Do You Want to be Made Well?

We have been reflecting on the questions God asks throughout Scripture. On the surface, some of these questions seem almost unnecessary. The factual answers are often obvious. When God asks Adam, “Where are you?” or when Jesus asks, referring to the dead Lazarus “Where have you laid him?” it is not because God lacks information. This raises an important question: why does God ask questions whose answers He already knows? Are these merely simple questions, or do they carry a deeper purpose that we often miss?

Today, I want us to consider another one of these questions — a question that, on the surface, also appears unnecessary. But as with many of God’s questions, the obvious answer may not be the real point. So we need to look beneath the surface and ask what this question reveals about us, about God, and about His grace. The story behind today’s question is found in John 5, where Jesus meets a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years.

The Healing at the Pool

John 5. Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda^[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ^[4] [b] 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to be made well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

⁸ Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, ¹⁰ and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

¹¹ But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

¹² So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

¹³ The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

The backdrop of our story today is a pool in Jerusalem where, John tells us, “a great number of disabled people used to lie.” The Pool of Bethesda was a place where suffering people gathered because they believed healing might happen there. Some translations mention the water being stirred, and the belief that the first person into the pool would be healed. Whether this was supernatural, natural, or simply a local belief, the central point in John’s story is that this man had placed his hope in a system that had never healed him.

The question we are considering today is: “Do you want to be made well?” or, more simply, “Do you want to be healed?”

Notice the setting of this question. Jesus asks it in a place where many disabled and suffering people had gathered because they hoped to be healed. Also notice that Jesus does not address the crowd in general. He sees one man in particular, and then, the bible says, Jesus learns that this man had been in his condition for a long time — thirty-eight years, to be exact. Jesus then goes and asks this man: “Do you want to be made well?”

The factual answer to this question is so obvious that when Jesus asks this question, the man doesn’t even register it. The expected answer seems simple: of course he does. Why else would he be there? His response suggests that he hears Jesus’ question only in the most practical sense: “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” 

So, then, what was Jesus asking this man?

When we are healthy, or when we presume ourselves to be healthy, it can be difficult to imagine the world as someone who has lived with long-term illness or disability might see it. This man, for example, had been lying on his mat for thirty-eight years — perhaps for most, or even all, of his adult life. His days, his location, his relationships, his hopes, his disappointments, and even his understanding of himself had all been shaped by this condition.

After that much time, sickness is no longer merely something that happens to the body. It becomes the world a person lives in. It becomes the reality through which life is interpreted. His imagination of what life could be had likely become severely limited by what life had always been.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus asked this question. The deeper question is not simply: Do you want your illness removed? The answer to which seems obvious enough. The deeper question is more existential: Do you want the life that healing would open up? Do you want to become someone other than the person this condition has forced you to become?
Do you want to step out of the identity, habits, explanations, and dependencies that have formed around your wound? 

What we often fail to see, especially when we presume ourselves to be well, is that we are all the sick man at the pool. Jesus asks each of us this question. Are you ready to leave behind the only world you have known, even if that world has been painful? Do you want to be made well if wellness requires you to see yourself, others, and God differently? Do you want healing if it means losing the identity that suffering has given you? Do you want to receive a new reality, or only relief within the old one?

It is telling that the man does not answer Jesus by saying, “Yes, I want to be made well.” Instead, he says, “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” In other words, he answers Jesus from within the only world he knows. He assumes that healing means getting into the pool at the right moment, with the right help, before someone else gets there first. And if we are honest, our answers to Jesus are often very similar. We say, in our own way, “Lord, if You would just do this one thing for me — the thing no one else has been able to do — then all will be well. That is all I need from You.” 

Like this man, we often tell God exactly what we need, when we need it, and how He should go about doing it. We are convinced that we understand reality. We think we know how the world works, what the problem is, and what solution God must provide. This man had spent thirty-eight years beside the pool, watching the same painful pattern unfold again and again. He lived in a world of scarcity, of competition, judgment and sin. This is the world we all inhabit, the world of sin, of money, and power. A world where the first go first and the last go last, where children are expected to stand behind adults, where the poor depend on the rich and the sick wait for the healthy.

This is precisely why Jesus asks this man, and all of us, this question. The healing Jesus offers is not merely physical, and it does not operate according to the rules of men. It is not governed by scarcity, competition, timing, status, or human advantage. The man’s world was organized by human rules: who gets there first, who has help, who is strong enough, who is noticed, and who is left behind. But Jesus does not enter that world in order to help the man compete better within it. He enters it to overturn it.

The healing Jesus offers is transformational on every level. It changes not only the body, but more importantly, our soul. It flips the way we see reality. Where we once saw only sin, limitation, judgment, and impossibility, Jesus teaches us to see grace, restoration, and new life.

This is what we see in the healing of this man. Jesus does not even acknowledge this man’s answer to His question. Instead, he heals him by a command. Healing by command is common in the ministry of Jesus, though it is not the only way He heals. But this command is especially striking because it is not a single action. It is a threefold command: rise, carry your mat, and walk. 

Healing requires from this man to move. He can no longer sit idly by the pool, supported by the mat that had carried him for so many years. Instead, he must stand up, pick up that same mat, and walk away. Everything he has known is now different. The pool is no longer the center of his existence. The mat is no longer the place of his helplessness.

We have to pay close attention to the mat, because it becomes a matter of contention later in the story. This healing took place on the Sabbath, and when the Jewish leaders saw the man carrying his mat, they questioned him about it. This gives the mat a curious and important place in the story. Why did Jesus command him to carry it? Was this detail incidental, or was it part of the healing itself?

In this story, the mat is a symbol of the old worldview. On that mat, the man had learned how life worked, and how he will always be last. But after Jesus heals him, the man is no longer lying on the mat. He is carrying it. That reversal is important. The symbol of the old worldview has not disappeared, but its power has changed. 

So when Jesus commands him to pick up his mat, He is commanding him to carry the symbol of his old identity. The man walks away holding the very object that once marked his captivity. The old reality has not been marginally improved; it has been completely overturned. He does not have to deny the old world in order to leave it. He carries its symbol, but he is no longer captive to its rules. In the presence of Jesus, the same mat now means movement, freedom, and new life.

Yet this action does not sit well with the religious authorities. The very object that symbolizes this man’s healing and freedom appears unlawful in their eyes. The mat that Jesus commanded him to carry becomes, for them, evidence not of God’s work, but of a violation of religious rules.

This raises a disturbing question: might our own healing sometimes fail to fit the expectations of our religious communities? Might the new life God gives us occasionally be questioned, or even opposed, on religious grounds? The religious leaders could see the mat, but they could not see the healing. They could recognize a rule being broken, but not a life being restored.

What, then, is this new world into which Jesus invites the man? I think it is the world of grace.

The world of the pool was governed by scarcity. There was only one opportunity, one opening, one winner. Someone else’s healing meant this man’s continued suffering. The strong moved ahead, while the weak were left waiting.

But Jesus reveals a completely different reality. In the kingdom of God, healing is not scarce. Grace is not a prize to be won, nor is it reserved for those who arrive first, move fastest, or possess the right advantages. Grace is a gift. It cannot be earned, competed for, or controlled.

Grace presents a complete reversal of the world’s order. In the world of grace, the weak are chosen first, children see reality more clearly than adults, the poor are richer than the wealthy, and those who lose their lives are the ones who truly find them.

In the world of grace, salvation is not scarce, but abundant. God does not merely observe human suffering from heaven but enters into it. He dwells among His people, shares their sorrow and their joy, and bears their burdens as His own.

In the world of grace, God is not distant but near. God’s children learn to recognize His voice amid the countless voices competing for their attention. They no longer follow the voice of fear, scarcity, status, or self-preservation, but the voice of the Shepherd who calls them into freedom.

This is the world Jesus was inviting the paralytic to enter. It was not simply a world in which he could walk. It was a world in which everything he thought he knew about life had to be reimagined. And this is both the reason for and the meaning of Jesus’ question: “Do you want to be made well?”

Discussion Questions

1. There is something unsettling about the fact that Jesus does not seem to depend on the man’s answer before healing him. The man does not appear to understand the depth of the question, yet Jesus gives him healing anyway. What might this suggest about God’s will, human will, and grace?
2. The man answered Jesus from within the only world he knew: the pool, the water, the competition, and the absence of help. What are some ways we also ask God to help us within the old world, rather than receiving the new reality He is offering?
3. What might the mat represent in our lives — something that once carried us, but now needs to be carried differently?
4. Why do you think the religious leaders could see the mat but not the healing? What does this reveal about how religion can sometimes miss grace?

Anonymous: I can’t help but praise God for the greatness of the minds He has given us. We can discuss the same subject, yet hear it presented by two different people with entirely different depths and insights into the same event. I cannot dismiss that.

Donald: We’ve heard this story over and over again, yet Michael has managed to cast it in a new light in a very important way.

There are so many questions surrounding this story that we simply don’t know the answers to, and perhaps we don’t need to know them. I wonder whether this man ever prayed. Did he have any real sense of the things of the Spirit, as Don would say? Or had this simply become his accepted condition in life?

As far as he knew, his only hope was somehow to maneuver himself into the pool before everyone else. Realistically, that was almost impossible. There were probably many disabled people there, and if your legs didn’t work, you weren’t going to be the first one into the water unless you happened to be lying right beside the edge.

I’m not sure all those details matter. But I think your observation about the mat is extremely important. Jesus could simply have healed him. The man could have stood up and walked away, and the mat would never have become part of the story. Instead, Christ deliberately included the mat, and it becomes one of the central elements of the entire narrative. I’ve never really stopped to think about that before.

How could someone spend thirty-eight years there and never make it into the pool? How did he survive? Who cared for him? Who fed him? Those are fascinating questions, although perhaps not the main point. If this man had prayed, I’m quite sure he never prayed for the answer he actually received. He probably prayed that somehow he could get into the pool, because that was the only reality he knew. His prayers would naturally have reflected his understanding of how the world worked.

That raises a question for us. What should we be praying for? We know so little. We really don’t understand how reality actually works. We simply do the best we can with the understanding we have. I think that’s one of the important lessons in what you presented this morning. Christ went far beyond anything this man ever expected. I don’t even know whether he stopped to say thank you. He simply picked up his mat, walked away, and undoubtedly rejoiced. Yet the people who saw him weren’t rejoicing that he could walk. They criticized him for carrying his mat.

I’m not really adding anything new. I’m simply emphasizing what you’ve pointed out—details that most of us miss every time we read this story before moving on to the next one.

C-J: When I see the mat, I think of trauma. We all carry our trauma with us, but it can either continue to imprison us or become something God uses to shape us into what He intended us to be. “Get up.” Be a witness. Learn from where you’ve been. In thirty-eight years, this man had seen a great deal. He had learned how the system worked—how people lived under rules rather than in liberty.

My thoughts immediately go back to the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God could simply have wiped them out. Instead, He sent them out of the garden. Women would experience pain in childbirth. Men would labor to cultivate the ground. 

Why? Because now humanity would learn responsibility. God had already given them everything they needed. He always intended His children to become mature adults—to bear fruit, to be productive, and to understand that parenthood, for example, isn’t just about raising toddlers but about a lifetime of responsibility. But God also has expectations. “Get up. I’m not going to carry you forever. What is the purpose for which I created you?”

I think you’re right, Donald. Many people completely miss that message. They remain focused on “Give me. Help me. I can’t.” But God says, “I have already enabled you through My Word, through your experiences, and through My promises.”

It’s a powerful message, Michael, especially for people who have lived through trauma.

I also want to thank Donald for pointing out something I’d never really considered. Imagine what it must have been like to spend thirty-eight years lying on a mat. He had no privacy. Someone had to bathe him. Someone had to help him relieve himself. Someone had to bring him food. There was no dignity in that life. He would simply have been seen as inadequate.

Yet here he was, hearing—through the Holy Spirit, I believe—the command, “Get up.” Why have you resigned yourself to believing that your appearance, or your circumstances, define your worth? According to the traditions of the day, people probably assumed either he or his parents had sinned. But Jesus says, “No.” Jesus reveals the truth. You don’t yet realize what your true purpose is.

I believe this man got up not only rejoicing and praising God but becoming a witness that your circumstances do not define who you are. Every day we have the opportunity to live out God’s promises if we believe them and act on them in faith—and even that faith is itself a gift from God.

Michael, I just want to embrace what you’ve shared because it confirms and reaffirms my own walk over the past year. There came a point where I simply threw up my hands and said, “This is what it is.” But recently God has been saying, “Now you’re ready. Now you’re ready to go out and do what I was preparing you to learn—to see and to understand.” It’s incredibly liberating. There’s a peace and a sense of agency that I haven’t experienced for a very long time. Thank you, Michael.

Dion: As I was listening to Michael, I found myself thinking back to something we discussed here perhaps three or four years ago, when Dr. Weaver was leading. The title that day was, Is the Question Really the Answer? That came back to me this morning.

When I look at this story, I see this man carrying the mat that had been his reality for thirty-eight years. Jesus tells him to pick it up, and now he’s walking away carrying it. But I don’t think he has fully comprehended yet what his new reality actually is. Then people immediately begin asking him questions about the mat. So while he himself is trying to understand what has happened to him, he’s simultaneously witnessing to everyone else about this new reality.

Jesus has already walked away, but grace continues working through the questions and reactions of the people around him. Human beings are collectively trying to make sense of what has happened. The understanding isn’t constructed by the healed man alone; it’s almost a collaborative discovery.

He could have gone home later and reflected privately, saying, “Now I understand what God did for me.” Instead, his understanding develops in conversation with others—people questioning his healing, questioning why it happened on the Sabbath, questioning what it all means.

Everyone is working through their own assumptions, their own religiosity, their own spiritual burdens, trying to understand what grace really is and how it works. That’s what makes the symbolism of the mat so interesting to me. The mat represented his old reality. Now that reality has changed, yet he continues carrying it. Everyone is trying to understand what this means and where they themselves now stand. I think that gives all of us an opportunity to reflect on where we are situated as well.

Anonymous: I think carrying the mat has deep significance. To me, it represents the evidence of everything we’ve gone through in life. In my own case, cancer remains with me. It will always remain as a reminder of my old life. I don’t think that’s something I should forget or try to leave behind. It’s good to carry it with me. It is a sign in my own body that, despite everything, I still live by God’s grace. I continue to experience His freedom and His abundant grace. I would never wish to erase that evidence from my life.

As Michael said, I’m no longer enslaved to it. In the man’s case it was thirty-eight years. In my case, it has been about twenty-five years. I’m no longer under its control. Now I carry it. It is under my control instead of me being under its control.

As for the question you raised—why Jesus healed the man even though he never really answered the question—I think the answer comes from Ephesians 1:4-14:

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

God reveals there His entire plan of salvation for the human race. What is so beautiful is that this plan was established before the foundation of the world. God wants us saved through Jesus. God wants us healed—not merely physically, but completely, body and soul.

That means a great deal to me. If God planned our salvation before creation itself, then His plan is already in motion. He isn’t waiting for us before acting. He goes forward according to His own good pleasure in saving the human race. The passage tells us that He has already determined to make us righteous in Christ, to make us holy in the Beloved, and to make us living testimonies of His grace. Everything He does is for the praise of His glorious grace. So, in the end, I see that no matter what choices we make, God’s desire is still to save us.

That led me to wonder this morning whether, in one sense, God’s will to save us precedes our own choices. Perhaps our freedom lies not in creating God’s plan but in how we respond to it. We can say, “Yes, Lord. Whatever pleases You is fine with me.” Or we can say, “No. I understand Your plan, but I choose my own. I can save myself. I can make myself good enough. I can make myself whole.” That’s where our freedom lies. So I thank God even for the calamities that come into our lives. As I’ve said before, I carry that evidence in my own body. For twenty-five years I’ve carried it, and I have no desire to get rid of it.

That passage from Ephesians captures exactly what I was trying to express. It says that everything is “to the praise of His glory.” We praise God because of the grace He has bestowed upon us through Jesus Christ. That is why He desires our salvation. So why would Jesus heal someone who never even answered His question? I think the answer is that God already has a plan. His plan proceeds according to His good pleasure, and He is carrying it out. God is not going to suspend His plan of salvation simply because we fail to ask in exactly the right way, or because our requests are too small.

The problem is that our prayers are often limited by our own understanding. We ask primarily for physical healing, while God desires to heal the whole person. He wants to make us completely whole—body, soul, and spirit. 

Don: It seems to me that the default position is that God wants to save us and heal us. That’s His starting point. If we simply go along with that default, we’re in good shape. Of course, we can reject it. We can impose our own conditions and choose another path. But God’s default position is always toward salvation and healing, whether we explicitly ask for it or not.

Donald: After listening this morning, I became curious about the emphasis on the mat, so I actually asked ChatGPT about the original wording in the Greek. Michael had focused our attention on the mat, and I wanted to know whether that emphasis was really present in the biblical text or whether we were simply reading too much into it.

The response pointed out that the word used refers to a simple sleeping mat—a poor person’s pallet, something light enough to be rolled up and carried. That alone is interesting. Why does John mention it so specifically? Why does Jesus tell the man to carry it?

According to what I found, there are several layers of meaning. First, carrying the mat demonstrates that the healing is complete. The man could have simply stood there after being healed, but by carrying the very thing that had supported him for thirty-eight years, his former weakness becomes visible evidence of his restoration. It becomes public testimony. People immediately recognize him because of the mat. Without it, many might never have realized he was the same man who had lain beside the pool all those years.

Then the story takes an even more interesting turn. The religious leaders don’t celebrate the miracle. Instead, they object because it is the Sabbath. “It is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” John repeats that point several times. The narrative suddenly shifts away from a man who has just been healed after thirty-eight years and focuses instead on whether he is violating Sabbath regulations.

That struck me as fascinating. The religious leaders become preoccupied with the mat rather than the miracle. Instead of celebrating the fact that a man who had been crippled for decades is now walking, they focus on whether he is breaking one of their rules.

So, at least according to what I found, the mat is anything but an incidental detail. It is an essential part of the story, exactly as Michael suggested this morning.

Jerrold: Michael, there were several ideas you raised that I simply don’t have the time or background to explore fully myself, but I’d very much like to think about them further. The idea of carrying the mat as a testimony especially struck me. There were also a couple of other things that caught my attention. In many of Jesus’ other miracles, He tells people, “Your faith has made you well,” or “Your faith has healed you.” But, as you pointed out, there doesn’t seem to be much explicit expression of faith from this man. Apart from obeying Jesus by carrying the mat on the Sabbath, we don’t really see a statement of faith from him.

I also noticed what appears to be a parallel with John 9, where Jesus heals the man born blind. If you compare these two chapters, there seems to be a much larger theological context. Both accounts move beyond the individual miracle into Jesus’ teaching about His relationship with the Father and His authority to give life. Eventually the discussion moves away from the Sabbath itself and toward the much larger question of who Jesus is.

Of course, we know that Jesus was ultimately condemned over precisely these issues—His Sabbath controversies and His claim to be the Son of God. These passages are therefore much more significant than isolated miracle stories. Thank you for digging into them so carefully. I’m looking forward to reading your paper and thinking more deeply about the questions you’ve raised.

C-J: I’d like to add one more thought. To me, this story highlights the distinction between law and relationship. The Pharisees were focused on the law, but when Jesus spoke to this man, He was inviting him into a relationship. That relationship completely changed the way the man now understood himself.

It seems to me that everything God does—whether physically in our lives or spiritually within us—ultimately comes back to relationship. The world around us is constantly saying, “You must obey these rules. These are the commandments. This is how our church practices the faith. These are the sacraments.” But when I think about the Garden of Eden, there were no rituals beyond simply walking with God.

Sometimes we become trapped within the limits of our own thinking. Yet God isn’t merely interested in healing our bodies or improving our earthly circumstances. He wants us to become living testimonies of His presence.

The invitation has always been the same: “Come and walk with Me in the cool of the evening.” There are no forbidden questions. God patiently explains things again and again. He promises, “I am with you always. I am a lamp to your feet.”

There’s tremendous authority and freedom in that kind of faith. We don’t always know where we’re going, but we don’t need to. We only see the next step because God reveals it.

Reinhard: I’d like to comment on something Jerrold just mentioned, particularly his comparison with John 9. As we know, these particular healing stories appear only in John’s Gospel and not in the Synoptic Gospels. In many other healing accounts Jesus tells people, “Your faith has made you well,” or someone approaches Him asking to be healed. But in both John 5 and John 9 the situation is different.

In John 5, the man at Bethesda never asks Jesus to heal him. Jesus takes the initiative. The same thing happens with the man born blind in John 9. He doesn’t ask for healing either. Instead, the disciples begin discussing whose sin caused his blindness, and Jesus redirects the entire conversation by saying that the works of God will be revealed through him. In both cases, Jesus simply pours out His grace.

To me, one lesson is that Jesus is revealing His divine mission to the Jewish people. That is why the Pharisees became so disturbed by His actions. Throughout these chapters Jesus repeatedly explains His relationship to the Father, His mission, and God’s plan for humanity.

This particular story, therefore, is not simply about physical healing. It is fundamentally about the divinity of Christ and about the way God approaches humanity in its deepest needs. God is always attentive to human suffering, whether those needs involve physical illness or our ultimate need for salvation.

Jesus came to reveal God’s grace, and ultimately that grace points us toward salvation through faith in Him.

David: It seems to me that what Jesus is really saying is that there was never anything wrong with you that a simple measure of faith could not cure. Spiritually speaking, there is nothing wrong with any of us that faith cannot heal. Jesus is saying to all of us is that there is nothing spiritually wrong with us that a simple measure of faith cannot cure.

Donald: Do you think it was necessary for this man to endure thirty-eight years of suffering in order for this story to become what it is? Or did Christ simply encounter a man who had already lived through those thirty-eight years and use that existing situation as the setting for revealing His grace?

In other words, are our circumstances somehow predestined to become part of God’s story of grace? Or does Christ simply meet us wherever we happen to be?

C-J: Nothing is wasted in God, Donald. Absolutely nothing. He knows the beginning, the middle, and the end. During those thirty-eight years that man learned an enormous amount about humanity. Because he was stationary, he saw everything. He witnessed cruelty. He witnessed kindness. He watched people rushing toward the water. He observed generosity, indifference, and willful ignorance. 

When he finally stood up, he possessed a testimony with tremendous depth. When he picked up that mat, I don’t think he was thinking about whether it was the Sabbath. He was overwhelmed with awe. The Sabbath would come and go, but this man’s transformed life would continue long afterward.

People would inevitably ask him, “Tell me your story. What was it like? What did you learn? How did God use those years?” Nothing was wasted. Nothing in our lives is wasted—not our parents, not our professions, not where we live, not our suffering. God wastes nothing.

Donald: That’s interesting, because years ago our churches often had testimony meetings. People would stand and tell the story of what God had done in their lives. In that sense, this entire story is really about testimony. The man carried his testimony with him instead of leaving it behind. The mat became the visible symbol of the story God had written in his life.

C-J: Exactly. Can you really separate your history from who you are? I don’t think you can. You are, in many ways, the product of that history. For me, those thirty-eight years became the clay in the Father’s hands. Think about what it would have meant simply to keep your faith during all that time. Sitting in one place that long, he would have developed pressure sores and infections. He was completely exposed to the elements. In today’s language, he would have been homeless. For someone living in poverty, that mat wasn’t merely something to lie on—it was his home. That little space beneath the portico was his entire world. If someone brought him food, perhaps it was only leftovers from someone else’s meal.

We naturally think in finite terms, but God moves in the infinite. How many times have we driven past someone standing at an intersection asking for money? Perhaps they’re addicted, mentally ill, disabled, or simply desperate. Sometimes God quietly prompts our hearts: “Pray for that person.” Nothing is wasted in God. He is constantly transforming situations, every day and everywhere.

Don: Donald, I think one point you’re making about testimony is that we should be very careful about judging someone else’s testimony. It’s easy to conclude that another person’s experience isn’t genuine because it doesn’t fit our own expectations or theological framework. But God has His own way of working in each life. We need to be very careful and very humble before we judge another person’s testimony.

Michael: One point I was trying to emphasize was that John specifically tells us Jesus first learned about this man’s condition before asking him the question. I initially noticed that simply because it made the question seem even more obvious. Jesus knew this man had been there for a very long time.

But the discussion has also made me think about something else. There were many sick people gathered around that pool, so why this particular man? It’s unsettling to think that he had lived in this condition for thirty-eight years. As I’ve reflected on it today, it seems possible that Jesus chose him precisely because he appeared to be the most helpless person there. That’s why He first inquired about him and then approached him personally.

I don’t necessarily want to make this into a question of who was more deserving or who was more helpless, but that possibility has certainly occurred to me as we’ve been talking.

C-J: What strikes me is continuity. I don’t think God simply looks for the most destitute person. Certainly, He often ministers to people in desperate situations, but what I see throughout Scripture is God’s remarkable consistency. For thirty-eight years this man’s story had remained the same. Day after day he lay there. Thousands of people must have passed him. Generations of pilgrims would have seen him.

God is consistent in His presence. His methods may differ, but His presence does not. The message is always the same: there is hope, there is provision, there is agency. “Get up. I see you. Walk.” It doesn’t matter what day it is because Christ Himself is our Sabbath. The issue isn’t ultimately the law. The issue is relationship.

That same continuity appears everywhere in the Gospels. Whether it’s feeding the five thousand, healing the blind, restoring the crippled, or welcoming the woman who had been isolated by her disease, the message is always consistent. God continually transforms people from what they and their communities believe they are into what God declares them to be. That’s the continuity I see throughout Scripture. God is consistently present.

Donald: Let’s think for a moment about this man’s reality. For thirty-eight years—whether he spent every one of those years beside that particular pool or not—his life had been defined by suffering. More importantly, his understanding of reality had been shaped by what he saw happening around him.

His reality was that people occasionally reached the water before everyone else and apparently experienced healing. So, from everything he observed, the pool worked. Given that reality, I doubt he ever prayed for Christ simply to appear and heal him instantly. If he prayed at all, I suspect his prayer was, “Please help me get into the pool.” That was the only reality he knew.

Jesus completely transcended that reality. He answered a prayer the man himself probably never knew to pray. I find that fascinating because it raises another question. If the pool truly did seem to provide healing for some people, what exactly was happening there? That’s an interesting question in itself.

Reinhard: I’d like to come back to something Michael mentioned earlier—that perhaps Jesus chose this man because he appeared to be the most vulnerable or helpless. At the end of the story Jesus later meets him in the temple and says, “Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.”

That statement suggests this man had been an adult when his illness began. Perhaps some action in his earlier life had contributed to his condition. In that sense, the story reminds us that sin can have real consequences. Some of the things we do can indeed bring suffering into our lives.

Another interesting difference between this story and John 9 is that the man born blind openly acknowledges Jesus, whereas the man at Bethesda never explicitly declares his faith in Christ. At least John never records such a confession.

What John does emphasize is the reaction of the Pharisees. They became increasingly angry, not simply because of the healing itself, but because Jesus claimed divine authority. They regarded His words as blasphemy.

Throughout these chapters Jesus is challenging long-established traditions. He’s changing the way people think about worship, about the Sabbath, about God’s character, and about the entire plan of salvation.

The religious leaders had become preoccupied with preserving their customs and their authority, but they had largely forgotten what God actually desired—faith in Him and genuine love for one another.

Jesus came to change that way of thinking. He came to reveal God’s true purpose and to call people back to the heart of the plan of salvation.

Anonymous: I’d like to focus for a moment on the Sabbath and on the Pharisees. I think they failed to understand that the Sabbath itself is an expression of grace. It points forward to Jesus and to what He would accomplish on the cross. Because they failed to see that, they—and almost everyone else—placed themselves under the law instead of under grace.

The law has the power to condemn us. As Paul says, the power of sin comes through the law. 1 Corinthians 15:55–56, please?

“Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

Paul says that the sting of death is sin, and that the strength or power of sin comes from the law. The Pharisees could see only the law. Paul explains elsewhere that the law actually exposes and awakens sin. It reveals our inability to save ourselves.

So how are we set free from that power? The answer is grace. The Pharisees failed to recognize that the Sabbath itself points to Jesus and to the grace He would ultimately reveal on the cross. Because they missed that, they remained enslaved to the law and, in turn, wanted everyone else to remain under that same bondage. The Sabbath is one of God’s gifts of grace. It is holy because it points us toward Christ. Christ came bringing grace upon grace.

In that sense, when Paul says we are no longer under the law, he really means it. The law makes demands. It requires us to meet certain standards and continually measures whether we have succeeded or failed. Grace does something entirely different. Grace makes us into something even greater than the law itself could ever require because it clothes us in Christ’s own righteousness.

The law functions almost like an examination. Did you worship only God? Check. Did you keep the Sabbath? Check. Did you honor your parents? Check. Grace goes far beyond merely passing the examination. Through Christ’s righteousness, God doesn’t simply bring us up to the minimum requirements of the law. He gives us something greater than the law itself could ever produce.

Then, when death is finally defeated and judgment comes, the law no longer has any claim over us. It cannot condemn those who have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness because, through grace, we possess far more than the law itself demanded. That is why Paul can ask, “Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting has been removed because the law has lost its power to condemn us.

Don: Those are good thoughts.

Michael: I thank everyone for such a thoughtful discussion.

I should confess that I modeled today’s class after one of Dr. Weaver’s earlier discussions—the one about Jesus asking where Lazarus had been laid. That conversation stayed with me and inspired the way I approached today’s question.

I also deliberately left out the final verse of this story because I wasn’t sure how it fit with the rest of the discussion. Reinhard brought it up, and Anon has pointed out that there’s a great deal of theology behind it.

I think that verse really deserves an entire discussion of its own.

Other than that, I simply want to thank everyone. I thought this was an excellent conversation, and I appreciate all of your insights.

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Next week: David begins a five-part series on Ecclesiastes.