John 5:1–23

The Healing at the Pool

5Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ²Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate^u a pool, which in Aramaic^v is called Bethesda^a and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ^{[4]b 5}One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶When 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.”

⁸Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”^{w 9}At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,^{x 10}and so the Jewish leaders^y said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”^z

¹¹But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

¹²So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

¹³The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

¹⁴Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning^a or something worse may happen to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jewish leaders^b that it was Jesus who had made him well.

The Authority of the Son

¹⁶So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. ¹⁷In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father^c is always at his work^d to this very day, and I too am working.” ¹⁸For this reason they tried all the more to kill him;^e not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.^f

¹⁹Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself;^g he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. ²⁰For the Father loves the Son^h and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these,ⁱ so that you will be amazed. ²¹For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life,^j even so the Son gives life^k to whom he is pleased to give it. ²²Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son,^{l 23}that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.^m