John 5:12 - Printer Friendly

ESV: They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”

NIV: So they asked him, 'Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?'

NASB: They asked him, 'Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick it up and walk’?'

CSB: "Who is this man who told you, 'Pick up your mat and walk'? " they asked.

NLT: Who said such a thing as that?' they demanded.

KJV: Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?

NKJV: Then they asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”

Jesus frequently clashed with Jerusalem's local religious leaders. The root cause of that conflict was their rejection of God in favor of their own traditions (Matthew 15:3–9). One particularly sensitive convention involved the Sabbath day. The law of Moses forbade doing work on the Sabbath (Leviticus 23:3). The Pharisees added layers of traditions, in the form of extra rules and regulations, which they saw as equally binding. Carrying nearly any load counted as "work," in their eyes.

After Jesus heals a man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years, he instructed him to take his bed and walk. This draws the attention of the Pharisees. Of course, they have every right to investigate. Upholding the Law and the truth is what they are supposed to be doing. However, it quickly becomes clear that their traditions are far more important to them than their actual spiritual obligations.

This passage (John 5:11) vividly demonstrates this warped perspective. The man who had been healed was crippled for nearly forty years. More than likely, everyone in this area had seen him before and knew about his condition. Yet, here he is, walking! Even if the Pharisees knew nothing of the man, he tells them specifically that he has been healed and that the man who healed him told him to walk with his bed.

Rather than asking, "who healed you?" or even "how were you healed?" these religious leaders reveal the hardness of their own hearts: "who said you could do that? " In their minds, this really means, "who told you to violate our tradition?" Rather than being amazed or curious about the miracle, all they see is someone breaking their customs (John 5:16).

John 5:1–15 contains the third of John's seven ''signs'' of Christ. A man crippled for decades expresses no prior knowledge of Jesus, nor an immediate desire to be healed. Jesus heals the man and tells him to walk. For carrying his mat—working—local religious leaders then confront the man. Yet he still doesn't know who Jesus is. Jesus meets the man in the temple and warns him about the dangers of sin. Once the city's leaders find out that Jesus was responsible for the healing, they will confront Him for violating the Sabbath, and for claiming to be equal with God.

Jesus again returns to Jerusalem, as required for the various feast days. While there, He heals a man who had been crippled for nearly forty years. Since this occurred on the Sabbath, local religious leaders are angry. In fact, they are more upset with Jesus for working on the Sabbath than amazed at His miracle. In response, Jesus offers an important perspective on evidence. Jesus refers to human testimony, scriptural testimony, and miracles as reasons to believe His declarations. Christ also lays claim to many of the attributes of God, making a clear claim to divinity.

Chapters 1 through 4 showed Jesus avoiding major publicity. Here, in chapter 5, He will begin to openly challenge the local religious leaders. This chapter is Jesus' first major answer to His critics in this gospel. The fact that Jesus is willing to heal on the Sabbath sets up a theme of His upcoming disagreements with the Pharisees. Jesus also provides an important perspective on the relationship between evidence and faith, which He will expand on in later chapters. This chapter also establishes a key point made by Jesus' critics: His claims to be God.

The disciple John wrote the gospel of John decades after the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written. The author assumes that a reader is already familiar with the content of these other works. So, John presents a different perspective, with a greater emphasis on meaning. John uses seven miracles—which he calls "signs"— to prove that Jesus is, in fact, God incarnate. Some of the most well-known verses in the Bible are found here. None is more famous than the one-sentence summary of the gospel found in John 3:16.