Flashback Episode — Challenging a Legalistic Picture of Heaven: John 5:1-15

While reading the gospel of John, one event happens to stand out in my mind not because of what is said in the Bible, but because of what is not said. One way this passage challenges me is through what is implied but not said. Our event only happens in the gospel of John, and if you are even remotely familiar with the Bible and Jesus’ life, you will likely have heard about this event.

Let’s read about what happened. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 4, and we will read it from the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Starting in verse 1:

¹ After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ² By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Hebrew, which has five colonnades. ³ Within these lay a large number of the sick—blind, lame, and paralyzed [and then some manuscripts add a parenthetical note that says these people were] [—waiting for the moving of the water, ⁴ because an angel would go down into the pool from time to time and stir up the water. Then the first one who got in after the water was stirred up recovered from whatever ailment he had].

⁵ One man was there who had been sick for 38 years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had already been there a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the sick man answered, “I don’t have a man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”

⁸ “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk!” ⁹ Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.

Now that day was the Sabbath, ¹⁰ so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath! It’s illegal for you to pick up your mat.”

¹¹ He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

¹² “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. ¹³ But the man who was cured did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Let’s pause reading here, because I want to draw out what is not said but implied up to this point in our passage.

The scene is something like this: One Sabbath, Jesus walks by a pool of sick people, sees one particular paralyzed man, heals him, and then continues on leaving the rest of the sick people to wait for the angel to stir the water of the pool.

It seems amazing in my mind that Jesus would ignore all the other sick people here, and while the Bible doesn’t say how big the pool was or how many people could fit around it, I imagine that there was space for several dozen sick people as a low estimate.

John’s emphasis for including this event has to do with the religious leaders’ confrontation with Jesus over healing on the Sabbath, and this man ends up facing ridicule from the religious leaders over doing what Jesus had told him to do.

Was carrying his bed a sin in God’s eyes?

To the religious leaders, it was.

However, verses 14 and 15 finish off this passage in an interesting way by saying:

¹⁴ After this, Jesus found him in the temple complex and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” ¹⁵ The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

We’ll stop our passage at this point, because John shifts into a bigger dialog Jesus has with the religious leaders in the next portion of the chapter.

Was carrying the healed man’s bed a sin in Jesus’ eyes?

I don’t think it was, because I don’t believe Jesus would have told the man to sin. However, the last thing Jesus tells the man is perplexing in many ways because we don’t know the man’s history aside from his paralysis that began 38 years earlier and that he had no friends to help him get into the pool in time.

Jesus tells the man to not sin anymore, because something worse might happen to him. This implies that the man’s paralysis was caused by some sin in his past. A truth we can learn from this idea is that sin can cause pain, hurt, and in some cases injury.

We don’t know what this man’s sin was that resulted in his condition, but what Jesus tells him is even more challenging. Jesus tells this man to “not sin anymore” which sounds a lot like Jesus telling the man to never sin again, which seems impossible in my mind.

However, does the Bible teach that life cannot be lived without sin? If you know of a place it says this, definitely let me know, because I am not aware of one. The Bible does say that everyone has sinned and has fallen short of God’s glory, but that simply means that everyone has at least one sin they are guilty of at some point in their past, but not that sin is guaranteed or impossible to avoid. Aside from Jesus, everyone has sinned at some point in our lives, but a sin that is in our past is not a reason to keep sinning in our present, and it is not a crutch we should use to excuse future sin.

This is not the only time Jesus tells a person to not sin anymore, and while Jesus might be simply saying to the man to not make a habit of sinning moving forward, He subtly challenges us reading this event regarding any preconceived ideas that our future lives are destined to have sin in them. Our future choices are ours to make, and while there will probably be some challenging choices to make at some point, Jesus describes a future where it is possible for us to never choose to sin again.

Heaven will be filled with people who always obey God’s law and who will never sin, and unless you believe heaven will be a legalistic place because of all of this obedience, choosing to obey God in your own life today is simply preparing to live in heaven. As a side note, legalism in my mind is living without love, grace, and holding others to the high standards you’ve set for yourselves, regardless of whether they asked for accountability or not. This is similar to hypocrisy which is holding others to a high standard that you choose to not abide by yourself. If obedience is legalism, then one must also view heaven as being a very legalistic place, which kinda doesn’t make heaven sound like heaven – at least to me.

Moving back to the topic we started this episode by talking about, what of all the sick people that Jesus seemed to ignore in this passage?

I don’t believe for an instant that God ignored them or that He didn’t love them. Instead, I wonder if some were not ready to accept Jesus’ healing, and I wonder if others were healed at other points in time, in other ways, and/or by Jesus that Sabbath day that simply did not make it into John’s gospel. John tells us at the conclusion of his gospel that he did not include everything Jesus said or did because it would be too much to write and too much to read.

John includes this healing and this event for specific reasons, and one of those reasons is a challenge for each of us who call ourselves followers of Christ: Will we believe that we can live the future portion of our present lives without sin?

Jesus thinks we can, and when we lean on Jesus for help, guidance, and strength to do so while drawing close to Him, His love that shines through us empowers us to live a future without sin in preparation for living in a sinless heaven. And when we’re living obediently in heaven, our lives won’t even come close to anything that looks like legalism.

As we finish off another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Choose to believe that a sinless life is possible starting today. While this doesn’t mean you or I won’t slip up or make mistakes along the way, this does mean that we choose to focus on modeling and reflecting Jesus’ love to those in our lives, and when making choices, we always choose the way of obedience.

To help keep our focus on God and Jesus strong, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself because a personal relationship with Jesus is the most important foundation to have in a life that leaves sin in the past.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him, because the life God wants to lead us into is a life without the pain, hurt, and consequences of sin!