John 5:1-18

Good News Translation

The Healing at the Pool

5 After this, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a religious festival. ² Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool^[a] with five porches; in Hebrew it is called Bethzatha.^{[b] 3} A large crowd of sick people were lying on the porches—the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. ^{4 [c] 5} A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. ⁶ Jesus saw him lying there, and he knew that the man had been sick for such a long time; so he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ The sick man answered, “Sir, I don't have anyone here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there first.”

⁸ Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” ⁹ Immediately the man got well; he picked up his mat and started walking.

The day this happened was a Sabbath, ^10 (A)so the Jewish authorities told the man who had been healed, “This is a Sabbath, and it is against our Law for you to carry your mat.”

¹¹ He answered, “The man who made me well told me to pick up my mat and walk.”

¹² They asked him, “Who is the man who told you to do this?”

¹³ But the man who had been healed did not know who Jesus was, for there was a crowd in that place, and Jesus had slipped away.

¹⁴ Afterward, Jesus found him in the Temple and said, “Listen, you are well now; so stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

¹⁵ Then the man left and told the Jewish authorities that it was Jesus who had healed him. ¹⁶ So they began to persecute Jesus, because he had done this healing on a Sabbath. ¹⁷ Jesus answered them, “My Father is always working, and I too must work.”

^18 (B)This saying made the Jewish authorities all the more determined to kill him; not only had he broken the Sabbath law, but he had said that God was his own Father and in this way had made himself equal with God.