More than once Jesus used His Sabbath activities to make the Jews consider who He was (cf. Matt. 12:1-14; Mark 2:23-3:6; Luke 13:10-17; 14:1-6). Here He wanted them to realize that He had the right to work on the Sabbath as His Father did. This is the first open hostility to Jesus that John recorded.
5:10 According to the prevailing Jewish interpretation of the law it was not legitimate to carry anything from one place to another on the Sabbath (cf. Neh. 13:15; Jer. 17:21-27). Doing so constituted a capital offense that could result in stoning. The rabbis allowed for exceptional cases such as moving a lame person for compassionate reasons.219God's intent in the fourth commandment was to free people from having to work to earn a living for one day out of seven (Exod. 20:9-11; Deut. 5:12-15). Therefore this healed paralytic was not breaking the intent of the law, but he was violating the rabbinic interpretation of it.
5:11-13 The healed man passed the responsibility for his disobeying the rabbis' rule off by blaming Jesus. This was no way to express gratitude for what Jesus had done for him (cf. v. 15). He probably feared for his life. The Jewish leaders wanted to know who had dared to contradict the accepted meaning of the fourth commandment. In their eyes He was a worse offender than the man who had carried his pallet.
Notice that they did not show any interest in the man's well condition. It should have identified the Messiah to them, but they saw the Healer as simply an offender.
The man did not know who Jesus was. This indicates that it was not his faith that had elicited the healing as much as God's grace reaching out to a needy person. Jesus had slipped away probably to avoid premature confrontation (cf. 6:15; 8:59; 10:39; 12:36).
It is not at all clear whether this man believed on Jesus. We do not know either if he sought a closer relationship with Jesus following his healing. Many people accept God's gifts but ignore the giver. Some experience miracles but do not go to heaven. Apparently it was not the reaction of this man that John wanted to emphasize but the lesson on the importance of believing in Him that Jesus used the occasion of this healing to teach.
5:14 Sometime shortly after that Jesus found the man in the temple precincts that stood south of the Bethesda Pool in Jerusalem. Evidently Jesus had been looking for him. He warned the man not to use his healing as an opportunity to participate in sin or worse consequences than his former ailment would befall him (cf. Acts 5:1-11; 1 Cor. 11:30; 1 John 5:16). He may have had eternal damnation as well as immediate consequences in mind since the man showed no evidence of possessing eternal life. Certainly not everyone whom Jesus healed experienced regeneration. Jesus' point was that the man should regard his new health as an opportunity to make a new break with sin (cf. Gal. 5:13).
5:15 The man did not seem to have wanted to glorify Jesus by telling the authorities about Him. He knew that they wanted to find Jesus because they considered Him a lawbreaker. Clearly the ungrateful man wanted to save his own skin by implicating Jesus. He did not appreciate Jesus' warning (v. 14). It is possible that the man was simply stupid. However the evidence seems to point more convincingly to a hard heart rather than to a hard head.
5:16 "These things"seem to refer to Jesus' acts of healing the man and commanding him to take up his mat and walk. Rather than worshipping Him, or at least considering His claims, the Jewish authorities persecuted Jesus for doing what they considered to be work on the Sabbath. Their persecution initially took the form of verbal opposition, as the following verses clarify.
5:17 Jesus defended Himself by stating that He was doing God's work. The rabbis regarded God as working on the Sabbath by simply maintaining the universe and continuing to impart life. They did not accuse Him of violating the Sabbath.220Jesus, too, viewed God as constantly at work. Jesus claimed to be doing what God did. God did not suspend His activities on the Sabbath and neither did Jesus.
This was a virtual claim to deity. Jesus was claiming that His relationship to the law was the same as God's, not the same as man's. Moreover by speaking of God as "My Father"Jesus was claiming a relationship with Him that was unique from that of the Jews corporately. The work that Jesus had done was the same kind as the Father's work. He provided deliverance and a new life for the paralyzed man as the Father provides salvation for those whom sin has bound. Obviously Jesus was arguing differently here than in the instances of Sabbath controversy that the Synoptics record.
"The most notable feature about Jesus in the Fourth Gospel . . . is the control He displayed over all persons and situations."221
5:18 The Jewish leaders did not miss the force of what Jesus was claiming, namely equality with the Father.222John here noted that these Jews had already been trying to do away with Him. These claims increased their efforts.
To the modern western mind the idea of "son"connotes a different person, but the ancient oriental mind thought of a "son"as the extension of his father. The word connoted identification with rather than difference from. The ancients considered a good son as one who followed in his father's footsteps exactly.
Jesus was equal with God in His essence. Both the Father and the Son are deity. However Jesus was not equal with the Father in His subsistence. The Son was subordinate to the Father in this respect. This distinction is one that the Jewish leaders struggled with and that Jesus proceeded to clarify partially.
The emphasis in this section of the text is on Jesus being an extension of His Father and the legitimacy of His continuing His Father's work even on the Sabbath.
