to lose a fraction of the true vision of the canal as time goes on. And no one has a memory of what water in the canal really looks like.

Barth’s warning to the Swiss and German church following World War I is a word we should heed today. The possibility always exists that my life, my church, my tradition, my denomination, even my Bible will become relics of religious curiosity instead of living instruments of God. Men and women will be ordained, earn Ph.D.s, and launch magazines, publishing houses, colleges, and seminaries with solid evangelical commitments, and it will all be for nothing. Empty canals. There are specialists who can cite Scripture and verse, who can measure orthodoxy with exacting precision, who can identify the religious speck in someone’s eye from a great distance, but in whom love for God does not exist (5:42).

On a national level I have seen evangelicals unsheathe their religious swords over arcane doctrinal matters (“But this is a slippery slope!” “But this is where liberalism begins!” “This is an agenda that must be exorcised!”). On a local level I have seen older church members viciously lash out because “the contemporary service” isn’t to their liking or they perceive that their power and influence are diminishing. All of it, John 5 suggests, is empty religion, religion that seeks its own glory. In the end, it is religion that would condemn and crucify Jesus as a religious duty.

Original Meaning

The Decision to Prosecute (5:16–18)

WE DARE NOT miss the pivotal importance of these three verses. These are John’s own comments explaining the nature of Jesus’ persecution. John tells us about Jesus’ opponents and assesses the reason for their fury. In 5:18 he anticipates the conclusion of the story with a shocking disclosure: His opponents want to kill Jesus (cf. 7:1). The Jewish leadership has located two crimes that are major offenses deserving the death penalty. If we keep John’s fascinating “trial motif” in mind, these verses contain the “legal complaint” that the Jewish authorities held against Jesus.

(1) The Greek of 5:16 says that the persecution is tied not simply to this offense (healing the paraplegic), but to Jesus’ habit of doing such things on the Sabbath. This parallels the Synoptic picture of Sabbath violations that brought significant conflict. Jesus was viewed as indifferent to divine Sabbath law as mediated through Jewish tradition, and observers to such violations were obligated to punish the offender (Num. 15:32–36). It is interesting that John uses a technical term for “persecute” in 5:16 (Gk. dioko, a word used in Greek literature for a legal prosecution). Thus John is telling us that Jesus is not simply being persecuted, but that his prosecution, his trial, is already underway. His prosecutors have now leveled their charge against him.

(2) The second charge against Jesus has to do with blasphemy. Jesus’ defense of his Sabbath activity is given in 5:17 (lit.): “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” The offense is not anchored in Jesus’ claim to have a unique relationship with God, such as calling God “my Father” (cf. 10:33). This is secondary. The offense is anchored to the nature of Jesus’ self-defense in light of Sabbath charges. The rabbis enforced the prohibition against work on the Sabbath but agreed that in some fashion, God himself continues working. For instance, God sustains the universe every day. Moreover, God continues to exert his prerogative over life and death since people die and children are born on the Sabbath.10 Jesus’ claim fits precisely here: He is God’s Son, and as such, if God (who made the Sabbath) can continue to work positively while commanding rest, and if Jesus’ works are the works of God, then Jesus’ works on the Sabbath are defensible. Jesus is assuming divine prerogatives (5:19).

This is a dangerous defense to make. Can it be proven? If the defense is true, a breathtaking claim is being set before Judaism. If it is false, a serious crime has been committed. Jesus is claiming equality with God (5:18), a claim that will reappear throughout the course of the Gospel. But we must be clear about Jesus’ claim. Borchert writes, “What Jesus, as the One and Only Son of God (1:14, 18), claimed was to be sent by God, on a mission for God, doing the works of God, obedient to God, and bringing glory to God. That is not the role of one who displaces God but one who is a representative or emissary of God.”11 As God’s divine agent, Jesus has the right and the ability to do what God does.

Therefore John interprets the persecution and eventual death of Jesus as leading from Jesus’ divine claims about himself. In the present instance, the cultural and religious interests of the Sabbath have provided a platform for these claims to be set out boldly.