Jesus Returns to Jerusalem (1)

As John developed his Gospel, he traced Jesus’ steps back and forth from Galilee to Jerusalem. The feast for which Jesus returned to Jerusalem is not identified in this chapter. John merely revealed the purpose of Jesus going to Jerusalem (1).

A Disabled Man Healed (2-9a) 

John went on to identify a pool, renamed Bethesda in Aramaic, meaning “house of mercy.” The pool was by the Sheep Gate, placing it between the Temple and Sheep Gate at the north wall of the city. Of course, during Jesus' day, the north wall had yet to be built to include these pools, so the pools rested just outside the city wall, north of the Temple (2). The pool was actually two pools, surrounded by five roofed colonnades, with walls around the entire facility and then a wall in the middle to separate the two pools, thus five walls. I have provided a map of the city and a picture of the Replica of Jerusalem, which sits at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (3).

Lying among these alcoves was a mass of hurting people. They were all attached to some disability: blind, lame, or paralyzed (3).

One particular man, who had been there for 38 years, captured Jesus' attention (5). Jesus may have been doing some visitation ministry at this site when He noticed this particular man had been a long-time day-resident at the pool. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed.

This text is controversial on many levels. Some translations add verse four, which arguably is an odd passage, whether it was added to the Gospel later or not. Here is how it reads in NKJV: “...for an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.”

Here is what we know: the pool in Jesus' day was just outside the city wall. The pools had been built to wash the sacrificial sheep and so had been originally called “The Sheep Pools.”

Devotion to Asclepius had spread through all the lands dominated by the Roman Empire. More than 400 asclepions (a word for healing centers related to Asclepius) stood throughout the Roman Empire. These facilities were known as healing centers and dispensers of the gods' grace and mercy.

Asclepius was the Roman god of medicine and health. He had two daughters, Hygeia and Panacea. We can hear the English words hygiene and panacea in their names. Snakes were associated with their cult of health; a snake on a pole remains our symbol for medicine today.

It was not unusual to have portions of the city of Jerusalem Hellenized by the Romans. The Roman theatre and sports complex, baths, and the fortress of Antonia are just a few examples of sites inside the city devoted to Roman culture.

There is evidence that these pools in Jesus’ day, located just outside the city walls, were abandoned as washing basins and likely re-purposed by the Romans for healing pools.

When the Asclepius priests who ran the pool area would open the pipes to move water from one pool to the other, the stirring or bubbling effect of the water became a superstition to the sick lying around the pool.

The priests encouraged a superstition of an angel coming down as the waters were being stirred and making the waters magical. The tradition was wicked and merciless, encouraging that those in the water first were healed.

Such is the likely background of the pools, and no doubt the verse that so many people question as a suspicious add-on was necessary to give understanding to the entire circumstance.

Those committed to the gospel would have known neither Jesus nor His Father would endorse a first-in-the-water healing model. This superstition was exactly what Jesus, on this day, decided to expose, and it was where the inclination to try to kill Him was born.

It’s hard to imagine such a tragic scene: the most hurting of the culture sitting for long hours waiting for some cynical priests to open some pipes to make some bubbles.

This is the scene where Jesus entered and found and asked a certain man if after 38 years of painfully watching suffering people race to the pool, he had seen a healing of someone who had jumped in first. The second question was if he had ever been the first in the pool, even once in 38 years.

The real question Jesus put to the man was, “Do you really want to be healed, or would you rather just lounge around here and use the excuse that you can't get in the pool first?” Jesus confronted the crippled man with his true heart: “Do you really want to be healed or do you want to keep hanging on to an absurd superstition?” (6-7)

No doubt this poor man had become comfortable being sick. Without realizing it, the disabled man had lost his desire to be cured. The pool culture had become his normative, acceptable life. Jesus was seeking first to fix his lost hope.

Jesus then spoke the words, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” Within Christ's words was the enablement necessary to do the impossible thing He was commanding (8).

At once, the man gathered his belongings, the word of God turned his atrophied muscles into strength to rise, and the man took up his belongings and walked out of the pool area without touching a drop of Asclepius' water (9a). Isaiah the prophet predicted Messiah would do just what He did (Isaiah 35:3).

The Sabbath Problem (9b-18)

Some Jews were watching the healed man carry his bed on the Sabbath, which was, in their foolish tradition, a violation of the Sabbath. The Jews had all sorts of additional rules added to the Sabbath command to rest. These rules were tedious, burdensome, and complicated. The healed man carrying his bed was problematic to their wicked rules, but mostly their wicked power, so they began to question his actions (9b-10). The healed man, caught in their force of intimidation, directed them to the unnamed man, who had not only healed him but ordered him to take his bed with him when he left the pool area (11).

The Jews asked the man who had done the healing. The healed man hadn't even bothered to find out who the healer was. Jesus, meanwhile, had secretly withdrawn, as the healing had caused a crowd to gather and a flush of attention was threatening to reveal Him in a way that was not appropriate to the moment (12-13).

Later, Jesus went looking for the man He had healed. He discovered him in the Temple area and told the man to stop and look at himself for “he was well.” Then Jesus charged the man to sin no more.

By telling the man to sin no more, we know Jesus did not heal him because he was:

• so deserving

• so grateful

• certain to become a follower

The healed man showed no gratitude, showed no interest in Jesus, and took no thought of what God might be up to in healing him.

When Jesus told the man to sin no more, He was not implying that some sin made the man an invalid. He was saying that if the sin of unbelief persisted, something much worse would happen to him, something eternal and far more troubling than merely being paralyzed. 

The man's sin was unbelief—not turning to Yahweh and considering a lifelong commitment of allegiance to his Creator, a lifelong allegiance to the words of Jesus (14).

Oddly, the man “went away” and “told on” Jesus to the Jewish leaders. Here is a circumstance of healing where the inner heart was not changed, not awed, not broken. The man was healed, yet he clung to his unbelief (15). 

This was Jesus' first experience of betrayal. A healed invalid who had been lying by the waters of Asclepius, who was chosen by Jesus for a miracle, betrayed Jesus by revealing His name to the Jewish leaders. 

This was why the Jewish leaders set their hearts on persecuting Jesus: He did not honor their perversion of Yahweh's Sabbath command. Jesus was challenging their authority (16).

Jesus answered the Sabbath question with amazing wisdom. The Father rested on the Sabbath day, and yet, in His rest, He was still working. The Father was doing Sabbath work, the work of saving. The last day of creation recorded in Genesis was the seventh day, the day God rested. The creation week ended with the seventh day. Jesus picked up on that day and stated that the Father, from that day, had been working. Jesus, being the Father's Son, was doing salvation work also. In a sense, Jesus was implying that the world was still living in that “today” day of rest, the seventh day of creation. God was at work with His Son, saving and preparing for a new week or age to dawn (17).

The Jews picked up on Jesus' answer and realized that He was not only breaking the Sabbath but also calling Himself God by saying God was His Father. Those with human fathers were human; the One who had Yahweh as Father would be God. The Jews sought to kill Jesus based on two mental indictments: Sabbath-breaking and making Himself God (18).

Jesus' Authority (19-30)

Jesus then began to explain His relationship with the Father and His authority as His Father's Son and thus Israel's true King.

Jesus made it clear:

• He could do nothing apart from the Father.

• His authority worked in a certain way: the Son would see the Father doing something in Heaven, and He would fulfill in the exact manner whatever the Father was starting (19).

• The Father continuously loved the Son and showed Him everything He was doing, so the Son was an accurate fulfillment of the Father's love for the world.

• The Father was just getting started; greater works were yet to come that would be even more astonishing and confirming of who Jesus was (20).

• The Father was up to more than just picking a paralyzed man out of the crowd; He was going to raise the dead to life through His Son (21).

• The Father no longer judged anyone but had directed such authority to His Son (22).

• The Father sought to focus honor on His Son; to honor the Son was to honor the Father, but to not honor the Son was to dishonor the Father (23).

• Those who heard Jesus' words and gave Him their complete allegiance, trusting completely in His word, would experience eternal life, escaping judgment and passing from spiritual death into spiritual life (24).

• The time was then present to hear the Father's voice in Jesus. Once they had heard Jesus’ voice, their dead spirits would come to life (25).

• The Father had inherent (infinite) life in Himself; this life, this inherent (infinite) life, He had given to the physical (temporal) born Jesus. He was inherently alive just as the Father was. Jesus possessed something unique: eternal and temporal life—both had met in Him (26).

• The Father had given His Son, Jesus, the Son of Man, the authority to execute His verdict on the earth (27).

• The Father's ultimate verdict on the earth, executed through His Son, would end up with all who were dead and buried coming to life at the sound of His voice (28).

• Those who had done good by giving their complete allegiance to Yahweh would experience the resurrection of inherent, eternal life.

• Those who had done evil by refusing to give their allegiance to the King of Glory, Jesus, would experience the resurrection of condemnation (29).

• The Father's judgment would be the only judgment Jesus would be capable of executing because neither the Father nor the Son were seeking their own selfish will but a selfless, loving, saving will (30).