John 5 - The NIV Application Commentary on the Bible: One-Volume Edition

The Crime (5:1–15). The story opens with Jesus coming to Jerusalem during a feast (which is the Sabbath, v. 9) and arriving at a gate in the city’s northeast wall called the Sheep Gate. It is interesting that this northeast section of the walled city has continued to sponsor a sheep market one day per week just outside St. Stephen’s Gate. The NIV refers to the name of a pool there called in Aramaic “Bethesda” (v. 2). Today this pool, complete with five porches, is located adjacent to the Church of St. Anne inside Jerusalem’s Old City.

We learn in the story that many people viewed the pool as a healing sanctuary. The people understood that occasionally an angel would descend and stir the water of the pool, and the first one to touch the water would be healed. The man Jesus meets had been ill for thirty-eight years. This area was likely a regular place for him to spend the day. Here he could beg from people coming to the pool and take his chances at being healed.

Jesus takes the initiative with the man (as he generally does in the Gospel) with words whose meaning likely goes beyond the mere miracle at hand: “Do you want to get well?” (v. 6). The man then appeals to his dilemma: as a paraplegic, he cannot outrace the others getting into the pool for healing. Jesus ignores both the superstition surrounding the pool and the man’s complaint: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk” (v. 8). The healing is immediate. The man simply obeys and is healed.

The importance of the story comes to us in verse 9b. It is the Sabbath when Jesus heals the man, and immediately the story takes an abrupt and unsettling turn. A self-appointed enforcer of Sabbath law upbraids the man.

The man does not know Jesus. He simply points to his own healing, and no doubt with joy that matched his inquisitors’ zeal, he says that a man with the authority to heal told him to do this. For the first time in the Gospel, Jesus’s opponents show themselves in all their hostility. Their question shifts rapidly from the error of the healed man to the identity of the healer who has incited this breach of law.

When Jesus meets the former paraplegic in the temple, there is an important exchange. We can surmise that the man has gone to the temple to offer praise to God for his healing or perhaps to confirm his healing with priests. When Jesus sees him, he says two things. “See, you are [literally have become] well” is no doubt a recognition that his cure was not short-lived, as many supposed cures were (v. 14a). But then Jesus remarks, “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (v. 14b).

Is Jesus making some link between sin and physical ills? The man’s sin and his condition are linked. Scripture indicates that some tragedies may be the result of specific sins, and this may be why Jesus has chosen the man for healing. But those with an infirmity have not necessarily sinned, and those who sin do not necessarily endure suffering as a consequence. Luke 13:1–5 and John 9:3 provide Jesus’s correction of that sort of thinking. Suffering is not an index of a person’s sin. But having said that, specific suffering may still come from specific sins.

The Decision to Prosecute (5:16–18). We dare not miss the pivotal importance of these three verses. The Jewish leadership has located two crimes that are major offenses deserving the death penalty. If we keep John’s fascinating trial motif in mind, these verses contain the legal complaint that the Jewish authorities held against Jesus.

The Greek of verse 16 says that the persecution is tied to Jesus’s habit of doing such things on the Sabbath. Jesus was viewed as indifferent to divine Sabbath law as mediated through Jewish tradition, and observers to such violations were obligated to punish the offender.

The second charge against Jesus has to do with blasphemy. Jesus’s defense of his Sabbath activity is given in verse 17 (literally): “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” If God (who made the Sabbath) can continue to work positively while commanding rest, and if Jesus’s works are the works of God, then Jesus’s works on the Sabbath are defensible. Jesus is assuming divine prerogatives (v. 19).

If the defense is true, a breathtaking claim is being set before Judaism. If it is false, a serious crime has been committed. Jesus is claiming equality with God. As God’s divine agent, Jesus has the right and the ability to do what God does. Therefore John interprets the persecution and eventual death of Jesus as leading from Jesus’s divine claims about himself.

Jesus Goes to Trial (5:19–47). Jesus and God (5:19–30). The central motif in the discourse is the relation of a father and a son as it would be viewed in this culture through the trade or skill the son was learning. His activity is never independent or self-initiated but always dependent, deriving its purpose from his Father’s will. The Son does not simply draw inspiration from the Father but imitates him tirelessly and successfully. What makes this possible? John provides three answers.

The most important affirmation is that the Father loves the Son. The Greek present tense suggests an ongoing, continuous affection here, which leads to complete disclosure of the deeper mysteries of the Father. Jesus is unique inasmuch as he has seen and heard things no one else has.

This love spills into two tasks entrusted to the Son that belong exclusively to the Father. Jesus is sovereign over life and judgment. That God alone has power over life and can raise people from death is no surprise. That Jesus can do it too sets him apart. Since Jesus is in this world, since he is the one through whom light and life are mediated, he becomes the catalyst of divine judgment. Those who love darkness find themselves under judgment already. Whoever believes in the Son has life already.

This makes Jesus God’s premier agent in the world. In antiquity, being an “agent” referred to a role in which authority and power were delegated to do a task. The agent’s words were binding both on his audience and on the king who sent him. Therefore the agent had to be completely trustworthy. This is the imagery Jesus has in mind. As verse 23 makes explicit, whoever wishes to honor the Father must likewise honor the Son who represents him. And whoever dishonors the Son offends the Father whose presence stands behind him.

Now that the groundwork has been laid, Jesus expands and interprets what life and judgment really mean. To hear the words of Jesus (i.e., to accept his entire presence and message) is to believe God (who sent him). God’s word and Jesus’s word are one and the same, and so to embrace one is to embrace the other.

The key in these verses is to see that Jesus is expanding his divine claim. His authority over the Sabbath leads now to authority over eternal life. Because of who he is, Jesus can do what God does.

Witnesses for Jesus’s case (5:31–40). Verse 31 is crucial in Jesus’s trial. In Old Testament law, more than one witness was needed in order to condemn someone. Jesus’s claims are extraordinary. But if he is the only one making them, they will carry little weight with his audience. But if the claims are corroborated, they stand.

Jesus therefore identifies five witnesses whose words and deeds buttress his claims.

1. The first witness is God. God’s word and power are within Jesus, he has been sent by the Father, and these data point to the truth of who he is.

2. The next witness is John the Baptist. John preceded Jesus, identified him, worked with him, and directed his followers to become Jesus’s disciples.

3. Jesus points to his own works, which demand some explanation. These point not merely to Jesus’s identity but to the Father, who alone can enable such things.

4. Jesus adds the Scriptures to his list of witnesses. First-century Judaism was zealous in its study of the Scriptures. Yet, Jesus says, his contemporaries do not see the central message about Jesus and how he fulfills the Scripture.

5. The final witness is contained in the next element of Jesus’s defense. It is Moses, who is represented in Scripture, but his words about the Messiah are unequivocal (Deut 18:15). Moses is the patron saint of Judaism. But, Jesus remarks, even Moses’s words have gone ignored.

Jesus prosecutes his opponents (5:41–47). A remarkable and unexpected feature of the discourse is the way in which Jesus finishes by attacking his opponents. Jesus turns the tables and moves from defense to prosecution. The final impact of his defense in verses 31–40 leaves the impression that Jesus’s hearers bear some responsibility for what God has done. If they cannot see the Father’s work in their midst, something must be profoundly wrong. Their disbelief is deliberate and the diagnosis severe: they do not have the love of God in their hearts. They love the religious life, but they have forgotten how to love God.

Jesus’s final reference to Moses in verses 45–47 points not only to Moses’s role as a witness (cf. above), but also to his role as judge. Judaism took great pride in Moses. But if Moses is possessed and not obeyed, the very words of Moses will come back to judge. To possess the Bible and to know the Scriptures but to not know God is to be in the most precarious place of all.

The Third Promise of the Spirit (5:26–16:4a). As we learned earlier, paraklētos should be taken as “advocate,” since it is a judicial title describing someone aiding a legal argument. The Spirit-Paraclete will not only live in the disciples, enabling them to recall the words of Jesus; now he will become a witness, supporting their trial. The disciples are witnesses, and they will be empowered as they deliver that message to the world.

The disciples will be forced to witness about Jesus as they are confronted. But the words they utter will be “the truth” because they are speaking about the work of God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit (v. 26). The truth (in the power of the Spirit of truth) is not a compelling spiritual experience in the first instance; it is the capacity to point faithfully to what is known about Jesus’s historic ministry from its onset.

Jesus has taught them “all this” so that they will not “fall away” (Gk. skandalizō, 16:1). This word refers to someone who stumbles, such as when a person trips because of darkness. The greatest thing, therefore, that the disciples have to fear is that they will renounce their faith or commit apostasy.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus was candid about the social consequences that came with discipleship. Suffering and even martyrdom may be theirs. In John’s own Gospel the story of the blind man (John 9) serves as a paradigm of what is to come.

But Jesus’s point is that to know in advance is to be equipped (16:4a). To step into suffering and recognize that it follows the pattern of Jesus’s life and fulfills his word may strengthen men and women for whom faith comes at a severe cost. Verse 16:4a does not refer to “when their time comes” (NIV) but “when their hour comes.” Throughout John, “the hour” refers to Jesus’s death and glorification, but now it is the disciples’ “hour” that will test their devotion to their faith.