John 5:6 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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John 5:6

Comments

What is the Lord doing there? The Pharisees would not have been found there because of the risk of ceremonial uncleanness, but the Lord goes to Bethesda’s pool. When Jesus saw him lying there, he knew his case. He was God as well as man; he ‘knew that he had been now a long time in that case’, and he asks him this startling question. ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ Imagine you are unwell. You are in pain perhaps. You have got a severe headache or something even more serious and painful. Does anyone say to you – do you want to get better? Of course not; the answer is obvious. And yet it is very likely he did not want to be made whole. He had been like this for thirty-eight years. He was completely adapted to his condition. There were some advantages in it: he did not have to work; he did not have to take up onerous responsibility. This was where he was accepted in spite of his bitterness or his cynicism or whatever it was. It is therefore a relevant question, and it is doubly relevant because everything the Lord did and all his physical healings not only authenticated him as God, but they illustrated spiritual healings. And when it comes to spiritual healing, the question is highly relevant – Do you want to be saved? Do you want to be reconciled with God? Do you want to be changed as a person and given a new nature? And given access to God and communication with him, and new tastes and new life, a new future?

Application

The answer pretty well all of us give to that question is, ‘No, we do not. Leave us alone.’ We are happy in this world as we are. We are not going to let go of our sin. We are not going to let go of the things we know. We want our own accomplishments. We are content to be the kind of people we are, and to have the things we have. We want our independence; we want our self-determination. We do not want God to lord it over us and to have to worry about our conduct before him. If he saves us, and changes us, and puts us on the road to heaven, we will have to struggle against sin, and long to improve, looking to him for blessing, studying him, loving him, walking in his ways, representing him. That is the last thing we want.

The question therefore becomes very relevant when you see the literal healing as a picture of spiritual healing also. ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ And all human beings resist God. And don’t we know it! If we try to speak to somebody about Christ, they will do anything to change the subject, or to put up barricades, or to resist. And we did the same once, all of us. If you knock on the doors, the last thing people want is somebody to talk about the faith. By the grace of God alone do we get a reception and hearts opened to the truth, but there is this tremendous resistance. And in the case of this man, he probably was not sure whether he wanted to be any different even physically.

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Introduction

John 5:6 Commentary and Bible Study