John 5:6

5:1-9 We are all by nature impotent folk in spiritual things, blind, halt, and withered; but full provision is made for our cure, if we attend to it. An angel went down, and troubled the water; and what disease soever it was, this water cured it, but only he that first stepped in had benefit. This teaches us to be careful, that we let not a season slip which may never return. The man had lost the use of his limbs thirty-eight years. Shall we, who perhaps for many years have scarcely known what it has been to be a day sick, complain of one wearisome night, when many others, better than we, have scarcely known what it has been to be a day well? Christ singled this one out from the rest. Those long in affliction, may comfort themselves that God keeps account how long. Observe, this man speaks of the unkindness of those about him, without any peevish reflections. As we should be thankful, so we should be patient. Our Lord Jesus cures him, though he neither asked nor thought of it. Arise, and walk. God's command, Turn and live; Make ye a new heart; no more supposes power in us without the grace of God, his distinguishing grace, than this command supposed such power in the impotent man: it was by the power of Christ, and he must have all the glory. What a joyful surprise to the poor cripple, to find himself of a sudden so easy, so strong, so able to help himself! The proof of spiritual cure, is our rising and walking.

John 5:6 . Jesus when He saw the man lying and had ascertained ( γνοὺς , having learned from the man or his friends) that already he had passed a long time (in that infirmity) says: θέλεις ὑγιὴς γενέσθαι ; “Do you wish to become whole (healthy)?” This question was put to attract the man’s attention and awaken hope. But the man is hopeless: it is not a question of will, he says, but of opportunity. His very weakness enabled others to anticipate him; ἐν ᾧ ἔρχομαι ἐγὼ , “while I am coming,” he could, then, move a little, but not quickly enough. At each bubbling up of the water, apparently only one could be healed. The ἄλλος πρὸ ἐμοῦ καταβαίνει was a great aggravation of his case.

Had been now a long time (πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον ἔχει) Literally, he hath already much time. Wilt thou (θέλεις) Not merely, do you wish, but are you in earnest? See on Matthew 1:19. Jesus appeals to the energy of his will. Not improbably he had fallen into apathy through his long sickness. Compare Acts 3:4; John 7:17. Whole (ὑγιὴς) Sound.

6. saw him lie, and knew, &c.—As He doubtless visited the spot just to perform this cure, so He knows where to find His patient, and the whole previous history of his case (Joh 2:25). Wilt thou be made whole?—Could anyone doubt that a sick man would like to be made whole, or that the patients came thither, and this man had returned again and again, just in hope of a cure? But our Lord asked the question. (1) To fasten attention upon Himself; (2) By making him detail his case to deepen in him the feeling of entire helplessness; (3) By so singular a question to beget in his desponding heart the hope of a cure. (Compare Mr 10:51).

Christ, as God, knew the particular time when this infirmity seized him, which was eight years or upward before our Saviour’s birth, and about the time when the temple was re-edified, or rather enlarged and further adorned, by Herod. As man, he pitieth his case; he asketh him if he was willing to be made whole. Not that he doubted of his willingness; for what sick man was ever unwilling to be healed? Besides that, he knew that the poor man lay there for that very purpose; but that he might make him declare his miserable, helpless state and condition, and draw out his faith and hope in himself; and from his answer take an occasion to heal him, and make the spectators more attentive to his miracle.

6 . knew ] Or, perceived , perhaps supernaturally (see on John 16:19 ), but He might learn it from the bystanders: the fact was very likely notorious. Wilt thou? ] Or, more strongly, Dost thou will ? Note that the man does not ask first. Here and in the case of the man born blind (9), as also of Malchus’ ear ( Luke 22:51 ), Christ heals without being asked to do so. Excepting the healing of the royal official’s son all Christ’s miracles in the Fourth Gospel are spontaneous. On no other occasion does Christ ask a question without being addressed first: why does He now ask a question of which the answer was so obvious? Probably in order to rouse the sick man out of his lethargy and despondency. It was the first step towards the man’s having sufficient faith: he must be inspired with some expectation of being cured. The question has nothing to do with religious scruples; ‘Art thou willing to be made whole, although it is the Sabbath?’

(6) And now Jesus sees him lying there among the throng of sufferers, and every ache of every limb, and. every sorrow of every heart told of the perfection of life marred by the curse of sin; but this man’s own sin had left its mark upon him, which men may read and condemn, though within the whited fairness of their own outer deeds, the soul’s life was by sin palsied to its very core. But he hears, in tones that went to the heart as he listened to them, the strange question, stranger indeed than “Wilt thou. . . .,” “ Wiliest thou to be made whole?”

John 5:6-7 . Τοῦτον … ἔχει ] two points which excited the compassion of Jesus, where γνούς , however (as in John 4:1 ), does not denote a supernatural knowledge of this external (otherwise in John 5:14 ) and easily known or ascertained fact (against Godet and the early expositors). ἔχει ] i.e. ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ , John 5:5 . θέλεις , κ . τ . λ .] Wilt thou become whole ? The self-evident nature of this desire made the question an appropriate one to rouse the sufferer’s attention and expectation , and this was the object Jesus had in view in order to the commencement of His miraculous work. This question was inappropriate for the purpose (de Wette thinks) of merely beginning a conversation upon the subject . Paulus falsely supposes that the man might have been a dishonest beggar, feigning sickness, and that Jesus asks him with reproving emphasis, “Wilt thou be made whole? art thou in earnest?” So, too, Ammon; while Lange regards him as simply languid in will , and that Christ again roused his dormant will; but there is nothing of this in the text, and just as little of Luthardt’s notion, that the question was meant for all the people of whom the sick man is supposed to be the type.