John 5:1-16

Living Bible

5 Afterwards Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish religious holidays. ² Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was Bethesda Pool, with five covered platforms or porches surrounding it. ³ Crowds of sick folks—lame, blind, or with paralyzed limbs—lay on the platforms (waiting for a certain movement of the water, ⁴ for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and disturbed the water, and the first person to step down into it afterwards was healed).^[a]

⁵ One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him and knew how long he had been ill, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

⁷ “I can’t,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to help me into the pool at the movement of the water. While I am trying to get there, someone else always gets in ahead of me.”

⁸ Jesus told him, “Stand up, roll up your sleeping mat and go on home!”

⁹ Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up the mat and began walking!

But it was on the Sabbath when this miracle was done. ¹⁰ So the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! It’s illegal to carry that sleeping mat!”

¹¹ “The man who healed me told me to,” was his reply.

¹² “Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.

¹³ The man didn’t know, and Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. ¹⁴ But afterwards Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; don’t sin as you did before,^[b] or something even worse may happen to you.”

¹⁵ Then the man went to find the Jewish leaders and told them it was Jesus who had healed him.

¹⁶ So they began harassing Jesus as a Sabbath breaker.