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.