Want to be Healed?

Do you want to be healed?

I think anyone in a state of poor health will always answer the question positively: “OF COURSE!” No one is going to respond, “No, I enjoy being sick. I hate having to function properly.”

The setting is the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. We’re told by the text that the “blind, lame, and paralyzed” gathered here. You’ll have to check out the first part of John 5 to see the whole story for yourself, but here’s the gist of it:

One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”

John 5:5-6

This guy couldn’t walk or function in society normally for 38 years! And it seems like Jesus has the nerve to ask him if he wants to be healed! Here’s the man’s answer to Jesus:

The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

John 5:7

Of course this guy wants to get well! Being healed by Jesus didn’t simply mean that he could now walk, but it meant that his whole life would have to be transformed. Was he ready to stop receiving assistance and handouts from others? Healing sometimes hurts.

This man would have to begin functioning in a society where, for 38 years, he had previously been physically unproductive.

Jesus wasn’t dumb. He knew that the man wanted to be healed. I believe his question was directed less at the man’s desire to be physically well, and more at the man’s desire to begin living a transformed life.

Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

John 5:8-9

Some people in this life are satisfied to live in their paralyzed existence. Apart from Christ, that’s all we are—numbed-up paralytics rendered spiritual quadriplegics by sin. And far too many people are content living in that sad, spiritual state, being temporarily satiated by everything BUT Christ.

Here’s the part that causes Christians grief when they say “YES!” to being healed by Jesus—it means you now have to walk in the power of Christ. The implication behind being healed by Jesus is that you can no longer linger around as a cripple would, expecting people to spiritually spoon-feed you and “carry” you from place to place.

That’s why Jesus heals.

You now have to live and function in the power of the Holy Spirit daily, apart from which you’ve been debilitated all of your life prior to being saved by God. You have to truly desire that healing, and when Jesus heals you, there is no lying back down on the mat. Pick it up and walk.

“Do you want to be healed???”