John 5:1-8; 14
1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 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. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

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.”

On First Reading: Wait, Jesus Said WHAT?!

Admittedly, this Bible story used to bother me when I was younger and read the Bible more shallowly. First off, Jesus’ final words to the man sound harsh, especially when you think about how long the man had been disabled (38 years). Secondly, it always seemed like Jesus was actually blaming the man for being disabled, because of his sin (mentioned in the second half of verse 14), as well as threatening him with “worse” punishment. As a younger reader, I didn’t understand why Jesus was saying this when the man had obviously had a hard life already.

Reading Again: The Invalid Needed This Wake-Up Call

But as I read over this Bible story again for this post, I realized something: this man had been disabled a long time. In all that time, he had never once reached out to God for help; Jesus even asks him in verse 6, “Do you want to get well?” Jesus didn’t really need to know the answer, but He asked because it would make the man think differently about his problem. For all those years, the disabled man had been focusing on self-pity (“oh, poor me, nobody around me will help me”), and he had forgotten (or ignored) God, Who stands ready to help when we finally quit trying to do it all ourselves.

Now, when Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?”, the man realizes Jesus is reaching out to him for help, and he finally defines in verse 7 exactly what he needs help with. He has finally asked the right person! He has finally quit ignoring Jesus and quit wallowing in self-pity long enough to actually ask for help.

Ignoring Jesus and choosing to wallow in self-pity are both sins, which Jesus addresses in verse 14. When we sin, we cut ourselves off from God, either consciously or unconsciously, and it makes it much more frustrating for God to try to communicate with us. Jesus’ final words, then, are a firm disciplinary admonishment for the man to keep in better contact with God from here on out. He has been shown, personally and powerfully, what God can do in his life; it’s now up to him to turn to God and stop living in a mental prison of his own making.

We Need This Wake-Up Call, Too!

We often do the same thing to God, especially these days when we think we have our lives completely together and we are perfectly fine without God helping. Fact is, we all need God, and for some of us, God has been waiting a very long time for us to realize that. God even allows struggles to happen to us, to teach us that we do need Him when our own strength fails (and actually, we need Him every hour, as the old hymn goes). It’s not that God is doing evil things to us, but that He uses the bad things in our lives as teachable moments, to show us that we can’t do it all alone, and we don’t have to, because He is there. We just have to stop pridefully ignoring Him first!

John 5:9b-13
9b 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.”

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

In this passage, Jesus had just healed a disabled man, and told him to pick up his mat and walk; the Pharisee leaders, following the letter of the Old Testament Law, considered that the man was carrying a “load” and thus was violating Sabbath law. When they question the healed man, they learn of Jesus, “this fellow” who is apparently healing people AND telling them to violate Mosaic Law (at least in their highly legalistic understanding)!

But Jesus, following the spirit of the Law, knows that the formerly-disabled man walking is an important demonstration, not only of Jesus’ divine power but of the old order changing. God is moving among His people again, shaking up the human-created hierarchies and pointing out the useless legalism in their interpretations of His Word. And, as you might expect, the Pharisees are none too happy about that!

We modern Christians, however, are not immune to Pharisee-like beliefs. We, too, like to put human-created pseudo-Christian laws and opinions in God’s mouth, like the following:

• You HAVE to be dressed nicely to enter church*
• The more money you give to the church, the closer to God you are
• If you call yourself a Christian but don’t belong to a certain political party, you are not actually Christian*
• Certain kinds of people (homosexuals, junkies, etc.) cannot be saved*

* I have actually heard “Christians” say these things

These sentiments may have started out based on wanting to honor God, wanting to be holy, etc., but along the way they got twisted to serve human interests and conveniences instead of God. It’s very easy to do–you might say it’s very tempting to do. That’s why it’s so important for us to do a faith self-exam every so often, to check ourselves against the Word of God so that we don’t start falling into Pharisee traps!

John 1:1-3
1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

These 3 verses, which echo Genesis 1:1, speaks of the “Word” being with God, and also being God–whether it was thought or spoken word doesn’t seem to matter much. (The Greeks defined “Word” as the “rational principle which governs all things,” as my NIV translation states; however, the Jews defined “Word” as “Word of God,” which God used to both create the world and govern it through the Law.)

But the Word is not just the Law, nor was it just God’s spoken phrases–the Word is also Jesus! After all, the Law (Word of God) came from God and was fully God, and had its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. Thus, the phrase “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” takes on new meaning; John’s not just talking about the Mosaic Law here, but talking about Jesus, too.

I believe John puts this first in his gospel because he wants to make sure that his readers understand Jesus’ role. He was not simply a man, nor even just a prophet–He was the Son of God, the Word made flesh at long last to fulfill the Law and make it possible for us to reconnect with God. John asserts that Jesus was present with God at “the beginning,” in the midst of creation, and “nothing was made” without His assistance. This directly combats any doctrine which says that Jesus is somehow “lesser” than God the Father.

John 6:37

37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

In the midst of the disciples discussing how Jesus is the Bread of Life (spiritual sustenance), Jesus says this comforting but slightly cryptic statement. “All those the Father gives me will come to me”? What does that mean? Does it mean that only a select few people will be saved, and others not? The phrase “All those the Father gives” seems rather selective…

Until you remember that God created us ALL, and is guiding ALL our lives. Then the meaning becomes a little clearer. God, in seeking a reunion between humankind and Himself, guides each of our lives in such a way that we will eventually come to at least hear about Jesus. The final step of accepting Christ as Savior is ours to make or not make as we choose, but the choice is there. Through the efforts of missionaries, Christian relief aid, and good old-fashioned Christian friends, word about God spreads, and word about Jesus as the risen Savior goes right along with it.

It may be hard to accept for some, whose lives have taken such drastically hard turns that they may even doubt there is any God at all. Perhaps you’re one of them. I myself wondered where my life was going more than once, as I spent over a decade outside organized religion entirely, and floundered in trying to worship and pray by myself, not ever feeling like I’d truly connected with God. Sometimes I felt downright lost (like yesterday’s blog post, lol), and wondered “Does this God really know where He’s going?”

But, as you might have guessed, I found that indeed He did know where He was driving me–He was just taking a few unexpected roads. And, moreover, I found that Jesus had never driven me away from Him, keeping the word He said in the second half of this verse. Even when I had packed my junk and left organized faith practice, Jesus had never abandoned me; there was an open door always, just waiting for me to walk through.

That door, standing for salvation and love, exists for everyone who lives on Earth today. This, indeed, IS a comfort!

John 5:39-40

39 You study 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.

Here, Jesus is answering the Jews who are arguing with and persecuting him because of all He’s been doing (working on the Sabbath, identifying Himself with God, raising the dead). All the way back to verse 19, Jesus constructs a counter-argument against the Jews’ position, but verse 39-40 is the crux of it. These Jews have been studying the Torah and the prophetic writings for centuries, and yet now that the Messiah has come, they refuse him, instead turning back toward the Law as if it alone will save them.

This fallacy, of believing that just knowing the Scriptures and being “good enough” will save you, is what I call the “Pharisee fallacy.” Even today, people study the Scriptures but forget to trust Jesus with their salvation; they think, perhaps, that they have to be “good enough” first for Jesus to save them, so they immerse themselves in the Word of God. Being in the Word is great; forgetting to friend-request Jesus somewhere along the way isn’t so great.

Knowledge of the Bible can’t give salvation in and of itself; knowledge of the Bible and believing in Jesus, Whom it foretells and describes, is what salvation is about. To know God, you must both read about Him and allow Him to be in your life.

John 14:6-11
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7 If you know Me, you will also know My Father. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I speak to you I do not speak on My own. The Father who lives in Me does His works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.”

You can almost hear the incredulous tone in Jesus’ voice as he addresses Philip: “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip?” Even though Philip is one of the disciples and has been literally walking with Jesus this whole time, he has momentarily forgotten exactly Who Jesus is. Jesus then says that if they can’t believe that He is the Father just because He says He is, then they should believe because of the miracles (the “works”) themselves.

Established Christians can often get into a similar kind of rut about our beliefs–in the throes of new belief, we eagerly suck up everything there is to know about Christianity like a sponge. Over time, however, some of those truths can evaporate away from our daily lives, leaving us with a limited, more worldly understanding of Christianity again. We can end up unsure if we believe Jesus is the only way to heaven, or we end up saying Satan isn’t a real being, or that even the Holy Spirit is a myth. Even if we once believed in these truths, our secular lives, our mindsets, and our society can make us drift away from the things that sound maybe a bit too unbelievable.

In reminding Philip of His divine identity, Jesus is also encouraging him to be revived in his faith. Most Christians go through an annual Revival at church each year for this same purpose–to reconnect to our Christian beliefs, to reaffirm what we know to be the truth (and the way and the life, according to Jesus). Just like adding more wood to a fire that has burnt down to embers, during Revival (or at any other time during the year) we add more memories and more experiences of God’s grace and power to rekindle what we first believed. Reaffirming Christian truths, such as Jesus’ divinity and the need for salvation, also help. But above all, we have to keep our minds and hearts open to the miracles around us, the works which only God can do.