After these things was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
John never names this feast. He tells us only that it belonged to "the Jews," and that it drew the Lord up to a city where religion ran smoothly while its sick lay helpless nearby.
John's name for the feast is not the name the Old Testament gives these gatherings. One writer traces the change and what it exposes.
In John's gospel the feasts are always called "the feasts of the Jews" (John 2:13; John 6:4; John 7:2; John 11:55). Leviticus 23 calls them "the feasts of the Lord." This change of wording has meaning. The feasts had become mere forms. They were no longer times when loyal hearts went up to God's centre, moved by a sense of His goodness. That sense had faded away, and the feasts had sunk into mere ritual. There was no longer anything in them for God.
The change of ownership did not come from carelessness about the calendar. If anything, the opposite was true.
It is sad and instructive to see how John speaks of the feasts in his Gospel. A sample is, "After this there was a feast of the Jews" (John 5:1), and so it is all through. They kept the feasts more carefully than their fathers had, but only as ritual. They had lost the kernel and kept the shell. So their feasts were disowned. Here is a warning for us.
John tells us there was a feast but never which one. Some see purpose in the silence.
It is perfect and consistent wisdom that the Spirit of God has not told us which feast it was that had drawn the Lord to Jerusalem. It did not matter which one it was. He was about to show Himself in the city of the Jews, the city of that people's feasts and solemn ceremonies, as One who would replace them all, and everything that belonged to them.
Commentators differ on whether the feast can still be named. One writer weighs the manuscript evidence for the small word "the":
The manuscripts are split almost evenly for and against including the article, "the"… If we accept the article, the feast can hardly be any other than the Passover, the first and foundational feast of the Jewish holy year. Some have thought that it might be the feast of Purim, but this would not account for Jesus going up to Jerusalem. It had no such divine claim.
Jerusalem at feast time looked like a city in good standing with God. One pool said otherwise.
It was feast time. Everything was going on at Jerusalem as though all were right before God. The feasts were properly kept, and the time was one of exact religious services. But Bethesda alone might have told Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion, that she needed a physician, and that she was not in the rest which faithfulness to the Lord would have kept for her.
The crowd of sufferers sitting so close to the celebration is itself part of the picture. One writer, quoting the list of sick people in an older translation, suggests the point may be the clash between the two.
John 5 mentions "a feast" in verse 1, but we are not told which feast it was. People have drawn various conclusions about this question. We wonder whether the point is instead to show how out of place it was for "the Jews" to be busy with "a feast" while misery was all around them: "a multitude of sick, blind, lame, withered" were waiting for relief.
The feast is only the occasion. The visit itself exposes what the religion at Jerusalem was worth.
A "feast of the Jews" brings the Lord up to Jerusalem again… As a "feast of the Jews," we stand outside it here, even though it was the occasion of His visit. That visit, like all this Jerusalem ministry, only exposed how hollow everything there was. With it, the visit exposed the powerlessness of the law itself as a remedy for man's condition. This last is surely the main point here. It brings us straight to what Bethesda shows us: a truth that sets aside all help in the old covenant, and leaves a person with nothing but the grace of God.
- Renamed. Leviticus 23 calls them the feasts of the Lord. John calls this one a feast of the Jews. The forms carried on; the heart had gone out of them.
- Unnamed. John never says which feast it was. Some read that silence as a sign that Christ came to replace them all; others argue for Passover from the manuscripts.
- Attended. Jesus goes up anyway, into the centre of feasts that had nothing left in them for God.
- Exposed. The feast said all was well; the crowd of sick at Bethesda said Zion needed a physician.
- Replaced. The visit sets aside every help the old covenant offered and leaves the helpless with one resource only — the grace of God.
Now there is in Jerusalem, at the sheepgate, a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.
John 5 opens with a place, not a word from Jesus: a pool in Jerusalem beside a gate, ringed with covered walkways. The details are not scenery. Commentators read the name, the gate and the porches as a picture of what Israel had under the law — and of who came among them that day.
The gate named here appears in the Old Testament. But no one can point to the exact spot today, and the manuscripts differ over the pool's name.
The Lord is in Jerusalem again. John brings us to a place mentioned nowhere else in Holy Scripture — the pool of Bethesda, as most manuscripts give it, though the Codex Sinaiticus calls it "Bethzatha." The Codex Vaticanus gives it as "Bethsaida," and the Vulgate agrees. The pool was in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate. So the Evangelist writes. We read of that gate in Nehemiah 3:1, where the high priest Eliashib and the priests with him rebuilt it. But modern research has still not fixed the site of the gate or of the pool, so competing theories remain.
Older translations read "sheep market" here. One reference work notes that the noun is supplied by the translators:
This occurs only in John 5:2, and the word 'market' has been added. It was probably at the sheep gate (as in the margin) mentioned in the Old Testament, but which cannot now be identified.
The name itself matters. God's mercy to His people was still on display there — but it reached only so far.
This was a wonderful witness of God's mercy still left to Israel. Yet it met the need only of those who had enough strength to make use of it. It did not reach the weakest and most destitute, and their condition truly pictures the state of man spiritually. In contrast to the law, which human weakness left powerless, the Son of God was there with life and liberty in His gift. The name means 'house of mercy'.
One writer takes the five porches as a picture of the responsibility the law laid on man.
The pool of Bethesda (meaning "house of mercy") by the sheep gate would remind us that God is indeed a God of mercy, and that the water (the word of God) does have healing power. Yet under law this was almost never available. That was so even though the sheep gate was near — the gate that pictures the sheep (the people of God) entering the city. The five porches next to the pool would speak of the responsibility which, under law, man had taken on (v. 2). But instead of producing active work and blessing, they held helpless people. The responsibility imposed by law only found mankind helpless and without strength.
What lay under those roofs was more than a local crowd of patients.
The pool of Bethesda, or "house of mercy" — while it was undoubtedly an expression of God's mercy toward His people — gave plenty of evidence of the miserable condition of man in general, and of Israel in particular. Its five porches were crowded with "a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water." What a sample of the whole human family, and of the nation of Israel!
The healing at Bethesda ran on a rule: first in, first healed. That rule made the pool useless to exactly the people who needed it most.
It was not mercy suited to the weakest. The man who needed it least got it, because the strongest would be best able to get in first… He might as well have been a thousand miles away from the pool. It was no good to him to step in second; no one must get in before him. Its power to heal was all spent on the first comer. It was like the law in this way. God gave the law through angels, and it would have been a mercy to man if he had been able to take the blessing it offered. But he must keep the whole law; if he offends in one point he becomes guilty of all.
One writer sets the pool and the ordinances of the law side by side.
Bethesda bore witness to Christ; the ordinances of the law did the same. But put Jesus beside the pool, or beside the ordinances of the law, and we will find the contrast as strong as the likeness.
The One standing among them met the crowd in the porches, need for need.
But the true house of mercy had drawn near to them in the person of Jesus. It was not those who had a little strength that He came to help. There was no demand for anything. The mercy that was in Him (and how boundless it was!) was available for the weakest. No one needs to despair now. The blind were there, but the light of the world was there too. The lame were there, but the power of God was present to heal them. The withered were there, but the resurrection and the life had come among them that Sabbath day, in the person of Christ.
- Place. The pool stood in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate, a gate named in Nehemiah 3:1. No one can identify the site today, and the manuscripts vary between Bethesda, Bethzatha and Bethsaida.
- Name. Bethesda means "house of mercy," and mercy was really there: God had not stopped caring about sickness among His people.
- Porches. The five porches speak of the responsibility the law laid on man. Instead of active work and blessing, they held a crowd of helpless people.
- Limit. That mercy reached only those with enough strength to use it. So writers read the pool as a picture of the law — real, but powerless to help the helpless.
- Person. Beside the house of mercy stood the Lord of mercy, asking nothing, available to the weakest in the crowd.
In these lay a multitude of sick, blind, lame, withered, [awaiting the moving of the water.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
For an angel descended at a certain season in the pool and troubled the water. Whoever therefore first went in after the troubling of the water became well, whatever disease he laboured under.]
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
But there was a certain man there who had been suffering under his infirmity thirty and eight years.
A crowd of sick people lay by the pool, and the record counts one man's years: thirty-eight. That number is not filler. It shows how far gone his case was, and why the water beside him could do nothing for him.
The Lord spoke to one man out of that whole crowd. What set this man apart was not his disease.
A crowd of sick people lay there waiting for the moving of the water — what sorrows and trials the Fall had brought in! But the Lord spoke to only one person. He had been afflicted for thirty-eight years, and it seems he had often failed to get a cure. Under the law's system, a person needed strength, or a friend's help, to get the relief he wanted. But this man had neither. He was helpless and friendless. So his case would seem almost hopeless. Divine grace, however, when it is at work, can meet the need of such a man.
The number of years is not only his own. One writer reads the place and the man together, and sets both against Israel's history.
At the place of sheep — whether it is a gate or a pool — the "house of mercy" raises its five pillars. It still clings to the number of responsibility, and it has no help for a helpless man like this one. He was afflicted thirty-eight years for his sin, just as Israel for their sin wandered in the wilderness the same length of time, until "that evil generation" had died out from among them.
The pool healed whoever got in first. That one condition decided everything.
So the pool becomes a striking picture of man under law. In the legal system of the Jews, as well as in the providence of God, there is blessing for man; but the blessing under law, or in God's providence, can only be secured by man's own efforts, and to make those efforts calls for power in man. It follows that under law, the man in the worst condition, who therefore most needs the blessing, is the least able to obtain it. The disease he needs healing from robs him of the power to use the means of healing. This was the sad condition of the man who had been suffering from an infirmity for thirty-eight years. As it was with this man in his bodily need, so it is with us in our spiritual need. The power of sin we need deliverance from has taken away our power to get free by our own efforts.
The man hoped for one thing: someone to lift him into the water at the right moment. Then the Speaker beside him asked him a question.
In the middle of this helpless crowd was one man. He was so far gone, so weak and helpless, that the pool of Bethesda could not meet his case... What grace and power there is in that question! It went far beyond anything the helpless man had ever imagined. He thought only of human help, or of his own ability to get into the pool. He did not know that the speaker stood above and beyond the pool with its occasional stirring. He was beyond angelic ministry, beyond all human help and effort — the Possessor of all power in heaven and on earth... What a true picture of everyone who seeks salvation by religious ceremonies!
Thirty-eight years ended in one sentence. Set the pool beside the One who spoke it.
The Pool of Bethesda bore witness even then to the Lord as Israel's healer (Ex. 15). It was not only occasional, but incomplete and conditional; like the law, it required strength enough to make use of it. The man who had no power lay there for nothing. Someone else stepped in first when the angel stirred the water, before anyone could put him in. The will to do it was there, but not the ability. "Wretched man that I am!" was all he could feel. He needed the only One who could speak the effective word: "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." Then he did so at once, Sabbath though it was. What was an angel's act compared to that?
- Thirty-eight years — the count is deliberate. A man lay disabled that long for his sin, matching the years Israel wandered until that generation died out.
- Helpless and friendless — he had no strength to reach the water and no one to put him in. On those terms his case looked hopeless.
- Strength required — the pool worked like the law. The blessing was real, but only for those strong enough to reach it. So the neediest were furthest from it.
- Beyond the pool — the Speaker beside him stood above the water, above angelic ministry, above all human effort. He held all power in heaven and on earth.
- The effective word — one command did what water and angel could not. It gave him the very strength the whole system had demanded of him.
Jesus seeing this [man] lying [there], and knowing that he was [in that state] now a great length of time, says to him, Wouldest thou become well?
A man had lain ill for thirty-eight years, and Jesus stopped beside him and asked what sounds like the most obvious question in the world. Why ask a man at a healing pool whether he wants to be healed, and why did the Lord pick this one sufferer out of a crowd of them?
Nobody at the pool called out to Him. The Saviour chose the man He would heal.
He had come to do His Father's will and to show the Father's love, and in the misery in front of Him He finds the right moment to show it. He picks out the saddest case of all — a man who had no strength and no one to help him. How like a Saviour to choose this case out of all the rest to show His power and goodness. "Do you want to be healed?" says Jesus. What a strange question to ask! We would have thought that the question of willingness lay all on our side. But that is how it is, even though it goes beyond our thoughts. Jesus is more willing to save than sinners are to be saved.
Many sick people lay in those porches. Why this one?
Here we have the one case where the Lord singles out a single sick person from many and asks him, "Do you want to be healed?" Why are we given this case? Because it is good for us to know that He had the right to help and heal anyone He chose. It is still so. In prayer, for example, we have no rights before God. The rights are all His. He is gracious to hear and to answer, but He is supreme, and we have no valid claim on His generosity.
The man's answer names the pool, though the pool was never mentioned in the question. His mind could not travel past it.
What grace and power in this question! It went far beyond anything the helpless man could imagine. He thought only of human help, or of his own ability to get into the pool. He did not know that the speaker stood above and beyond the pool and its occasional stirring. He was beyond the work of angels, beyond all human help and effort, the Possessor of all power in heaven and on earth… What a true picture of everyone who seeks salvation through religious ceremonies! Each one doing the best he could for himself. No care for others. No thought of helping them.
He wanted to be well — that is why he was lying there. What he lacked was strength, and that gap is exactly what the question exposes.
I do not know a more precious word in the spirit and character of it than this portion. The poor man had been ill thirty-eight years. The Lord asks, "Do you want to be healed?" He had the will, but explains he had no strength. Christ brings the strength with Him. This is what is so distinctly and definitely brought out in contrast with the law.
The pool worked on one condition: whoever got in first. That condition is the same one the law made.
For a person to benefit from the blessings enjoyed under the law, he had to have power in himself… This man's disease had taken away the power he needed to use the means of healing. It is the same with sin. The blessings and the means the law offers demand strength in man… Jesus brings with Him the power that heals; the good He does makes no demand on our strength.
The length of his illness is not a random detail.
The Saviour noticed a man at Bethesda who had suffered for thirty-eight years. That is exactly how long Israel wandered needlessly in the wilderness after putting themselves under law (Deut. 2:14). The poor man had watched the pool for years, hoping against hope. It never crossed his mind that healing could come to him any other way. He is sadly like the crowds in the church world today, who think that if salvation can be had at all, it must be earned by human effort.
Compare that one question with everything the pool required.
"Do you want to be healed?" was the only word the Lord brought with Him when He spoke to the poor disabled man there. Was he ready to put himself, just as he was, into His hand? Was he willing to be His debtor? Could he trust himself, with his need and weakness, alone with Jesus? That was all. This simplicity stands in complete contrast with the heavy, clumsy machinery of Bethesda. Here there is no rivalry, no delay, no uncertainty, no asking others for help, as there was there.
The same question stands open to the reader today.
Therefore the only question now is: "Do you want to be healed?" It is not a question of what God will do. He has done everything needed to set you free. It is now only a question of your willingness to be healed by Jesus. Outside of Him there is no mercy for man… The whole question is, Will you submit to the One in whom God has placed every blessing for you?
- He saw — the man never called out; Jesus noticed him and picked the most helpless case there.
- He asked — a strange question, since Jesus is more willing to save than sinners are to be saved.
- He exposed — the man had the will but no power; the law, like the pool, only helps those who already have some.
- He replaced — no rivalry, no delay, no waiting for the water; one word from Christ did what thirty-eight years could not.
- He still asks — God has done everything needed; the only question left is whether you will be His debtor.
The infirm [man] answered him, Sir, I have not a man, in order, when the water has been troubled, to cast me into the pool; but while I am coming another descends before me.
A pool in Jerusalem is crowded with sick people waiting for the water to move, and one man has lain there for thirty-eight years. Jesus asks if he wants to be healed, and instead of saying yes, the man gives the reason he thinks he never can be.
(Note: older translations say "I have no man" where the ESV says "I have no one." Some quotes below use that older wording.)
Jesus' question surprised the man, and his reply shows why.
The Lord's question only surprised the sick man. It was a strange question to him. He did not see the Lord of glory in the face of the speaker. He only saw Him as a man who might perhaps be kind enough to stand by and put him into the pool at the right moment. His thoughts rose no higher than this: "I have no man to put me into the pool," he said in reply. So there was no recognition of the Lord. His eyes were dull, his heart heavy, his feelings deadened. The Son of God was speaking with real concern, but there were no ears to hear. He had no sense of who was addressing him. In short, there was no spiritual life there.
The whole crowd at the pool made the same mistake.
But as we stay a little longer at this pool, what are we to say? We see not only this crippled man, but a great crowd of sick people lingering around that uncertain, disappointing water. And all the while the Son of God was out in the land, carrying in Him and with Him healing and deliverance without doubt or delay, with no rival to match Him and no need of anyone's help! Surely this teaches us a lesson. The pool was crowded, and Jesus passed by unnoticed!
Healing at the pool came with a condition, and his illness was what made it impossible.
Divine power might show itself in an extraordinary way, giving power to something that naturally had none. Still, the truly helpless got no healing. The condition of healing was that he should do the very thing his disease forbade him to do.
The pool and Christ work on opposite principles:
The principle of the pool is that "God helps those who help themselves." But Christ shows that He helps a man who owns that he is utterly helpless. The power is in Christ; deliverance depends on the Deliverer.
At the pool, each person looked out only for himself.
What a true picture of all those who are seeking salvation through religious ceremonies! Each one doing the best he could for himself. No care for others. No thought of helping them.
That scene pictures more than one man's misfortune.
That scene was a striking picture of man, and of the Jews under law. There they lay without strength. The grace of God might step in from time to time, but the greater the need, the less could souls take advantage of His mercy... No angel's stirring of the water could help a man who was unable to step down and had nobody to plunge him into the pool. The one who was stronger could always get there before the helpless.
What sounds like an excuse is in fact the honest admission that changes everything.
He needed deliverance from his struggles to earn the blessing by his own efforts... In answer to the Lord's question he says, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool." He owns his utter weakness and the uselessness of all his efforts. So he needs another to deliver him from his sad condition. As soon as he stops struggling and looks for a deliverer, he finds that a Deliverer is at hand.
One writer tells of a man from East Central Africa who summed up the story in two sentences:
The sick man said to Jesus, "I HAVE NO MAN," and Jesus said to him, "I AM YOUR MAN." The African who summed up the story like this had the gift of going straight to the heart of the matter. He must also have learned the wonderful, soul-freeing truth that all life, virtue, power, blessing and deliverance for men lie in Christ.
- No man. His answer is not an excuse but a fact: the pool asks for the one movement his illness makes impossible.
- No help. Where healing goes to the fastest, the weakest never wins; the pool rewards strength, and he has none.
- No sight. He looks at water and at helpers, and misses the Son of God standing in front of him asking the question.
- No struggle. The moment he stops working and owns his helplessness, a Deliverer is already there.
- The Man. To "I have no man," Christ Himself is the answer — power belongs to the Deliverer, not to the delivered.
Jesus says to him, Arise, take up thy couch and walk.
A man had been ill for thirty-eight years, lying by a pool whose moving water he could never reach in time. Then a stranger spoke a word of command, and in a moment the man had everything the pool had promised and never given.
The man expected help into the water. What came instead was a word, and the cure was total from the first moment.
He never imagined that the stranger, who had shown interest by His question, could be not a helper but the Healer. Jehovah who heals was standing before him. So now came the word — the word of power and of command, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk" (8). Who said that? A voice from heaven? No, a man upon earth, even the Son of Man. Power at once reinvigorated the limbs. He was made whole. It was no gradual recovery working up by degrees to full health. For he took up his bed, and walked.
The pool was real mercy, but it worked on a condition the sick man could not meet — you had to be strong enough to use it.
The pool did not only work now and then. Its help was also incomplete and conditional. Like the law, it required enough strength to use it. He that was quite powerless lay there in vain. Another stepped in before he could be put into the water when troubled by the angel. To will was present with him, but not to do. "O wretched man that I am!" was all he could feel. He needed the only One Who could speak the effective word: "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." Then he obeyed at once, Sabbath though it was. What was an angel's act next to that?
One writer sees in the man a picture of Israel, "under testing; incapable of ever meeting the divine claims of the covenant" (George Davison).
This is the difference between a demand and a gift. The order to get up would be cruelty if the strength to obey did not come with it.
"Get up, take up your bed, and walk" gave the bedridden man at the pool of Bethesda all the power he needed to obey the command. But the law of Moses did not do that. The law came to a man who had no strength to meet its righteous demand, and it cursed him for his disobedience. But grace gives the soul the power it must have, so that he can respond with thanks to the word spoken to him.
The bed is not a detail. The Lord tells the man to pick up the very object that had held him for years, and to need nothing else.
And here the Lord Himself speaks to the poor crippled man of nothing but His own healing power: "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." He was to carry the bed that once carried him, while he lay waiting by the pool. He needed nothing else. He knew the healing of the Son of God, and he was free.
The Lord could have healed him and left him lying there. Instead He sent him walking through the city on the one day when everyone would notice a man carrying his bed.
He picks out a completely helpless and hopeless man. At His command the man carries his bed through Jerusalem on that very Sabbath, and this proves the cure is real. But it was a witness to more than the power of Jesus. It also showed the authority He had as the Son of God to set aside the customs of the law.
Christ's word did the same thing at a grave, and it does the same in a soul that is dead.
"Lazarus, come forth" brought the dead man out of his grave, with the life blood running through his veins and the bloom of health on his face. And when the word of life comes in the power of the Spirit to a soul that is morally dead, that soul is made to live in the life of Christ.
Later in the chapter Jesus speaks of the Son giving life. Another writer points out that the verb there is the one He used at the pool.
Now the Son comes in to give life, "even so the Son gives life to whom He will". … The word "raises" in chapter 5 is the same as the one said to the man at the pool, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk" (see John 5:8 and 21).
- Helpless. The man's problem was not the pool but his own weakness — like the law, it demanded a strength he did not have.
- Word. No water touched him. A spoken command from the Son of God did what thirty-eight years of waiting could not.
- Power. Grace does not only tell a man to rise; it supplies the strength the command calls for.
- Witness. He carries what once carried him. His bed had been the proof of his weakness. Now it walks through Jerusalem as proof of the cure.
- Life. The word that lifted him is the word Christ uses of raising the dead. The same voice still makes a dead soul live.
And immediately the man became well, and took up his couch and walked and on that day was sabbath.
One word from Jesus, and a man who had not walked for thirty-eight years stands up and carries his mat away. John then adds a short note that turns the whole scene into a fight: the day was the Sabbath.
John's wording marks how fast the change came.
Power at once restored strength to his limbs. He was made whole. It was not a recovery that improved step by step until he was fully well. For he took up his bed, and walked. Before he was struck down he could have done all this. After thirty-eight years of forced disability he could do it again — and at once, in front of all the crowd of sick people. He rose up. He carried his bed. He walked.
The mat is the detail to watch. For years it had held a helpless man.
"Get up, take up your bed, and walk." What powerful words! The man is strengthened. Power runs through his long-weakened frame. This is a picture: he now stands on the ground of resurrection. He had known what the weakness of death meant. He is now in the vigour of life. He carries his bed; what was proof of his weakness becomes the witness of the power given to him by Christ.
For thirty-eight years nothing had made this man well. One writer explains why the law could never have done it.
Yet by his confession he admitted that he wanted to be made whole. The word of the Lord made him completely sound at once. The law could not do this for him, because it was weak through the powerlessness of his flesh. The Son of God, now present on earth, did it in an instant as His own work. The man was able not only to walk but also to carry the bed which had once been proof of his helplessness. The Lord told him to do this even though it was the Sabbath.
John's closing note is not a stray detail. Commentators see a clash here between man's idea of rest and God's.
Man does not know what the Sabbath truly means. So he insists on keeping it outwardly, to gain a religious reputation. But while he insists on that outward keeping, he does not care at all about the sin that broke into the rest. The blessing of Sabbath rest belongs to a people who keep the law, not to a people who break it. Man may be content to rest in the presence of sin and the misery it brings. God cannot rest where sin and misery exist. His holiness demands that He deal with sin; His love drives Him to work for the relief of the sinner.
The cure was complete without the mat. One writer asks why the Lord added the order.
A man lay helpless beside Bethesda, waiting for an angel to come down. He found that One greater than all angels was there, who did not need to stir the waters. A word was enough; for power went with it, and the man was healed. But Jesus told him to get up, take up his bed, and walk, Sabbath though it was. Could he not have left his bed there, or at least left it for that day? Yes. But when he acted at the word of the One who healed him, that was a plain testimony, and a very irritating one: God had no fellowship with their Sabbaths.
The reaction came at once, and it did not stop with the man.
The law of the Sabbath was very strict. All kinds of work were forbidden, even picking up sticks and lighting a fire. So the Jews were up in arms at once when they saw the man carrying his bed. He had a ready and sufficient answer. The Man who had healed him had told him to do it, and a little later he could name that Man — Jesus. Their zeal for the Sabbath was so great that from that moment He became the object of their hatred and persecution.
For the crowd this was a broken Sabbath. For the man himself, another writer suggests, it was the opposite.
It was the first true day of rest for him. All his useless efforts after life and health stopped. He rested entirely in the grace and power of Another.
- At once. The cure was total and instant, in front of a whole crowd of sick people.
- A word, not a pool. No angel needed to stir the water. The word of the Son of God healed him in an instant.
- The bed. What had been proof of his helplessness became the proof of the power given to him.
- The Sabbath. God cannot rest where sin and misery exist. His holiness makes Him deal with sin. His love makes Him work for the sufferer.
- True rest. His own rest began the day his useless efforts stopped and he rested in the grace and power of Another.