John 5:15 - Printer Friendly

ESV: The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

NIV: The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

NASB: The man went away, and informed the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

CSB: The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

NLT: Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.

KJV: The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.

NKJV: The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

The Bible does not include every possible detail about every story. The man Jesus has healed might have expressed some gratitude to Jesus. He might not have. However, putting the various details together doesn't paint an optimistic picture. Jesus seems to have been questioning whether or not the man was really interested in healing (John 5:6). The formerly crippled man, for his part, seems more apt to complaining (John 5:7) and shifting the blame (John 5:11) than anything else.

This same man was interrogated by local religious leaders for carrying his bed on the Sabbath. Even when he told them he'd been healed, their primary concern was still their Sabbath traditions (John 5:12). Now that the man knows who Jesus is, he goes and tells the men who'd confronted him about the source of his cure.

As the next verse shows, the amazing instance of healing is totally lost on these hard-hearted men. Every mention of Jesus, from the perspective of the religious authorities, relates to the Sabbath, not the miracle (John 5:10, 12, 16, 18).

John 5:1–15 shows Jesus healing a man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years. This is the third of John's seven ''signs'' of Christ. Interestingly, the crippled man expresses no prior knowledge of Jesus, nor any overwhelming desire to be healed. Jesus restores the man, then tells him to walk. For carrying his mat—working—the man is then confronted by local religious leaders, but 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—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 more or less avoiding 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 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 gospel of John was written by the disciple John, decades later than the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 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”—in order to prove that Jesus is, in fact, God incarnate. Some of the most well-known verses in all of the Bible are found here. None is more famous than the one-sentence summary of the gospel found in John 3:16.

Accessed 5/6/2024 12:32:54 PM