JOHN 5

JESUS HEALS A PARALYZED MAN + CLAIMS HIS AUTHORITY AS GOD’S SON

While Jesus is in Jerusalem for a feast, He visits a pool called Bethesda, known for its healing abilities. A multitude of people with various disabilities gather around the waters, hoping to enter the water and be healed of their blindness or paralysis.

Jesus sees a man that He knows has been unable to walk for thirty-eight years and asks the man if he wants to be healed. The sick man responds hopelessly by saying he has no one to lower him into the water and is unable to get in before the crowds of people. Jesus immediately heals the man, and he was able to stand, carry his mat, and walk! He later finds the man at the temple, wanting to praise and worship God for his healing.

Upon seeing the man at the temple, the Jewish men question him, asking who allowed him to take up his mat and walk. When the man explains that Jesus is the one who healed him, they are angry with Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, but He claims that He was doing the work of God. One of the reasons the Jewish people are skeptical of Jesus is His boldness in equating Himself as equal to God.

Jesus says to them that nothing He does is of His own accord, but the will of God. God has assigned all authority of judgment to Jesus, making Him as honorable as God. Boldly declaring that whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him, Jesus shows their oneness and unity. Speaking to His redemptive power, He says those who hear the voice of the Son will have a resurrection of life. He will personally defeat death, but also offers new life to all those who believe in Him.

Jesus confronts the beliefs of the Jewish people, accusing them of looking to the Scriptures for eternal life instead of acknowledging Him as the fulfillment of the Scriptures. Many of the Jewish people have elevated obedience over faithfulness, prioritizing the law over relationship with God.

God has promised to send a Savior, but because the people value rules and religion over relationship, they miss the Messiah standing before them. Jesus says that if the Jewish people believed in Moses, they would believe in Jesus because He is the one Moses wrote about.