John 5:6-9 6 When Jesus saw this him lying there and knowing that he had already been there for a time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one, so that when the water is stirred, can put me into the pool, and to whom I go, another to go down with me.” 8Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
In many stories, people sought out Jesus and asked for healing, such as the official in the previous story. Other times, Jesus went to people who were helpless and could not come to him. This story is like that. As Jesus entered the Sheep Gate, he saw one of the many disabled and sick people lying around the pool of Bethsaida. The story of the healing is simple and straightforward in these verses, just what one might expect from Jesus. The surrounding story is what takes center stage.
The question Jesus asked, if asked of anyone struggling with life, is obvious to answer: Of course, we want to be healed. It is one of the special questions Jesus asks in John’s Gospel. The question may not be intended simply for this one man but for all who read this Gospel. This invalid by the pool does not answer the question affirmatively but indirectly. Rather, his response is more of a desperate excuse of someone at the bottom who has no more hope. Even the grammar of his response is stilted and broken, starting off with the sad words, I have no one. His response makes it clear that he was all alone. He put all his faith in a superstition that he could be healed if he got down into the water when it was stirred up. He and the other sick people gathered around the pool believed that they could be healed by the water, though perhaps they had some sense of divine power behind the water (see the textual variant of verse 4).
As the story goes on, there was nothing magical about the water itself. Jesus already showed that the water of the world cannot satisfy the deep searching of the human soul. Only the “living” water through him satisfies the internal thirst for purpose and meaning. Likewise, the water of the earth cannot bring the deep healing that people need, nor can earthly efforts heal the body. The invalid had been deceived by the false hopes offered by those around him. John records that the man had been there a long time. The Greek text indicates that Jesus knew (gnous) this about the man, assuming once again that Jesus had deeper knowledge of a situation because of his status as the Son of God. The meaning of this time indicator is uncertain, whether it be a long time that day or for many years, but the latter makes better sense about the man’s desperate response. He had been waiting but no one could help him become well. He was searching in the wrong place.
Jesus’ response to the man’s idea shows great compassion. Jesus intervened in a person’s life who could not do anything to help himself. The man knows nothing about Jesus, who just showed up one day in his life. However, something must have happened in the man’s mind at the new word of hope because he immediately obeyed Jesus’ command to take up his mat and walk. The mat would have been made of straw and something the man laid on rather than the dirty ground. The miracle was the confirmation of Jesus’ power, another powerful sign of divine identity. This short story (though part of a larger story) reveals the great compassion Jesus had towards the sick and disabled. As John mentions in 20:30, Jesus did many other signs like this one not recorded in this book. Sometimes, we, as Jesus followers, need to intervene in the lives of those who cannot do much, if anything, to help themselves. As the larger story unfolds, we also learn that this healing created a problem for Jesus because he went outside of the status quo.
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