John 5

John 5 is the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John of the New Testament of the Christian Bible.

Healing at Bethesda

Jesus goes to Jerusalem for a feast. At the Pool of Bethesda he heals a paralyzed man. Jesus tells him to "Pick up your mat and walk!" This takes place on the sabbath, and many people see the man carrying his mat and tell him this is against the law. He tells them the man who healed him told him to do so, and they ask who that was. He tries to point out Jesus, but he has slipped away into the crowd. Jesus comes to him later and tells him "Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." The man then tells people it was Jesus who healed him.

This story is very similar to one that takes place in the synoptic gospels, ( [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=48&chapter=2&version=31 Mark 2] , [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=9&version=31 Mathew 9] , [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=49&chapter=5&version=31 Luke 5] ) but the paralyzed man comes to Jesus at his home in Capernaum, and Jesus at first says the sins of the man are forgiven and only when people question his ability to forgive sins does he say that he "could" have said pick up your mat and walk. Either Jesus healed two paralyzed men with similar words, or this is really the same story remembered in two ways or a legend of Jesus that altered over time, since Mark was probably written, according to most scholars, at least thirty years before John.

The ruins of the Pool of Bethesda are still standing in Jerusalem.

Jesus as way to eternal life

People begin to persecute Jesus because he is working on the sabbath and comparing himself to God. Jesus responds that his power comes from his father, and that he has been given the power to judge men from the father. This power is granted to the son because he is the Son of Man, presumable meaning that because Jesus is fully human he knows all that is to be known about men and so can accurately judge them. He then speaks of the future when the dead will rise and the good will be given life and the evil condemned.

Testimonies

Jesus then talks of John's testimony about him. He also says that people study the scriptures hoping for eternal life, but that the scriptures speak of him, and people still refuse to come to him for life. People accept people who preach in their own name but not in one who comes in the name of the father. "How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?" He then speaks of Moses as the accuser of humanity. "But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?

These teachings of Jesus are almost only found in John. In the synoptic's Jesus only speaks of himself as the messiah in such a straight forward way at the very end, shortly before his death. All this occurs in Jerusalem, where the synoptic's have very little of Jesus's teachings occur in Jerusalam, and then only before his death.

References and Full Text

[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=5&version=31 John 5 New International Version]

External links

* [http://www.bible-history.com/sketches/ancient/pool-bethesda.html Pool of Bethesda]