AUGUST 16 - Jesus One on One: The Paralyzed Man

On Sunday, August 16 we looked at Jesus' encounter with the invalid man in John 5:2-9.

To go a little deeper, here are some thoughts by various writers across the years on this character - the paralyzed man.

RAY STEDMAN. There is a critical clue many miss when they are looking for help from God. There is always something God tells them to believe, and do, and act on. This is a word of action. Jesus does not say, "Try to build up faith in your mind. Try to fasten your thoughts on this or that." He tells them to do something: "Rise! Stand up!" Obviously it was Jesus' will that this man should do what he told him to do, and the moment the man's will agreed with the Lord's will the power was there. He knew he could stand, and he did. Then what? The Lord did not merely say, "Rise," he said, "take up your pallet." Why did he say that? I like the way G. Campbell Morgan has put it, "In order to make no provision for a relapse." The man might have said to himself, "I'm healed, but I had better leave my bed here; I may need it tomorrow." If he had said that he would have been back in it the next day. But he did not. Jesus said, "Take up your bed. Get rid of it; don't leave it there." In those words he is saying something very important to people who need to be healed: do not make any provision to go back on what you have done. Many people fail right here. Go home and pour out the alcohol! Go home and get rid of the drugs! Burn your bridges behind you. Say no to the friends who have been luring you on into evil. You will probably find that some of them will come back with you. Burn your bridges. Cut off any possibility of going back. Let somebody know the new stand you have taken so that he will help hold you to it. Burn your bridges, is what Jesus is saying. That is so important. Many a person has really been touched by God, delivered from some inner attitude, a bitter spirit or whatever, but then he has allowed the past to come back in again and he finds himself back where he was. Our Lord knows what he is talking about -- "take up your bed."

CHRYSOSTOM (4th/5th centuries). The perseverance of the paralytic was astonishing. Each year he hoped to be freed from his disease. He lay there waiting, never given up. He had been waiting 38 years without obtaining what he desired, and he still did not withdraw.

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA (4th/5th centuries). Christ does not wait for entreaties from the sick but anticipates their request with his own loving kindness. See how he runs to the one who is lying down and how compassionate he is to one who was sick with no one to comfort him.

WILLIAM BARCLAY. Jesus began by asking the man if he wanted to be cured. It was not so foolish a question as it may sound. It might well have been that hope had died and left behind a passive and dull despair. In his heart of hearts the man might be well content to remain an invalid for, if he was cured, he would have to shoulder all the burden of making a living. But this man's response was immediate. He wanted to be healed, though he did not see how he ever could be since he had no one to help him. The first essential towards receiving the power of Jesus is to have intense desire for it.

MIKE SLAUGHTER. Just like other areas in my life that experienced rapid and radical change, I want the whole thing to be finished in one fell swoop. But, the question that Jesus asked, do you want to get well, seems to indicate that there is a deeper issue behind his state of paralysis. In many areas in our life that are so visible to us, the presenting issue is not the real issue that is creating the pain and paralysis. Here’s the problem, God knows it: many of us want to be fixed, but we don’t really want to be cured. We want to get out of debt, but we want to have all of the nice, fun new toys at the same time. We want to have a fulfilling marriage, but we don’t want to do the hard day-to-day practice it takes to get there. We want to lose the addiction and still get a buzz. We’re going to learn in the next two weeks that there’s a relationship between our paralysis and sin. These unholy habits become a source of comfort and meaning in our life. We learn to live with these unholy habits; as a matter of fact, we create these little comfort zones around ourselves with these unholy habits.