Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Five

                                                                                                                                      Verses 1-15

Jesus went to Jerusalem to observe one of the Jew's feasts. Jesus found a man who was at least partially paralyzed who had been lying beside a pool called Bethesda for 38 years hoping that someone would put him into the water first because an angel who troubled the water from time to time healed anyone who first entered the water. Jesus asked the man if he desired to be healed. Jesus already knew that the man desired to be healed, but He asked him that question in order to evoke some faith in this man when he answered Jesus. The impotent man revealed that he had some faith that God would heal him. When Jesus heard him express his faith, then Jesus told him to "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." Jesus immediately healed him, and he took up his bed and walked on the Sabbath day.

Some of the Jews saw him and rebuked him for carrying his bed on the Sabbath. By his answer to them, the healed man demonstrated that his faith had increased and that he now directed his faith toward Jesus. This man now believed that if the man that healed him could tell him to take up his bed and walk on the Sabbath, then that man must have some authority over the Sabbath, and therefore, must have been sent from God. The Jews then asked the healed man who had healed him. The man answered that he did not know Jesus or his name. A little later, Jesus found him in the Temple where he had evidently gone to worship God for his healing. Jesus told him that He had made him whole which could only mean that He had also saved him by His grace. Jesus also commanded this man to stay out of sin and warned him that sin causes great pain and suffering. This man then demonstrated his new faith in Jesus because he felt compelled to go and tell the Jews that Jesus had made him whole.

Faith in Christ for salvation by grace can come suddenly and unexpectedly on a person as it did with Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. But faith in Christ as one's Savior can also develop gradually as it did with the woman at the well and with the impotent man whom Jesus healed. Jesus knows every one of His sheep that He saves by His grace. He cannot lose a single one of them. They all chose to become saved by His grace when He planned the history of mankind before He ever created the world. John 10:26-30; I Corinthians 2:7; Acts 15:18; II Timothy 1:9; Hebrews 4:3. For these reasons, Christ proceeded to save by His grace all living humans whose faith was growing, but who could not come to a full understanding of how He saves them through His sacrifice and resurrection for them. Before His crucifixion and resurrection, Christ saved by His grace all living humans who had some subdued faith in Him because He knew that He would visit them in Paradise under the earth where they all would be. He would preach the gospel to them so that they all would come to complete faith in how He saved them so that He could translate them all to Heaven when He ascended. Ephesians 4:7-10.