John
After this there was a Jewish
festival and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now in Jerusalem at the sheep-gate there is a pool called in Aramaic
Bethsaida with five colonnades.
A mass of sick people lie there, blind,
crippled and paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the waters.
For an angel of
the Lord used to go down at certain seasons into the pool and stir up the
water. Whoever first stepped in when the water was stirred was cured from
whatever disease he was afflicted with.
There was one man there who had
been sick for 38 years.
Jesus saw him lying there, and knowing he had been
an invalid for a long time, asked him, “Do you want to be healed?”
The sick
man answered, “Sir, I have no one to take me down into the pool when the water is stirred up. As I try to go down, someone else goes down in front of
me.”
Jesus said to him, “Pick up your bed and walk,”
and immediately the
man was healed and picked up his bed and began to walk. Now that day was
the Sabbath.
So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is Sabbath, and it is
not permissible for you to carry your bed.”
But he answered them, “The one
who healed me said, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’”
They said to him, “Who
is this man who told you to get up and walk?”
The man who had been
healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had left since there was a
crowd at that place.
After this Jesus found him in the temple and he said to
him, “Look, you are healed now. Do not sin any more. If you do, a worse
thing might happen to you.”
The man went away and announced to the Jews
that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
So then the Jews persecuted
Jesus, because he had done these things on the Sabbath.
Jesus replied to
them, “My Father is working up to now and I am working too.”
For this
reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only had
he broken the Sabbath, but he was calling God his own Father and putting
himself on a par with God.
So Jesus answered them, “I am telling you the truth: the Son is unable to do
anything on his own authority. He can do only what he sees the Father doing.
Whatever his Father does, the Son does likewise.
Because the Father loves
the Son He has shown him what He is doing, and He will show him greater
things, so that you may marvel.
For just as the Father raises the dead and
makes them alive, so also the Son makes alive whom he wishes.
The Father
judges no one but has put all judgment into the hands of the Son,
so that
everyone may honor the Son as they honor the Father. The one who does not
honor the Son does not honor the Father, who commissioned him as His
agent.
“I tell you on the highest authority that the one who hears
my Gospel-word and thus believes the One who commissioned me has the Life of the
Age to Come,
and will not come into judgment, but he has been
transferred from death to life.
I am telling you the truth: the hour is coming,
and now already is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and
those who hear will come back to life.
Just as the Father has life in Himself,
so also He has granted the Son to have life in himself,
and He has given him authority to carry out judgment, because he is the Son of Man.
Do not be
amazed at this, because the hour is coming when all who are in their graves
will hear the voice of the Son of Man.
They will come out of their graves,
the ones who have done what is good to a resurrection of life
and those who have
done what is evil to a resurrection of judgment.
“I can do nothing on my own authority. As I hear I judge, and my
judgment is fair, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the One
who commissioned me as His agent.
If I witness about myself, my witness
is not true.
There is another who witnesses about me, and I know that the
witness He gives about me is true.
“You sent messengers to John and he witnessed to the truth.
I do not
accept witness from people, but these things I am telling you so that you can be
saved.
He was a bright shining light and you were willing to rejoice in his
light for a time.
“But I have a much greater witness than John, because the works which
the Father has given me to do, these works witness to the fact that the Father
has commissioned me.
And my Father who commissioned me has
witnessed about me. You have never heard His voice or seen His form at any time.
And you do not have His Gospel-word
living in your heart, because the one
whom the Father commissioned — him you do not believe.
“You search the Scriptures because you think that you have the Life
of the Age to Come in them. These are the very Scriptures which bear
witness to me.
But you are not willing to come to me to have that life.
I do
not receive praise from people,
but I know that you do not have God’s love in
you.
I have come in the name of my Father, as His agent, and you do not
receive me. Yet if another comes in his own name, you will receive him.
How can you possibly believe when you accept praise from one another,
and you fail to seek the praise which comes from the only One who is God?
Do not imagine that I will accuse you before the Father. There is one
who will accuse you and that is Moses, in whom you claim to have placed
your hope.
If indeed you believed Moses you would believe me, because he
wrote about me.
But if you will not believe his writings, how can you
possibly believe my words?”
John