Do You Want to Get Well?

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

DO YOU WANT TO GET WELL?

John 5:1-9

5:1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda 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.   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 get 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.

NIV

We should note there is another version of this narrative about this pool of Bethesda which some manuscripts. which are considered by some as less important. include other details. Yet several other versions of the scriptures such as the KJV, NKJV, NASU all have this verse 4.

3b— and they waited for the moving of the waters. [4] From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had.

NIV

It is not that important to the narrative or the truth of the situation in which Jesus takes the initiative in the healing of this lamb man. We are told Jesus learned of how long this man had been in this condition and he went to him and asked if he wanted to get well. It is interesting the man does not answer Jesus’s question directly but instead gives him a reason why he is not well and still in this condition. The result is the same, but we would have thought the man would have simply said, “Yes”. Nevertheless, we are seeing the compassion of Jesus being demonstrated. Jesus could have just walked through this crowd filled with the blind, the lame and the paralyzed and waited for someone to cry out, “Help me Jesus” or something to that effect. But Jesus went to this man and extended himself to him. “Do you want to get well?” is the question of the ages. Who would not want to get well? Who would want to stay in their infirmity? Because it appeared from the man’s answer, although not directly, Jesus understood his predicament and told him to get up. This is a man who had someone carry him to this spot every day for thirty-eight years and go back and pick him up and carry him home each night. This is a man who relied on his friends or family to provide food, clothing, and shelter for him for all those years, even to the point of helping him go to the bathroom if they had those rooms, and now Jesus tells him to get up. This is going the change his whole life as he has known for the past thirty-eight years. “Do I want to get well?” “Do I want to live my life free of all this reliance on others?” Or something like that could have been flooding through his mind. But he must have come to the conclusion, he wanted to change his life, so he got up. This brings us to the question of why are we still living with our infirmities? Do we want to get well?