Healing at the Pool

4TH and 1

The Healing of the Man at the Pool (5:1-9a)
1. The historicity of this story was largely doubted until the 19th century when archaeologists located the pool in question.
2. The earliest manuscripts do not contain v. 3b-4. They were likely added later to provide detail to people unfamiliar with the setting.
3. The Scripture doesn’t necessarily say whether the pool ‘worked’ as a place of healing, but the fact that Jesus heals this man without utilizing the pool surely says something significant about Jesus.

The Sabbath Controversy (5:9b-18)
1. The 4th commandment called for ‘no work’ on the Sabbath. Jewish tradition had since attempted to define what constituted ‘work.’ By their measure, carrying a mat was a violation of the law.
2. The healed man is portrayed in a somewhat questionable way in this story. While his original complaint (v. 7) is understandable, he failed to seek out Jesus’ identity. After Jesus suggests that his sickness was due to sin, he provides Jesus’ name to the authorities.
3. Jesus does not deny that He had done ‘work’ on the Sabbath. Rather, He argues that since the Father works on the Sabbath, so does He! This response provoked murderous plots, for Jesus was not only admitting to the charge of working on the Sabbath, but was also claiming equality with God.
The Relationship between God & Jesus (5:19-20)
1. Jesus speaks of His relationship to God as the ideal father-son relationship, one in which the Father shows his son all he does and the son submits perfectly to the father’s will. This way of speaking of God was unique to Jesus.
2. If Jesus does ‘in flesh’ exactly what the Father does ‘in Spirit’ then Jesus is the revelation of God Himself.
3. Jesus predicted that God would make even greater revelations of Himself through Jesus than miracles.

The Role of Jesus as Judge (5:21-30)
1. As the Father is able to raise the dead, so too may the Son raise the dead. Indeed, the Son has been given the role of Judge so that people may Come to honor Him.
2. As a foretaste to physical resurrection, those who submit to Jesus experience new spiritual life. This ability to bestow life also shows Jesus’ true nature (God alone has life by nature).
3. A time is coming when Jesus will serve as Judge of all people. His judgment will be perfectly just since it corresponds perfectly to that of the Father.

The Judgment of the Jewish leaders (5:31-47)
1. The Jewish leaders should have accepted Jesus on the basis of the witness of John the Baptist and the Father (as evidenced by Jesus’ works and by Scriptures’ words).
2. That the Jewish leaders were rejecting Jesus served as evidence that they had never truly heard from God, seen God, or had His word dwell in them. Otherwise, they would have recognized Jesus since He was God!
3. The Jewish leaders’ error was not a lack of study, but a lack of using that study to draw them closer to Christ. They were more interested in being seen as right than in being right.
4. In the end, they were going to be found guilty and the case against them was going to come from Moses himself!