John 5:14, A Second Look At Healing (part II of II)

Posted on Wednesday, September 30, 2015 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

//Yesterday, I wrote about how Jesus “healed” a beggar at the pool of Bethesda. The man picked up his mat and walked off, only to encounter “the Jews,” who scolded him for working on the Sabbath. It seems that carrying his mat was against the rules.

Still in character, and probably still miffed at being chased from a prime begging spot, the man replied that he had been healed, and his healer told him to take his mat and go. “Who told you to do that?” the Jews demanded. He didn’t know, he hadn’t bothered to learn Jesus’s name.

Soon after, Jesus spies the man again at the Temple–the man had probably moved his begging operation there–and says something very interesting to him: “Stop your sinning, or something even worse will happen.” Worse than being chased from the pool? Is pretending to be lame really that big a sin? Is Jesus now going to ruin his ruse at his Temple begging spot too?

So the man hatches a vengeful plan. He marches immediately to “the Jews” and informs them that he now knows the name of the healer who keeps bugging him on the Sabbath. The plan works like a charm:

For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath. –John 5:16