The man at the pool.

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, where Jesus cures a royal’s son, happens in western Galilee right after they got back from Jerusalem. The second, where Jesus cures a weak man at a pool, takes place back in Jerusalem—either at the next festival where they were expected to go to temple, or several festivals later; maybe even years later. We don’t know.

The situation is this: Jesus is back in Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem there’s a pool. The UBS and NA Greek New Testaments identify it as Βηθζαθά/Vithzathá, although most bibles go with the name given by the Textus Receptus, Βηθεσδά/Vithesdá (KJV “Bethesda”) and other ancient copies of John call it Βηθσαιδά/Vithsedá, Βηδσαιδά/Vidsedá, Βηδσαιδάν/Vidsedán, and Βελζεθά/Velzethá. All of these are attempts to transliterate the Aramaic name בית זיתא/Beit Cheytá, the name of a district in first-century Jerusalem which Josephus calls “the New City.” The district was next to the Roman fortress, Antonia, located on the NNW corner of the temple mount, and the pool was within this district. It was created around the 700s BC as a reservoir for rainwater, and around 200 BC the head priest, Simon bar Onias (also known as Simon 2), had a second pool created just south of it. Scholars figure it was so one pool could hold warm water, and the other cold, so you could bathe in whatever temperature you pleased.

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 ritually clean before they could go to temple, so here’s where they did it.

The Israel Museum’s model of the “Pool of Bethesda” during the first century. Without the water of course. John describes it with five colonnades—the four around the whole complex, and one in the middle over the wall between the pools. [Wikimedia]

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 שער האריות/shahar ha-Arayót), named for the leopard carvings in the stone above it, which get confused with lions. It’s the entrance to the Muslim quarter. The pool’s still there, as part of the St. Anne’s church complex.

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 3B–4 first appeared in fourth-century copies of John, and were of course added to the Textus Receptus. They provide kind of a backstory to why all these people were gathered round the pool: Whenever the water moved, they figured an angel was causing it, and hoped it’d heal them. My only problem with this theory is it sounds a lot like pagan superstition; like something the Greeks would claim. “Look, a lesser god is moving the water! Jump in!” But is that what people believed in the first century? Or what people believed in the fourth century, after a few centuries of Greco-Roman pagans had overseen the pool, and added their own superstitions to the pool’s history?

Now we do know the water was agitated, for that’s what the weak man says. Jn 5.7 But it didn’t have to be roiled up by an angel. It coulda happened whenever the water was replenished. Or when an attendant dumped a bunch of bath salts into it. Or when crowds of people came to town and needed ritual washing. Anything coulda moved the water—and people might figure, “Fresh water” or “Ritual washing” or “Fresh salts” or any of those things might somehow make the water holier, and therefore more likely to cure ’em.

But the angel story has been in bibles, including the Vulgate, for a mighty long time. And you know how people are with favorite traditions: They’re loath to give ’em up, no matter how wrong and misguided they might be.

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 the Holy Spirit empowering them—but then again might not, or might be frauds. So what other options did you have? Well, there was a rumor if you got in the pool at just the right time, you’d get cured. So here they were.

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.

Fair judgment.

John 7.19-24.

The people of Jerusalem found Jesus teaching in temple, and wondered where he got his education; Jesus pointed out if we really pursued God instead of our own bright ideas, we’d know where he got his education.

Then he took a bit of left turn:

John 7.19-20 KWL

19 “Moses didn’t give you the Law, and none of you does the Law: Why do you seek to kill me?”

20 The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who seeks to kill you?”

Where’d that come from? Well, largely the fact, two chapters ago, they totally sought to kill him.

John 5.17-18 KWL

17 Jesus answered them, “My Father works today, just like I work.”

18 So the Judeans all the more wanted him dead for this reason:

Not only was he dismissing Sabbath custom,

but he said God was his own Father, making himself equal to God.

And they still wanted him dead. Oh, they might’ve pretended otherwise, but Jesus knew better. So he bluntly called them on it: “Why do you seek to kill me?” And they flagrantly pretended otherwise: “You have a demon”—that culture’s way of saying, “You’re nuts.”

Yeah, certain Christians claim the Judeans meant “You have a demon” literally. Y’might recall the other gospels, in which the Jerusalem scribes decreed Jesus’s exorcisms were done by devilish power. John’s gospel doesn’t include that story; in fact Jesus never performs an exorcism in John. But this wasn’t an accusation of Jesus working via Satan’s power; it was the culture’s presumption about how madness works. Nowadays we’d leap to the conclusion you’re off your medication (or need some); back then they’d leap to the conclusion you had some critters in you. So we can dismiss the Judeans’ comment as mere hyperbole… for now.

But Jesus wasn’t nuts. He knew they intended to destroy them; he’d known it since they first started plotting. He knew they’d ultimately succeed. He was gonna use it as part of his grand plan to save the world. But he didn’t want them to think they were cleverly slipping anything past him, or getting away with anything. He knew what they were up to.

Bibliolatry: When Christians straight-up worship the bible.

Christianity is based on the person and work of Christ Jesus.

I hope you knew this already. Most of us do. But you’re gonna find a strain of Protestants, particularly Evangelicals, who consider Christianity to be based on the bible. As a result they’ve exalted the bible to a really high position in their belief system. Nearly as high as God. Sometimes even higher, and we call that bibliolatry. They call it all sorts of other things—a “high view of scripture,” or love and respect for God’s holy word, or Christian apologetics in which they argue for the bible’s centrality and preeminence. But Jesus is meant to be center and preeminent, and if you put anything else there, it’s idolatry. Even when it’s the bible.

In my experience, bible-worship tends to happen most often among cessationists. No, they’re hardly the only ones who do it. But once you insist God turned off the miracles, and won’t talk to us anymore, what’re you left with? Well, your bibles. And this is why they exalt their bibles: It’s the only thing they have left of God. It’s like if your mother abandoned you as a child, but left you a note saying she loves you: You’re gonna cling to that note, and make it the most precious thing you own. (Or you’re gonna bitterly throw it out, but I’m not discussing apostasy today.) It tends to become a substitute for your mother—and for cessationists, the bible’s become the substitute for their Father.

Or the Holy Spirit, ’cause they imagine his only job nowadays is to give ’em a warm fuzzy “inspired” feeling whenever they’ve correctly understood the scriptures. Or Jesus, ’cause they argue the only way to have a relationship with him is to read about him—as opposed to talking with him, obeying him, getting empowered by him, and all the stuff which constitute the actual Christian life. Nope, if they reject such experiences ’cause they imagine they don’t happen anymore, they won’t know him. Just about him.

So insult the bible, or show it what they consider a lack of respect, and they figure we’ve committed blasphemy. They’ll even call it that; as if we could slander a bible. It must be treated with nothing but the greatest reverence. Never set your bible on the floor. Never doodle in it. Never toss it onto a table. Protect it in the biggest, thickest bible covers. To treat it as an ordinary book, is as if we treated God with anything other than majesty.

Heck, some of ’em aren’t even hiding their idolatry. They’ll actually say God and the bible are equivalent.

Loads of proof in Jesus’s favor—but people don’t wanna see it.

John 5.31-47

If you know the story, Jesus cured some guy in Jerusalem who’d been disabled for decades—an event which should’ve triggered great rejoicing, ’cause God had a prophet in Israel who could cure the sick!

Instead the Judeans pitched a fit, ’cause Jesus cured him on Sabbath. And when Jesus correctly pointed out he could cure on Sabbath because his Father authorized him to do so—he is the Son of Man, after all—they didn’t care to hear it. This, despite the obvious evidence Jesus is precisely who he says he is. Today we’ll get into it.

Elsewhere in John, the Pharisees objected when Jesus made similar grand statements about himself:

John 8.13 KWL

So the Pharisees told Jesus, “You testify about yourself. Your testimony isn’t valid.”

Because alithís ordinarily means “true,” various interpreters leap to the conclusion the Pharisees were accusing Jesus of lying. And no doubt some of ’em believed he was lying. But interpreting it “Your witness is not true” (NKJV) means the average Christian will miss the historical context: John, Jesus, and the Judeans were speaking of the sort of “witness” which held up when people were trying a case in court. And for that, the Law mandated the following:

Deuteronomy 19.15-17 KWL

15 “Don’t stand up only one witness against a man

for any act of evil, offense, or trespass, which he committed.

From the mouth of two witnesses, or the mouth of three witnesses,

a word may stand.

16 For when you stand up a false witness against a man,

to accuse him of rebelling against the Law,

17 the two men who are in dispute are before the LORD’s face,

before the face of priests and judges who are in office in those days.

Jesus prefaced his remarks with “Amen amen,” Jn 5.19, 24, 25 which is an oath—he swore what he taught was true, that he is the Son of Man, and will judge the world on behalf of the Father. But he knew by Pharisee standards he only provided his own word, so they wouldn’t accept it. They’d demand further witnesses.

I should point out some commentators claim Judeans wouldn’t accept anyone’s testimony about themselves. Supposedly in a Judean court, neither the accused nor the plaintiff could make statements. Well, the scriptures demonstrate people could, and did. In the trials of Jesus, Peter and John, Stephen, and Paul, all of ’em made statements. (Stephen took a whole chapter. Ac 7) Jesus was even sentenced to death because nobody else’s testimony was valid but his—and he testified he’s Messiah. Mt 26.63-66 One person’s testimony is certainly valid; Jn 8.14 it’s just Jesus’s listeners in this chapter wanted more witnesses.

So Jesus brought ’em forth. Starting with John the baptist.

John 5.31-35 KWL

31 “When I testify about myself, my testimony ‘isn’t valid’:

32 The one who testifies about me must be another person.

Fine. I know a witness who is valid, who testified about me:

33 You sent for John, and he answered truthfully.

34 I don’t accept testimony from people, but I say this so you can be saved:

35 John’s a burning, shining lamp, and you wanted to rejoice in his light for an hour.”

John had referred to Jesus as “God’s ram, taking up the world’s sin!” Jn 1.29 KWL He knew Jesus had pre-existed; Jn 1.15, 30 he’d seen the Holy Spirit stay on Jesus, because he’s the one who baptizes with the Spirit. Jn 1.32-33 John knew who Jesus was, and if you considered John valid (as we Christians do), he counts as a second witness to Jesus.

The implications of being the Son of God.

John 5.17-30

After Jesus cured the sickly man at the pool, the Judeans objected that he’d done so on Sabbath, to which Jesus responded like yea:

John 5.17-18 KWL

17 Jesus answered them, “My Father works today, just like I work.”

18 So the Judeans all the more wanted him dead for this reason:

Not only was he dismissing Sabbath custom,

but he said God was his own Father, making himself equal to God.

Now, why’d that outrage the Judeans? Sloppy interpreters say it’s because Jesus was claiming, “I can do whatever I want, because my Father can do whatever he wants. I’m as unbound by your Law as he is.” So the Judeans were offended because Jesus was claiming license to break the Law.

As they should be. When you break the Law, it’s sin. Yet Jesus was born under the Law, Ga 4.4 was held to the Law’s standard, Ro 2.12, 3.19 and didn’t sin. He 4.15 He didn’t violate the Law, despite anything lawless Christians claim—because they want license to break the Law.

Okay, so Jesus wasn’t talking about breaking the Law, nor having the divine prerogative to do so. So then why’d that outrage the Judeans?

In Roman culture—which had largely superseded the Hebrew patriarchal culture by this point in history—adult sons were considered equal in legal status to their fathers. They had the run of their father’s property; they held their father’s authority; they had full access to their father’s money; they were equal. So Jesus wasn’t saying, “I can cure on Sabbath because God told me it’s okay,” nor “I can cure on Sabbath because God commissioned me to do so.” He was saying, “I can cure on Sabbath because I’m legally equal to God.”

If that sounds blasphemous to you, you know it sure did to the Judeans.

But rather than back away from the idea, Jesus doubled down. Not only is the LORD his legitimate, literal Father, Lk 1.35 but you know how God’s gonna raise the dead 2Co 1.9 and judge the world Ps 96.13 when the End comes? Yeah… guess who he’s delegated all that to?

And the proof of it comes from the fact Jesus can heal. The Son doesn’t wanna go outside the Father’s will. The only reason he can cure the sick because he sees the Father cure the sick, and if the Father does it, this automatically authorizes the Son to do it. Hey, if the Father didn’t approve of curing the sick on Sabbath, why would the Holy Spirit grant Jesus the power to do so?

John 5.19-21 KWL

19 So in reply Jesus also told them, “Amen amen!

I promise you the Son can’t work anything by himself

unless he sees the Father working.

For the Father might do anything,

and the Son does likewise,

20 for the Father cares for the Son,

and shows him everything he does.

The Father’ll show him greater works—

so you might be astounded!—

21 for just as the Father raises the dead and creates life,

so also the Son creates life in whomever he wants.”

You think Jesus curing the sick and throwing out demons is astounding? Just you wait. In the very near future, you’re gonna read stories from the gospels about Jesus raising the dead. And during the End Times, there’s gonna be even more.

“You take that back!”

How curses freak Christians out.

Curse /kərs/ n. Solemn utterance, meant to invoke supernatural evil, punishment, or harm.

2. v. Invoke supernatural evil, punishment, or harm.

3. n. Cause of evil or suffering.

[Curser /'kərs.ər/ n.]

Some Christians are mighty sensitive about curses. (Also mighty sensitive about “cursing,” by which we mean profanity, but I already discussed that.) Sometimes they call ’em “word curses,” which means precisely the same thing: You used your words to curse something. (How else are you gonna curse something? Waving one’s hands? Magic wands? Yeesh.)

For certain dark Christians, any negative statement—or anything they can interpret as a negative statement—counts as a curse. Fr’instance, I could say, “Hmm, cloudy day; looks like rain.” And to their minds, I just cursed the sky. Seriously. “You take that back! Don’t you call down rain on us!” As if my casual observation has the power to call down rain—and y’know, if it could, I’d make a fortune.

See, according to these folks, our words, even our idle words, spoken into the atmosphere, have the power to create or destroy. ’Cause we humans are made in God’s image. Ge 1.27 And since he has the power to call things into existence, supposedly we have the power to call things into existence. Good things or bad. Because I’m a semi-divine being, my uneducated weather forecast can actually make weather.

Which is rubbish, but you’d be surprised how many Christians believe this rubbish.

Don’t get me wrong. The spoken word isn’t a powerless thing. Words can build up; words can tear down. I can make someone’s day by giving ’em a compliment; I can ruin their life by criticizing ’em at the wrong time. That’s what Solomon meant when he wrote death and life are in the tongue. Pr 18.21 For this reason, Christians need to watch what we say. We never know the direction we’re influencing people.

But the idea my words have magical power that might trigger a reaction in nature around us, and create all sorts of unintended horrors: Not biblical. Ridiculous. And illogical, too: You’ll notice all those Christians who fear accidentally destroying stuff through their “word curses,” never worry about accidentally blessing stuff. “Gee, it looks like the weather today will be really nice!” never seems to force the clouds to dissipate. Nope. Blessings gotta be intentional, but curses can be accidental.