Can You Stop Working? (John 5)

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Are you constantly working and never resting?

Do you find yourself constantly distracted or focused on doing the next task? Do you run from silence and always opt for activity? If so, John 5 is a must-read. This chapter recounts Jesus healing a man who had been sick for 38 years at the Pool of Bethesda.

While skeptics used to doubt the viability of this event, the Biblical Archaeology Society notes, “The Bethesda Pool is described as having five porticoes—a puzzling feature suggesting an unusual five-sided pool, which most scholars dismissed as an unhistorical literary creation. Yet when this site was excavated, it revealed a rectangular pool with two basins separated by a wall—thus a five-sided pool—and each side had a portico.”[1] Thus, a site once used to disprove the reliability of Scripture now points to its truth.

For reasons not described in the text, the invalid apparently believed he would be healed if he was the first person into the pool after an angel of God stirred the waters. Again, the author does not say whether this was some natural occurrence. All we know is that Jesus encounters him and says in verse 8, “Get up…pick up your mat and walk.”

Miraculous as this is, the moments after this miracle are the focal point of this narrative. Because immediately after he is healed, this man does as he has been instructed and picks up his mat and walks. While this might not seem like a big deal, according to the Sabbath day regulations in the Mishnah, the oral law of Judaism, "a couch could be carried only if it had a man on it.”^[2] Thus, when the Jewish leaders see this man carrying his mat, he naturally draws attention.

Later, Jesus encounters this man in the temple and says in verse 14, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” While scholars debate what Jesus meant, D.A. Carson notes, “there is nothing in any of this that precludes the possibility that some ailments are the direct consequences of specific sins. And that is the most natural reading of this verse.”^[3]

Perhaps most surprisingly, rather than worshiping Jesus and thanking him, this man goes straight to the Jewish leaders and essentially blames Jesus for his actions. It’s as if he’s saying, It’s all Jesus’ fault. If he hadn’t healed me, I never would have carried my mat on the Sabbath in the first place.

That’s when Jesus utters some words that cause the Jews to want to kill him. He says in verse 17, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” This statement is remarkable because Jesus is pointing back to creation when God rested on the Sabbath. Certainly, this rest didn’t mean that God stopped operating the world. Carson notes that “Philo, a Greek-speaking Jew heavily influenced by hellenistic writers, frankly denies that God has ever ceased his work of creation. The consensus amongst the rabbis, too, was that God works on the Sabbath, for otherwise providence itself would weekly go into abeyance.”^[4]