Jesus went to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. When He passed by the pool of Bethesda, he passed an invalid who had been that way for 38 years. I'm sure his bones and muscles were tightly maladjusted and "set" in their disfunctional ways. Jesus asked him if he wanted to get well. Isn't that the question of the hour? And the invalid replied, "Sir, 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."
This is interesting, because apparently an angel would come down on ocassion and stir up the waters and the first one in after that got healed. Pretty amazing. It's interesting that something supernatural like this was common in the time of Jesus. Anyway, Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." Of course, some Jewish people busted him for carrying his mat on the Sabbath. "The man that made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.'" When they asked Who it was that told him this, he didn't know. Jesus had "slipped away into the crowd..."
Later Jesus found the man at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." Some people use that to build a doctrine that says sickness is a result of sin. While I do believe that sickness and random bacteria attacking other living things is a result of the Fall, and thus sin; I do not believe that someone who, say robs a liquor store will come down with cancer or become paralyzed. It's probably likely that Jesus wanted this man to get saved and thus avoid something far worse -- the flames of hell.
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at November 3, 2005 09:25 AM