John 5:1-9
Introduction: One More Day in His Presence
The peace of the Lord be with you and with your house. We give thanks to the eternal and almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth, for one more day of life that He has extended to us and, above all, for one more day in His presence. Man’s life consists precisely in standing before the presence of the Lord. The psalmist David said it plainly: “I would rather spend one day, at least, in the courts of my God than a thousand outside them” (Psalm 84:10). Nothing would truly be the same if we were not before the presence of the Lord, and so we give thanks for each day He allows us, that we may expose ourselves to the power of His Word and to the power of His Holy Spirit.
In this chapter we will study chapter 5 of the Gospel of John, where the third sign is presented to us.
The Purpose of the Gospel of John
We have entered a series of teachings on the Gospel of John, and the reason the Lord has led us to study it is that John does not present a summary of all the deeds Jesus performed on the face of the earth during His three and a half years of ministry. The other Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—give an account, a summary, and they try to do so chronologically. John does not have that purpose. John’s purpose is to establish a specific order, one that has to do with the Kingdom of Heaven on the face of the earth.
This is what has led us to study the Gospel of John, because it is not merely a matter of knowing the works Jesus did. The gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven does not consist only in knowing what Jesus did on earth; it consists in understanding why He did it while He was here. That is precisely the aim of the Gospel of John. John outlines his entire Gospel around seven great signs. Up to this point we have studied the first four chapters, which contain the first two signs. In chapter 5 we will study the third.
The Account of Bethesda
Let us read John 5:1-9:
“After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been a long time in that condition, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk.’ And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath.” (John 5:1-9, NKJV)
This is the third sign that John records, and he presents it precisely as a sign concerning the ministry of Jesus on the face of the earth. Our purpose is to understand what this sign is about.
The True Condition of the Man at Bethesda
The first thing we must understand is what this man’s real condition was. Almost always, when we have read this account, the idea we have formed is that he was a paralytic. In fact, many Bibles—not to say the great majority—place a heading above the passage and present this event as “the paralytic of Bethesda.” Yet when we examine the original writings to discover his actual condition, we find the following: this man was not a paralytic, at least not in the way we have defined a paralytic. I repeat: he was not, despite the idea we have formed and despite the fact that many Bibles carry that heading. We must keep in mind that such headings come from a publishing house. The Bible was not written with headings or subtitles.
How can we affirm this? Because in verse 7, when the sick man answers Jesus, he says: “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me” (John 5:7). Observe the statement carefully: “while I am coming.” This means the man had movement; he was not a paralytic in the sense of a person with no movement at all. His own words reflect it. What he is saying is that almost every time the angel stirred the water, he ended up second: he was on the verge of getting in first, but there was always someone with greater mobility than his. It is clearly seen, then, that this sick man could move on his own and that, almost always, he came close to entering first but someone else got ahead of him.
Verses 3 and 4 speak of a great multitude who were there. It was a place where many sick people of different kinds had gathered: the blind, the lame, and the withered, waiting for the moving of the water. But when we reach verse 5, the writer uses a word that helps us understand this man’s real condition. The last part of the verse says that he “had an infirmity.” The Greek word the writer uses is derived from sthénos, which means strength; but the writer presents it in the privative form, placing an a before it: asthenés. In other words, it describes a person without strength.
The sick man described in verse 5 was a person unable to move quickly. He had a disability, particularly in his legs, that did not allow him to get around with speed. We could understand it as a kind of rheumatism in his legs, or a kind of multiple sclerosis that did not allow him to advance quickly; but he did have movement. He was not a paralytic as such: he was a person with a disability that kept him from moving fast.
Verse 6 mentions a detail: thirty-eight years of being sick. This is not his age but the length of time he had spent in that period of illness. We are therefore speaking of a person who was roughly fifty years old or more. It is very important that we understand this, because we must grasp what Jesus was doing. He was not merely healing a person who had difficulty moving quickly; He was establishing a sign.
Bethesda: The House of Mercy
What was the sign He was establishing? The key to understanding it is given to us in verse 2: “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches” (John 5:2). The word Bethesda is a Hebrew word meaning “place of mercy” or “house of mercy.” For us Bethesda is a name; but for those who read or pronounced it in that day, it was not simply a name but the very definition of the place where the pool was located. They understood perfectly that this place had been designated a house or place of mercy. If we were to read it literally, we would say: “And there is in Jerusalem, by the gate of the livestock, a pool that is called the place of mercy.”
This is confirmed by verse 4: an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred the water, and whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Where was this sick man, and where were all those sick people? All of them were in the place of mercy. And it is there that Jesus intervenes. The purpose of His intervention, the purpose of this healing, is to establish the sign that God works by His mercy. I repeat it because it is very important: the purpose of this work is to establish that God works by His mercy.
God Works by His Mercy
I want us to look at several texts in order to understand what His mercy is and how God acts. In Romans 9:16 we find this word: “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy” (Romans 9:16). This is emphatic in the writings of the apostle Paul: it is not of him who runs, it is not of him who wills, but of God who shows mercy.
In the book of Malachi, God tells the priests that He has loved them with an everlasting love. They ask: how have You loved us? What do You mean that You have loved us? And the Lord answers by reminding them of what is written: “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated” (Malachi 1:2-3). This comes precisely to confirm what the apostle Paul, by the Spirit of God, established in Romans 9:16. God does not work by human imposition; God does not work by human request. God works by His mercy.
In the book of Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah establishes this word: “Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). Chapter 5 of the Gospel of John is therefore establishing for us the sign that God works by His mercy.
What Did Not Move Jesus to Heal This Man
Let us return to the Gospel of John. This man who lay at the porch of the pool of Bethesda was not healed because he had been sick for thirty-eight years. We cannot say that Jesus approached him because He felt sorry that he had been sick so long. God does not operate that way. Neither was he healed because he was a chosen one, a favorite of Jesus among all those who were in that place; he did not receive favoritism. Jesus intervenes and heals him precisely to establish that God works by His mercy.
This is the truth that we need to establish within the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, because unfortunately, especially in these last times, many philosophical ideas have been introduced that claim to teach men and women that we are the ones who must provoke God’s intervention on our behalf. That is not established as true doctrine within the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. No man can provoke God; no woman can provoke God.
I repeat, this has unfortunately been introduced into the evangelical Christian context and is proclaimed in such a way that it has already become a school of thought within the gospel: “provoke God,” “provoke your miracle,” “provoke God’s favor on your behalf.” And in other cases, as an extension of the same idea: “sow a seed so that you may receive in return what you are asking the Lord for.” These points, which have unfortunately been presented as doctrinal points, have no scriptural foundation. The teaching that this third sign presents to us clearly establishes that God works by His mercy.
That man was precisely in the place of mercy, but he had not received mercy up to that moment. He was in a place where, from time to time, an angel came down from God to stir the water—by the mercy of God, whose mercies are new every morning, as the prophet Jeremiah said—in order to give instruction to everyone who was in that place. Surely not all of them received the same lesson, just as surely many people today have not understood that God works by His mercy.
How many people today may find ourselves embittered or resentful against God, precisely because we have believed that He is obligated to do what we ask of Him or to fulfill what we demand? God does not work by the imposition of man or woman. God does not work even because of the length of time a person has been going through a difficult situation. God works by His mercy.
“Let Him Glory in This”: Understanding How God Works
I want to take you to the book of the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 9, verse 24: “But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight, says the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:24). Listen well: in the Reina-Valera wording the preacher uses, God says, “I do mercy.” If there is any kind of boasting that is proper, any personal boasting, it is to understand how God works, how God acts.
Therefore, the approach we must have regarding God’s interventions has to conform to what the Word of the Lord establishes. It is not because I am working within His work, collaborating and taking part in the work of God, that He is obligated to give me what I am asking of Him. Is that not what the Word of the Lord presents? We need to understand it and walk according to this Word: it is by the mercy of God. That is why, when you review the Psalms of King David, you find that David understood precisely this spiritual law, and on more than one occasion he said: “Have mercy on me, O God, and do not take Your Spirit from me” (Psalm 51). And it is the teaching that chapter 5 of the Gospel of John leaves us: the sign that God works by His mercy.
Transforming the Way We Approach God
We must transform the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we approach God. None of us, men or women, above everything we may do and everything we may preach for the benefit of the Kingdom of Heaven, is fit and worthy to receive by ourselves. If we persist in that way of thinking, feeling, and viewing things, what we are really doing is placing limits and moving away from the presence of the Lord. Why? Because this amounts to arrogance, and God rejects every man and every woman with a spirit of arrogance. That is why our cry must be: have mercy on me, O God.
I want to take you to Matthew 9:13, where it is written, also through Jesus: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). Because God is merciful and works by His mercy, He likewise demands that all of us who draw near to the Lord do so on this same foundation: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.
We remain in the Gospel of Matthew, now in chapter 12, verse 7. This reference has to do with a situation very similar to the one in John 5. The day the sick man of Bethesda was healed was a Sabbath; verse 9 says so. What does this mean? It means that the religious people of that time were resentful that Jesus did work on the Sabbath, because according to them Jesus was not keeping the law of Moses, which established that no work may be done on the Sabbath. But look at what Matthew 12:7 says: “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matthew 12:7).
These texts show us God’s way of operating and how we must understand the way He works. We want God to work in our lives, to work on our behalf, to intervene in our lives. But the approach has to change: the approach that God is obligated to do and give me what I am asking Him, and that if He does not give it to me, I become resentful. That approach has to change, because by continuing with it we are in fact moving away from Him. What approach must we readjust? Our cry must be: have mercy on me, O God; have mercy on my house; have mercy, O Lord, on those around me; incline Your ear to hear the voice of Your servant, the voice of Your handmaid.
God’s Mercy Throughout All of Scripture
This is contained in the Holy Scriptures. Unfortunately, there are many people who are not reading the Holy Scriptures; there are many who are staying only with readings from the New Testament. We must read the Old Testament in the same way, because through its pages we are shown how God acts. This is not new. We did not need to go to John 5 in order to understand how God works: it is contained from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation.
Why, then, have we not understood it? Because we are not coming to the reading of the Word with the purpose of seeing how God works, but with the purpose of fulfilling an assignment we have given ourselves: to read the Bible. But what good is it to read the Bible if we do not understand what the Lord is showing us in His Word?
There are two more texts I want to read to you. The first is in the book of the prophet Joel, chapter 2, verse 13. See how important what the prophet says is: “So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm” (Joel 2:13). Notice that in a single verse the prophet, by the Spirit of God, uses the same word twice in the Reina-Valera wording the preacher cites: merciful and great in mercy. Mercy is the way God works, and it has been the way God has worked throughout time. The sick man of Bethesda was not healed because he had suffered the illness for thirty-eight years; he was not healed by a favoritism of Jesus toward him at the expense of all the others; he was not healed because of anything he could present. He was healed because God shows His mercy.
The second text is in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, because practically that is how John began his Gospel. See what verse 14 says: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Full of grace and truth. Let us move now to verse 16: “And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus the Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:16-18). The Son is declaring, is showing us, what the message is: God works by His mercy. And this must make us see things in a completely different way.
If you have not read the book of Job, I urge you to read it, because Job is grounded in this same sign: God works by His mercy. When the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, intervenes with Job, He says to him: “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Why? Because, although Job was right in his arguments against his friends—declaring that he had done nothing to deserve the situation he was facing—he lost sight of something: that God is merciful and that He establishes and works all things by His mercy. That is why, when you finish reading the book of Job, you discover that God multiplied to double everything he had lost, everything he had as part of his inheritance and his family. Why? Because God is merciful; God works by His mercy.
Two Additional Teachings from Chapter 5
Besides this fundamental teaching—the one considered the sign that Jesus establishes: God works by His mercy, God does not work under anyone’s coercion—chapter 5 of the Gospel of John presents two additional teachings.
First teaching: God abhors ambiguity
Let us return to verses 2 and 3: “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water” (John 5:2-3). Where was the pool, and what was its purpose? The pool was at the gate of the livestock (the Sheep Gate), on the north side of the temple. Gates had names according to the function they served, and through this gate, as its very name says, the livestock entered: not just any livestock, but the livestock that was going to be sacrificed.
Let us keep in mind that the temple was still standing and that, according to verse 1, it was a feast of the Jews. Feast days were not only celebrations; they were also days of sacrifice. Therefore, the pool was not for bathing or for other recreational purposes: it was for washing with water the livestock that was going to be sacrificed. The pool had a priestly function. That is the first fact. The second is the name of the pool: we have already discovered that Bethesda means place or house of mercy.
And yet—listen carefully—the place and the people who were there had been practically marginalized. What is the teaching this account presents to us? I will repeat it to you: God abhors the message that lends itself to ambiguity. A house of mercy, a place where what would be sacrificed to the Lord was prepared, and yet a marginalized place, as if it did not exist; mercy was not being dispensed. This is decisive for those of us who have confessed the name of Jesus, because it has been established for us: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” God abhors everything that lends itself to promoting ambiguity. If it is a house of mercy, it must honor the name it bears. This teaches us that we need to understand what God is demanding of each of our lives.
Let us see what verse 10 says: “The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, ‘It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed’” (John 5:10). No one was glad; no one rejoiced or celebrated over the healing of this man who had been ill for thirty-eight years. No one. And how did they find out? Precisely because the pool of Bethesda was on the north side of the temple, and the priests had to go down to the place to bring the victim that was going to be sacrificed. They knew the place; it is not that they happened upon it by chance while walking by. It was a house of mercy that showed no rejoicing, neither gladness nor joy, over the one who was receiving from God. In reality, there was ambiguity there, and God abhors ambiguity. On the contrary, they were upset and angry because this man was carrying his bed.
This teaching is very important: God desires mercy and not sacrifice, and many times the positions we take about what holiness is run contrary to what God has established as mercy. It is necessary that we understand this so that we can act, move, and proceed as God wants.
Second teaching: How aware are we of our real situation?
We find the second teaching in verses 6 and 7: “When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been a long time in that condition, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me’” (John 5:6-7). Let us pay close attention to the sick man’s answer. The question “Do you want to be made well?” admitted only one of two answers: yes or no. But the sick man answered neither yes nor no; he answered by explaining the reason he had not received healing up to that moment.
This leads us to ask: how aware are we of our real situation? This is the problem of many men and women of faith: we are not aware of the situation we are going through. We think we are giving a convincing answer, but in reality it is a circumstantial answer that somehow becomes an excuse for why we have not received. Many times, in reality, we are giving an excuse for why we have not received what we are asking the Lord for. And the reason we are not aware is that we do not have the corresponding knowledge that would make us see the reality of our life.
Let us go to verse 11: “He answered them, ‘He who made me well said to me, “Take up your bed and walk”’” (John 5:11). Verse 12 continues: “Then they asked him, ‘Who is the Man who said to you, “Take up your bed and walk”?’” (John 5:12). And he did not know how to answer. Why? Because, having spent so much time at the pool, he had never heard Jesus; he did not know Jesus or the teachings of Jesus. This is very serious. In this man, many of us who confess Jesus may be represented: we have references, but not the real knowledge that explains to us what the true condition of our lives is.
In the Gospel of John, chapter 8, verse 32, a word of Jesus is written: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). Why are we many times not free? Why have we not managed to get out of our conditions? Why have we not been able to overcome our realities? Because we do not know the truth. This was the case with this man: his problem, in addition to the condition of having no strength—not only in his legs, but in his whole body—was that he had no knowledge of the truth.
Something that will complicate our understanding a little more is that the knowledge we are speaking of is not merely reading the Word. There are many people who have read the Bible twenty, thirty times or more, but that has nothing to do with having the timely and necessary knowledge. Let us see why: in this same chapter 5, starting at verse 16, Jesus speaks with the Jews, that is, with the practitioners of Judaism. Verse 38 says: “But you do not have His word abiding in you” (John 5:38). They had a great deal of knowledge of the law of Moses, but in reality they were not moving by the knowledge that is the result of God’s revelation. This means that both the sick man and the religious people of that day were in the same condition: they did not know Jesus.
Let us observe something more in verses 39 and 40: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). That is how it is written in the more modern versions, and it is the correct form. In a great many traditional Spanish Bibles—I refer particularly to the old Reina-Valera and the 1960 revision—it appears as an imperative, as if Jesus were commanding them: “Search!” But the correct form is indicative, not imperative: “you search,” presented as a fact, because that is exactly what the religious people of that day did: every Sabbath they read the Torah, they read the Word of God. It is not that they lacked knowledge; it is that they were not walking according to the revelation of the knowledge of God. Both the sick man and the Jews were in the same condition: they did not have a truth by which to walk.
The reason we are not aware of our present reality is precisely that we have not entered the Word to see it as a mirror. Listen well to what I am saying: many times we are not aware of our reality because we have not entered the Word as into a mirror, to see in it what our real condition is. We have read it as if it were a reading book. No: the Word is a book in which to see ourselves reflected and to see what the real situation is that each one of us is going through. We have not been aware because we have not wanted to expose ourselves to the power of the Word and to the power of the Holy Spirit, in order to understand, first, how God acts and, second, what God is demanding of our lives.
Conclusion
We have seen that chapter 5 of the Gospel of John contains the third sign of Jesus. What does this sign consist of? It consists of showing us that God works by His mercy: not by our condition, not by our need, not by our requests, not by our imposition, not by our demands. God works by His mercy. “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy” (Romans 9:16). “Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). The prophet Joel exhorts us: “Rend your heart, and not your garments,” because God is merciful, slow to anger, and great in mercy (Joel 2:13).
This sign is very important for every man who wants to walk according to the will of the Lord, and for every woman who wants to walk according to the will of God. It is not possible to walk in the will of God if we have not understood that God works by His mercy. When we integrate this sign into our lives, then, and only then, can we see the work of God, can we see what God is doing and, above all, can we understand what God is demanding of our lives.
We thank the Lord for this sign and for the power of the Holy Spirit, who makes us see ourselves when we have been walking far from the truth. The peace of the Lord be with you. Amen.
Review Questions
- According to this chapter, what was the real condition of the man at Bethesda, and why is it important to understand it correctly? What teaching does it leave us that Jesus healed him?
- In what ways have you ever believed that God is obligated to give you what you ask because of your work, your need, or the length of time you have been waiting? How must that approach change in light of the fact that God works by His mercy?
- When you read the Word, do you read it as a reading book or as a mirror in which to see your real condition? What changes do you need to make in order to expose yourself to the power of the Word and the Holy Spirit?
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