John 5:5-18

Living Bible

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,^[a] 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.

¹⁷ But Jesus replied, “My Father constantly does good, and I’m following his example.”^[b]

¹⁸ Then the Jewish leaders were all the more eager to kill him because in addition to disobeying their Sabbath laws, he had spoken of God as his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.