READ: John 5:1-18: … Get up, pick up your mat and walk …
In Jerusalem, there is a special pool where sick people are regularly healed: Bethesda. From time to time, an angel descends into that pool to heal the sick (verse 4). In a number of colonnades around the pool, many sick people are also now waiting for the moment when the water is stirred so they can get into the pool as quickly as possible. Whoever gets in first is healed.
Jesus meets a man there who has been sick for 38 years and has never managed to get into the water because no one will help him (verse 7). Jesus speaks to him and asks: Do you want to get well? He then heals him. The man picks up his mat and walks. This happens on the Sabbath (verse 9).
The healed man is then questioned by the Jews. When he says someone healed him and told him to pick up his mat, they want to know who it was. But the man doesn’t know.
Later he meets Jesus in the temple (verse 14). Jesus wants this man to be not only physically healed but also spiritually healed. That’s why He says: “Sin no more.” And adds: “so that nothing worse happens to you.”
The man must realize that he lives by grace and should show gratitude to God for that. But the story doesn’t end here. The Jews want to accuse Jesus—yes, even kill Him—because, in their view, He violated the Sabbath (verse 16).
It is true that He healed on the Sabbath. But is that against God’s will? What is Jesus’ answer to that? In verse 17, Jesus says: “My Father is still working, and I too am working.” In other words: If My Father works on the Sabbath, then I do too, because I do what My Father shows Me.
What Jesus did was not ordinary labor or productive work. It was the work of the Father: giving people the opportunity to serve and honour Him with both their bodies and their spirits—cleansed of sickness and sin. That is what Jesus did and what He will continue to do. He stands as Saviour in service to the Father, for His glory.
Must we also live by grace? Why?
Sing: Ps. 32:3