John 5 Commentary

From the Pulpit—Video & Full Transcript

John 5:1-14 The Healing at the Pool
John 5:15-47 The Authority of the Son

Commentary

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 

1. Christians disagree on which unnamed festival Jesus was going to Jerusalem for in this instance.  Passover or Shavuot tend to be the ones most gravitate towards.
   1. If it was Passover (which Jesus also goes up for in John 2:13, 6:4, and 11:55) it would reasonably fit into Jesus’s 3.5 year period of public ministry.  Symbolically, healing during Passover would show that Jesus is liberating people today, just as Moses liberated in the past, painting him as the greater Moses.
   2. Passover happened at harvest, but John 4:35 says harvest was still four months away.  Shavuot was a festival that happened around that time.  It was a celebration of Moses receiving the law at Sinai.  Symbolically, healing on the Sabbath (a violation of the law, strictly interpreted) and then lecturing the Jewish leaders about the law afterwards would be fitting for a festival about God’s law.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.

1. The pool was located in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate, a gate used primarily for moving sheep and other livestock in and out of the city.
2. The covered colonnades were a beautiful work of Roman architecture, but here it had been essentially turned into a homelessness camp by the poor and desperate who were hoping to find healing in the waters.  This was a place of immense suffering.
3. The pool of Bethesda was a local legend, not widely known throughout the empire. It was almost forgotten by history until archaeologists found it. Its modern remembrance is primarily because Jesus visited it.

—and they waited for the moving of the waters. 4 From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.

1. This addition to verse three and the entirety of verse four is subject to scholarly debate.  It does not appear in some of the earliest version of the text.  It may have been a scribe’s explanatory note that was later incorporated into the text.
2. Regardless of its scriptural authenticity, the verse is helpful because it explains that people were waiting and watching for the water to bubble, at which point there would be a “mad dash” to be the first one in.
3. This intense focus on the pool caused the people to miss Jesus, a great healer, when He came.
4. “Their eyes were fixed on the water, expecting it to be troubled; they were so taken up with their own chosen way that the true way was neglected.” -Charles Spurgeon, “Jesus at Bethesda; or, Waiting Changed for Believing”, April 7 1867.

 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

1. The man Jesus approached had been an invalid for 38 years.  His whole life defined by his condition.
2. When Jesus asks him, “Do you want to get well,” it is not a silly question.  Being healed would be hard!  It would completely change the man’s life. He would lose his means of getting charity, have to find a trade, and possibly lose the community he knew by the pool.

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “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.”

8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

1. The man responded with an excuse, explaining that he has no one to help him into the pool. Jesus doesn’t ask for or need an explanation or justification.
2. Jesus commands him, “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” This healing requires the man to take initiative and trust Jesus, even though it may have seemed irrational or been physically difficult.
   1. Notice that Jesus ignores the pool entirely.  A whole ecosystem has evolved around waiting for the pool to bubble up and heal someone.  This system is broken.  Jesus doesn’t need the things of this world to heal.  His power is sufficient.
   2. If you want to be healed from the unhealthy things in your life, don’t wait on the world around you to heal you.  Pick up your mat and walk, trusting that Jesus’s power, mercy, and grace are available if you take the initiative.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

1. After being healed, the man is confronted by authorities who are upset that he is carrying his mat on the Sabbath. They want him to preserve the status quo and effectively “go back where he came from.”
   1. These leaders are the enforcers of the culture that Jesus just shook up.  In their minds, people like this man are supposed to stay at the pool, especially on Sundays. 
   2. Jesus showed that their order was not God’s intention.  This man is living proof that their system was fragile.
2. When we experience healing in Christ, some people may be frustrated and want to drag us back to our old, unhealthy ways.

14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

1. Healing is not a “one and done” event. One must continually choose to live as a new creation and not slip back into sin or brokenness.
2. “Nothing was farther from his intention than to make Christ an object of their hatred, and nothing was farther from his expectation than that they would rage so furiously against Christ. His intention, therefore, was pious; for he wished to render to his Physician the honor which was justly due to him.” -John Calvin, Commentary on John 4

16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 

1. Historical Context of Sabbath Observance
   1. The leaders’ legalistic view is informed by history. The Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, and the Old Testament penalty for breaking it was death (Exo. 31:14-15 and 35:2)
   2. Israel’s failure to keep the Sabbath contributed to their 70 years in exile (2 Chron. 36:20-21, Lev. 26:33-35, Jer. 25:11-12)
   3. The exile ended about 500  years before the time of Christ, but it was a massive event in Israelite history.  A significant part of their communal self-understanding was wrapped up in that period of exile.
   4. This led to taking the law so seriously that they created a series of laws concerning what activities were allowable and which ones weren’t that were so complex that they even dictated what could and couldn’t carry on the Sabbath.
      1. In the Babylonian Talmud (b. Shabbat 94b), there is a series of laws concerning Muktzeh (laws concerning whether items should be handled at all) and Hotza’ah (laws concerning the carrying of items) on the Sabbath. Some items, like a hoe, are Muktzeh (translated: set aside) because they are tools of labor and have no Sabbath-appropriate purpose. Other items, like a sleeping mat, are permitted for use but are subject to Hotza’ah laws, which prevent you from moving the items from a private dwelling into a public area. The mat had a Sabbath-appropriate purpose (sitting or lying down), but the man was carrying it in the streets, so it was a violation of law.

17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

1. “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”
   1. Jesus equates himself to God with this statement, which the leaders recognize and are infuriated by.
2. …not only was he breaking the Sabbath,
   1. Jesus consistently taught the Sabbath’s purpose was misunderstood. 
      1. His disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:3-8).
      2. Teaching that one would rescue a child or a donkey from a well on the Sabbath (Luke 14:5).
      3. Jesus teaches, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” and that He is the “Lord of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)
   2. The Sabbath is a means to draw closer to God, not an end. It was established at creation to teach humans to rest in God.
3. Christian Sabbath (Sunday)
   1. The Christian Sabbath moved from Saturday to Sunday, as seen in Acts 20:7.
   2. The logic: the old Sabbath represented rest in the old creation, while Sunday—the day of Jesus’s resurrection—signifies the start of the new creation.
   3. Modern Christians are more at risk of neglecting the Sabbath than of taking it too seriously.  Many have redefined Sabbath away from a particular day or to include any sort of rest, rather than rest specifically intended to grow closer to God.
   4. There’s an opportunity to value the Sabbath not just as a brief moment of rest in a busy day or a random vacation, but as a day that God intended for us as a tool and means for our benefit—a day of worshipful rest in God.

19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.

1. After the Sabbath conflict, Jesus explains His relationship with God the Father.
   1. This section uses a large amount of classic Trinitarian language, affirming that Jesus and the Father are distinct persons yet one being—both are God.  To honor one is to honor both.
   2. “To believe and love the Trinity is to possess the key of theology.” -Charles Spurgeon, “Bread Enough and to Spare,” July 16, 1871.

24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. 25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.

1. And he has given him authority…
   1. Jesus asserts His authority in response to earthly authorities challenging Him. He speaks with perfect judgment and discernment as God.
   2. When we encounter teachings or actions of Jesus we don’t understand or prefer, we must remember His divine authority. Our disagreement is our problem, not His.

28 “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. 30 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

31 “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.

33 “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. 34 Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. 35 John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

36 “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38 nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39 You study[c] the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

1. “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true…”
   1. Jesus admits that His own testimony would not be sufficient to prove anything, so he points to external witnesses.
      1. Deut. 19:15 and Num. 35:30 require two or three witnesses to establish any charge or execute judgment. 
2. “I have testimony weightier than that of John…”
   1. John the Baptist testified to the truth, which was helpful, but Jesus relies on a weightier testimony: God Himself.  God’s testimony is expressed in two ways:
      1. Miracles: Jesus’s works, given by the Father, testify that the Father sent Him.
      2. Scripture: The Old Testament points to Jesus constantly.
3. Jesus tells scripture experts that they study diligently thinking they have eternal life, but miss the point.
4. “These are the very scriptures that testify about me…”
   1. “Again, we are taught by this passage, that if we wish to obtain the knowledge of Christ, we must seek it from the Scriptures; for they who imagine whatever they choose concerning Christ will ultimately have nothing instead of him but a shadowy phantom.” -John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary on John  
   2. Scripture is a means to an end (knowing God), not an end in itself. The words matter, like in a love letter, but their value lies in pointing to the author, God.
5. There are many people that claim to know a lot about Scripture, but they haven’t found God in spite of all of their so-called knowledge.
   1. Bart Ehrman is a famous professor and atheist that uses his knowledge of early Christian documents to try to debunk Christianity.
   2. Amy Jill-Levine is a professor of the New Testament that is Jewish and does not believe in Jesus.  In spite of that, she produces resources about Jesus to be used in churches.
   3. People inside the church today can also miss the point by treating scripture reading as a checklist item.
   4. When opening scripture, expect to encounter God, regardless of feelings. The goal is to seek God through it.

41 “I do not accept glory from human beings, 42 but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God[d]?

45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

1. God is the intended endpoint of everything we see.
   1. “I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts…”
      1. Everything in our lives is intended to point us to God, whether it be prayer, a walk in the park, or time with a friend.  God is the ultimate end of everything that’s created.  It’s should draw our attention to Him.
   2. “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”
      1. We are called to be means through which others see God’s goodness.  Just as everything should draw our attention to God, we should draw other people’s attention to God, not to ourselves.
      2. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you” -Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Bk. 1.
2. “…for he wrote about me.”
   1. “Indeed had they attended to His words, they ought and would have tried to learn from Him, what the things were which Moses had written of Him. But they are silent. For it is the nature of wickedness to defy persuasion. Do what you will, it retains its venom to the last.” -John Chrysostom, Hom. xli. 2.