September 23, 2002
LifeWay Explore the Bible Series for Oct. 6
Jesus heals the lame, opens a fresh wound
___John 5
___By Robert Creech
___University Baptist Church-Clearlake, Houston
___The trial of truth continues in John 5 as Jesus goes head-to- head with the prosecution. Jesus' third "sign" is the catalyst of this confrontation.
___Jesus intentionally goes to the Pool of Bethesda ("house of mercy") and walks among the wounded of this world. Superstition and false hope have drawn the blind, the lame and the paralyzed to this spot (5:3). Each one hopes an angel will soon stir the waters of the pool. Each hopes to be the first to notice and the first to enter the pool and receive its healing. With no more basis for belief than a piece of folklore, hurting humanity has surrounded the pool.
___Among the hopeless at the pool lies a man who has been lame 38 years. (Is this detail a mere fact or a deliberate allusion to Deuteronomy 2:14 and Israel's time in the wilderness?) This story is one of the few in which Jesus takes initiative to bring healing to an individual. Approaching the lame man, Jesus asks a strange question: "Do you want to get well?" (5:6).
___The question is not really out of place. Human beings are notoriously resistant to change, even positive change. We have ways of extracting "secondary gain" from our infirmities, and we do not easily let go of those. What would it mean to this man to be well, who for four decades had learned to depend on others? What would it mean to be completely responsible for himself?
___Although we could imagine a more positive response, the man merely offers an excuse: "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me" (5:7).
___Jesus' next statement is amazing. He simply tells the man to do the very thing his condition will not permit him to do: "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk" (5:8). Jesus will later do the same thing in his seventh and final sign, as he commands a corpse to emerge from the grave (11:4). The lame man obeys, Jesus, and finds his limp legs strengthened and capable of supporting his weight.
___The narrator then adds the detail that will tie this episode to the scenes that follow: "The day on which this took place was a Sabbath ..." (5:9). With that statement, Jesus' healing of the lame man becomes both a testimony to Jesus as the giver of life and an indictment of his ministry: He ignores the Sabbath law (5:17).
___When the "Sabbath police" see the man carrying his mat, an act forbidden by the law, they challenge him (5:10). He quickly points them to Jesus, not as an act of testimony, but to shift responsibility away from himself (5:11). He was not entirely certain who it was that healed him (5:12-13). However, when Jesus found him again to talk about finding complete healing through repentance, the man reported Jesus to the authorities (5:15).
___This story has much in common with Jesus' sixth sign, the healing of the man born blind (9:1-41). In that story, however, the blind man becomes a witness for the defense rather than turning state's evidence.
___Jesus' statement to the religious authorities infuriated them further. He simply told them he was doing the Father's work (5:17). They understood him to be claiming equality with God and determined to kill him (5:18). At this point, the next phase of the trial of truth begins.
___Jesus' statement about sharing the Father's work was in line with rabbinical teaching. Recognizing that children were born on the Sabbath, they reasoned that on the Sabbath God still performed the work of giving life. Moreover, observing that people died on the Sabbath, they concluded that God still engaged the task of exercising judgment.
___In the discourse that follows (5:19-30), Jesus claims the authority both to give life and to exercise judgment. He claims to be about the Father's Sabbath work.
___As Jesus makes this claim, he summons a series of witnesses to validate his testimony--John the Baptist (5:32-35), the works the Father is doing through him (5:36-38; cf. 3:2), the Scriptures (5:39) and Moses (5:45-47). If the Law required testimony from two or three witnesses to establish the validity of a matter (Deuteronomy 19:15), then Jesus has produced sufficient testimony to back up his claim.
___Throughout this dramatic trial, John implicitly invites the reader to make decisions about the evidence and arguments presented.
___Is Jesus, in fact, the giver of life (5:26)? Is Jesus the one to whom all will give an account (5:22, 27)? Is it his voice that will one day summon the dead from their graves (5:25, 28, 29)? Is it his voice even now that calls men and women to eternal life (5:24)? On the other hand, are the purveyors of religion correct in condemning Jesus' outrageous claims as blatant blasphemy?
___Although the trial is far from over, the reader must already begin to answer questions such as these. Before the story ends, each reader will render a verdict on the nature of truth.
___Questions for discussion
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