Being With Jesus:
John 5:2-6 (NLT)
In Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda which has five colonnades. Within these lay a large number of the sick—blind, lame, and paralyzed waiting for the moving of the water [they believed would heal them]… One man was there who had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had already been there a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to get well?”
Does it seem that Jesus’ question, “do you really want to be healed?” is a bit insensitive? After all, this man had been paralyzed—and totally dependent on others—for thirty-eight years. He had been waiting at this pool for who knows how long, in the belief that when the waters stirred, whoever got into the pool first would receive the healing they needed.
Do you really want to be healed—really, Jesus? The answer to that is a resounding “no; not at all is that insensitive of Jesus!” Since Jesus’ one desire was to do the will of the Father and restore the lost sheep to the care of the Good Shepherd—and therefore, insensitivity could not be a part of his character—there must be more here than meets the eye.
One of the things we see in this story is how Jesus’ power operates. And whether it had to do with healing, as is the case here, or deliverance or salvation, the power of God flowed through Jesus mercifully and graciously, but that Divine flow always demanded a human response to be fully activated and thoroughly experienced. That human response is what we call faith. And anytime Jesus acted in a way that we might consider harsh, it was simply the Lord doing what he discerned would be needed to move a person to respond to God in faith.
In this story, we see a pattern of this very thing. To begin with, Jesus initiated the man’s healing by asking him if he really wanted to be healed. It could have been that the lame man had grown accustomed to his condition, as strange as that may sound. But think about it: others did everything for him, and to be suddenly healed would turn that arrangement upside down. He would now have to work, take care of himself and contribute to his family and society.
Or it could be that this man’s hope was so dead that any expression of the faith needed to respond to a work of God had died with it long ago. But this man’s response was immediate and sure. Yes, he wanted to be healed—even though that seemed impossible since he had no one to help him—so he was ready for the change, and all that change would require in his life.
Being ready for change—and willing to cooperate in it—is a critical piece to the work of God in our lives, since Divine transformation cannot take place without human cooperation. The sick, the enslaved, the unsaved, must see their need for God, must be ready to abandon their dysfunction and be willing to step in faith for God’s work to take its full course.
Moreover, we see that in asking the lame man to “get up”, Jesus was saying, “grab your will, reject your dysfunction and exercise your faith to join in with what God desires to do in your body right now.” As William Barclay said, “The power of God never dispenses with the effort of man.” The power of God in our lives is released to have its effect when our will engages God’s. Now to be clear, our will doesn’t create God’s power, it only opens the spigot wide for that power to flow. Said another way, our faith doesn’t earn God’s favor, but certainly, it either activates it and/or enhances its effect to a fuller degree in our lives.
“Get up”…a very bold command to you and me, perhaps even insensitive to expect such a thing of a man paralyzed for thirty-eight years, but it was what this man needed to catalyze the human faith needed to activate Divine power. And as he bent his will to accommodate the command of Jesus, power happened—and so did one of the outstanding miracles of the Bible.
In this is the pattern to the release of power—God’s power to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We face so many things that in our lives that hinder, harass and hurt us. But when we offer faith-desire and are willing to risk bending our will to God’s will—even if we have lived in bondage to a condition for an insufferably long time—the opportunity is created for God’s power through Christ’s Lordship to turn our victimization into victory.
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