1. Later, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a special Jewish festival.
2. In Jerusalem there is a pool with five covered porches. In Aramaic it is called Bethzatha. This pool is near the Sheep Gate.
3. Many sick people were lying on the porches beside the pool. Some of them were blind, some were crippled, and some were paralyzed.
5. One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years.
6. Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been sick for a very long time. So he asked him, “Do you want to be well?”
7. The sick man answered, “Sir, there is no one to help me get into the water when it starts moving. I try to be the first one into the water. But when I try, someone else always goes in before I can.”
8. Then Jesus said, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
9. Immediately the man was well. He picked up his mat and started walking. The day all this happened was a Sabbath day.
10. So some Jews said to the man who had been healed, “Today is the Sabbath. It is against our law for you to carry your mat on the Sabbath day.”
11. But he answered, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
12. They asked him, “Who is the man who told you to pick up your mat and walk?”
13. But the man who had been healed did not know who it was. There were many people there, and Jesus had left.
14. Later, Jesus found the man at the Temple and said to him, “See, you are well now. But stop sinning or something worse may happen to you!”
15. Then the man left and went back to the Jews who questioned him. He told them that Jesus was the one who made him well.
16. Jesus was doing all this on the Sabbath day. So these Jews began trying to make him stop.
17. But he said to them, “My Father never stops working, and so I work too.”
18. This made them even more determined to kill him. They thought it was bad enough that he was breaking the law about the Sabbath day. And now he was saying that God is his Father, making himself equal with God!
19. But Jesus answered, “I assure you that the Son can do nothing alone. He does only what he sees his Father doing. The Son does the same things that the Father does.
20. The Father loves the Son and shows him everything he does. This man was healed. But the Father will show the Son greater things than this to do. Then you will all be amazed.