JOHN 5

A previous miracle story involved Jesus' mastery over the limitations of space. This story hinges on the question whether Jesus has mastery over time as well.

All of the material in this chapter belongs together (even though we will only be covering the first 18 verses). It consists of a miracle performed on the Sabbath and Jesus’ reply to the controversy that arises. The chapter is organized like a criminal trial. In verses 1-18, Jesus is the accused offender because he broke the Pharisees' laws and traditions, and he encouraged someone else to do the same thing.

By contrast, in verses 19-30 Jesus speaks as the judge in the case and states that God has appointed him to that position. This section is marked by no less than three occurrences of Jesus’ solemn pronouncement “verily, verily, I say unto you,” which he uses only on important occasions (vv. 19, 24, 25). The words “judge/judgment” appear six times in these verses.

Then in verses 31-44, Jesus acts as his own defense attorney with the words “testify/testimony” appearing ten times.

Finally, in the last three verses of the chapter, Jesus states that Moses will act as the prosecuting attorney against the Jews who do not believe in him. So the chapter comes full circle and the end with the initial accusers themselves becoming the accused.

John 5:1-3

v. 1 It is not stated which feast. The important points are that (a) it explains why Jesus was in Jerusalem and (2) it continues the Feast Theme which runs throughout the first half of John's Gospel.

v. 2 The name of the pool is uncertain in the early manuscripts: either Bethzatha, Bethesda (house of mercy) or Bethsaida (house of outpouring). Either of last two names would fit the context symbolically. Archeologists have excavated a 2^nd century AD healing sanctuary and pool near where it is stated to be in this verse. The fact that the pool had five porticoes confused scholars for years. A portico is a covered walkway with the roof supported by columns. How can five porticoes fit around the pool unless it is in the shape of a pentagon? In fact, the excavated pool was found to be rectangular with a walkway down the middle to divide it into two separate pools – a total of five porticoes!

John 5:4 If you look for this verse, you probably won't find it unless you have a King James Bible. I had the occasion to write to a woman recently who was concerned because she read from a site on the internet that modern translations can't be trusted because they leave out whole verses of the Bible. (This verse was one of the examples.) On the other hand, Mormons will tell you that we can't trust our Bible because it was in the hands of the Catholic Church for over 1,000 years and they altered it by adding material that wasn't in the original. Can we trust our Bible?

This brings up the whole question of textual criticism, which we don't have time to treat in adequate detail here. But the bottom line in this particular case is that it was a “gloss”: words probably added by a copyist later to a manuscript in the margin to help clarify what is going on. (In this case, verse 4 helps to explain the lame man's comments in verse 7.) Later scribes mistakenly thought that the marginal note was part of the original text and accordingly placed it there. However, the earliest manuscripts of John's Gospel do not include this verse. This demonstrates the importance of establishing the original Greek wording before even starting the process of translation and interpretation.

John 5:5-7 Jesus asks an interesting question: Do you want to be healed? Why? Are some of us 

perhaps more happy telling everyone about our symptoms and ailments hoping to get sympathy than 

being healed? Note that the man doesn't actually answer Jesus; he just complains about his situation. 

Some people I know get their identity from their difficult situation. They are defined by their condition. 

This frees them from the responsibility of doing anything for someone else.

There is another pertinent question to ask. What was Jesus doing here in the first place? It was off the 

beaten track for pilgrims to Jerusalem, and Jesus had to go out of his way to get there. A logical 

deduction is that Jesus purposely went where he knew there were people needing help. I really admire 

people who volunteer at a hospital or who provide help to shut-ins, etc. They are doing the same thing 

Jesus did. But often we ignore even those in need who are around us. I found this out while pushing my 

wife in a wheelchair around DisneyWorld. We were treated as if we were practically invisible by those 

around us. We sometimes block out the presence of those in need; we don't want to see them.

 

v. 7 Did healings actually occur when the water was stirred up? “It's in the Bible.” We need to look at 

the context. There is no indication that this is anything other than a popular folk superstition of the 

time. The pool was so deep that someone would have had to not only carry him to the water, but hold 

onto him while he was in the pool. It is ironic that the man had been waiting for years to be able to go 

to the place where he could be healed, but help came to him instead. This is a picture of attempting 

salvation by works, but it comes by grace.

 

John 5:8a Jesus helps the man anyway where he is at. There are spiritual implications here to the 

subject of salvation, but also practical implications for us who are sometimes reluctant to help someone 

in need because we think their attitude isn't right and they should help themselves first. “God helps him 

who helps himself” started out in Aesop's Fables and a variation appeared in Benjamin Franklin's Poor 

Richard's Almanack. But it certainly isn't in the Bible.

 

John 5:8b-10 This is a typical example of the Pharisees' nitpicking. They criticize the healed man, but 

are really criticizing Jesus for giving the command in the first place. This is the first time in John's 

Gospel that he gets into trouble for acting on the Sabbath. Isaiah 35:1-7 prophesied that in the days of 

the Messiah the lame would “leap like a deer.”

 

John 5:11-13 The man acts just like Adam in the Garden after the Fall — he immediately blames 

someone else. Not only that, but the lame man obviously doesn't even know who Jesus is. There is not a 

hint of faith anywhere in the story, but Jesus helps him anyway. Jesus probably disappeared so as not to 

bring attention to the miracle (“My time has not yet come”). 

 

John 5:14-15 Jesus seeks the man out and finds him in the Temple, hopefully thanking God for his 

healing. The interesting comments by Jesus may be interpreted in several ways. The last phrase means 

“do not continue in sin.” Or it may be inferred that Jesus had forgiven the man's sins up to that time. Is 

there an automatic connection between one's physical and spiritual state? Job's friends thought so and 

they were wrong in that case. Jesus' apostles thought that sin had to be the cause of the blind man's 

condition (John 9:1-3) and they were wrong. But perhaps in this case there was some sort of 

connection. Probably the main point in Jesus' warning was that unless he repented of his sins, a worse 

punishment than merely being lame lay in store for him. In any case, the healed man's character was 

not exactly the highest as we see in verse 15. He thanks Jesus for healing him by running off to the 

authorities and telling on him.

 

John 5:16-18 From these verses we can see that the Jewish authorities had three things against Jesus: 

(a) he broke the Sabbath, (b) he associated his own activities with the activities of God, and (c) he 

called God his Father. Let's deal with each of these accusations in turn.

(a) It was against Jewish teachings at the time to carry a mat or bed on the Sabbath unless there was a 

man on it, but this teaching is found nowhere in the Old Testament laws. I used to think that this kind 

of nitpicking was long gone among Jews today. Our church in New York once invited an Orthodox Jew 

to speak in our Sunday school class. He explained how Jews were able to attend a synagogue meeting 

on the Sabbath when you aren't supposed to go more than about ¾ mile from your house. The rabbis 

had determined that your house is where your possessions are so they bought a bunch of handkerchiefs 

and left them with friends who lived ¾ miles apart.

Of course, Christians aren't immune from such mentality. In the church where I grew up, the pastor's 

wife was once asked during a Sunday school class if it was OK to play card games. Her reply was, 

“You can do it only if the deck has no face cards in it.”

(b) Genesis 2 says that God rested from his creation on the seventh (sabbath) day, but unlike the first 

six days, it doesn't conclude by saying “And there was morning and there was morning, the seventh 

day.” From this, some people have concluded that God is still resting since the seventh “day/era” is not 

yet over.

Comments? What are implications of this idea? We could come up with a deistic God who created the 

world but now has no direct interaction with it. But it didn't say that he rested from any other activities 

on that sabbath or subsequent ones. Jesus makes it clear that God continues to be active even on the 

Sabbath. Rabbis had a saying: “Three keys are in the hand of God and they are not given into the hand 

of any agent, namely that of the rain, that of the womb and that of the raising of the dead.” But it rained 

and babies were born and people died on the Sabbath, so that proved that God worked on the Sabbath. 

The sabbath command was not to do nothing, but to do the work of God. Consider the implications for 

our own Sunday activities. When Jesus says that his works are the same as God's works, he crossed the 

line and basically challenged the Jews' monotheism. This still poses a problem today, not only for Jews 

and Muslims but also groups like Jehovah Witnesses.

 (c) Jesus calls God his Father. God is compared to a father in the OT, but the instances where God is 

called “My Father” are very rare. In Jeremiah 3, God says he wanted the people of Israel to call him 

“My Father” but they didn't; instead they called idols of wood and stone their father. So apparently the 

idea of God being the father of the Jewish people was acceptable, but not an individual calling Him, 

“Father.” Psalm 89:26, written by Ethan, has God announcing that he will make David his firstborn, 

establish his line forever, and he will call God “My father.” Many of the prophecies relating to David 

were only fulfilled in his descendant Jesus. If this psalm was widely was understood as a messianic 

prophecy, then you can understand why the Jewish leaders were so upset.