
John 5.1-9.
There are two back-to-back stories of Jesus curing people in John, but because they’re in two different chapters, Christians tend not to nice they’re right by each other. On purpose. ’Cause they happen some time apart. The first,
The situation is this: Jesus is back in Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem there’s a pool. The
Because it’s by the Sheep Gate, popular legend says the pool was created to wash sheep before their ritual sacrifice. Problem is, the pool is 13 meters deep, which is more appropriate for drowning sheep. So no, it’s likely not for washing animals. (That’s what they used Siloam for.) More likely this pool was mainly used for ritual washing. People had to get
After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, the pool was made part of a pagan temple to Asclepius and Serapis, the Roman and Egyptian gods of healing. When the Roman Empire became Christian, it was turned into the Church of the Sheep, which was destroyed in 614 by the Persians. The Crusaders rebuilt it as a smaller church, the Church of the Paralytic, which fell into disuse after the crusaders built the larger Church of St. Anne nearby. That church was renovated by the French in the 1800s, but the rest remained ruins, later to be excavated by German archaeologist Conrad Schick.
Today, the Sheep Gate is known as the Lion’s Gate (Hebrew
But let’s get back to Jesus’s day. At that time, the pool was a healing pool: Sick people gathered round it, hoping for a miracle.
John 5.1-4 KWL - 1 After these events there’s a Judean feast,
- and Jesus goes up to Jerusalem.
- 2 A pool is in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate
- —in Aramaic it’s called Beit Cheytá—
- having five colonnades.
- 3 Under these colonnades lay a large number
- of weak, blind, lame, shriveled people,
- {waiting for the water to move.
- 4 For an angel comes down to the pool at times,
- and agitates the water,
- so the first who enters after the water is agitated
- becomes whole from whatever ailment he has.}
Verses 3
Now we do know the water was agitated, for that’s what the weak man says.
But the angel story has been in bibles, including
Still, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was a myth these sick people believed. They wanted to get well, and healthcare didn’t exist back then. Their “physicians” were actually witch doctors, and had no real medical nor scientific training. Their faith healers might be legit—might actually have
If it all sounds hopeless to you—and it kinda does to me too—y’notice the people gathered round the pool had to have some small degree of hope, or they wouldn’t be there! (Or, which is just as likely, their family members wouldn’t carry them there, day after day, in the hopes something might happen.) Hey, what else are you gonna do? Who else are you gonna turn to?
So this is the depressing situation Jesus walked into one day… to bring somebody out of it.
Too weak to get in the pool.
We don’t know what this guy was suffering from. John calls him an
If we had to guess, I think it’d be a fair guess that he’s suffering the consequences of his own actions. We can see that in Jesus’s later comment to him, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”
And in any case, just before Jesus cures the blind man in
John 9.2-3 KWL - 2 Jesus’s students question him, saying, “Rabbi,
- who sinned—this person or his parents—
- so he might become blind?”
- 3 Jesus replies, “Neither this person nor his parents.
- Instead it’s so God’s works might be revealed in him.”
In Jesus’s culture,
Okay, let’s say the ailment was the result of the guy sinning. Let’s say when he was a boy, Dad told him, “Don’t dive into the shallow end of the pool!” but he did, disobeying his father—and he broke his neck, and now his legs don’t work, and he’s gotta drag himself to this pool by his arms. Who knows?—maybe that’s exactly what happened here. We don’t know. But don’t you think 38 years of being unable to walk is hugely disproportionate to the sin of disobeying Dad?
That’s the problem with people who preach
John 5.5-7 KWL - 5 A certain person had been there 38 years,
- suffering from a certain weakness.
- 6 Jesus, seeing this person laying there,
- and knowing he’s been there a long time already,
- tells him, “Wanna become whole?”
- 7 The weak man answers Jesus, “Sir,
- I have no person to help me when the water is agitated,
- to throw me into the pool.
- I get into it;
- another gets in before me.”
Jesus asks him, “Wilt thou be made whole?”
Yet again, preachers tend to presume the very worst of this weak man. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard preachers bash him. They figure he was a sinner—which is fair; we all sin. But they also figure he was an unrepentant sinner. That his answer to Jesus betrays a bad attitude: “Lookit him. He’s got Jesus our healer offering to cure him, and all he can do is complain he can’t get to the pool fast enough.”
And other criticisms which lack grace, which are ready and willing to find fault with the sick guy. With the needy person. With the sufferer. You do realize compassion is
True, when you contrast the weak person with the royal in the story right before this one, that guy heard Jesus say, “Go thy way; thy son liveth,” believed, and went home.
Good thing Jesus came to him!
“Lift up your bed and walk.”
Ancient middle eastern “beds” were basically a thick piece of fabric which provided a buffer between the sleeper and the ground, or the cold hard tile of the floor. It wasn’t a bed like a western bed; it’s not a mattress or futon or foam padding. It’s not even a yoga mat. Most of the time it’s little more than carpet.
That’s why the
But the weak man had to believe Jesus enough to obey it. And he did.
John 5.8-9 KWL - 8 Jesus tells him, “Get up.
- Pick up your bed and walk.”
- 9 At once the person becomes whole.
- He picks up his bed and walks.
- It’s the sabbath on that day.
Yeah, the weak man’s critics are gonna claim he didn’t have the faith to believe Jesus before our Lord told him to get up; but he certainly had the faith to believe Jesus afterward. He did get up.
One Jesus movie I’ve seen, depicted this man getting cured as he was standing up. Makes it look like the cure didn’t kick in until he had the faith to try to stand up. It’s certainly dramatic, but it’s not what John says. At once (
And he did it. And picked up his bed. And walked out of the pool area, whole again.
And pretty quickly ran into some Judeans who objected to him carrying his bed on sabbath, but that’s the next part of the story, which I’ll get to another time.


