Christ Healing the Paralytic

Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool with five covered colonnades, which in Hebrew is called Bethesda. On these walkways lay a great number of the sick, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. One man there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized that he had spent a long time in this condition, He asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am on my way, someone else goes in before me.” Then Jesus told him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” Immediately the man was made well, and he picked up his mat and began to walk. Now this happened on the Sabbath day, so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath! It is unlawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” “Who is this man who told you to pick it up and walk?” they asked. But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while the crowd was there. Afterward, Jesus found the man at the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.” And the man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Now because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews began to persecute Him. But Jesus answered them, “To this very day My Father is at His work, and I too am working.” Because of this, the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him. Not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. So Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does.”