Gospel according to John 5

¹ Some time after this there was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

² Now at the Sheep Pool in Jerusalem there is a building, called Bethzatha in Hebrew, consisting of five porticos;

³ and under these were crowds of sick people – blind, lame, paralysed – waiting for the water to move;

⁴ for at intervals the angel of the Lord came down into the pool, and the water was disturbed, and the first person to enter the water after this disturbance was cured of any ailment he suffered from.

⁵ One man there had an illness which had lasted thirty-eight years,

⁶ and when Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had been in this condition for a long time, he said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’

⁷ ‘Sir,’ replied the sick man ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed; and while I am still on the way, someone else gets there before me.’

⁸ Jesus said, ‘Get up, pick up your sleeping-mat and walk’.

⁹ The man was cured at once, and he picked up his mat and walked away. Now that day happened to be the sabbath,

¹⁰ so the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; you are not allowed to carry your sleeping-mat’.

¹¹ He replied, ‘But the man who cured me told me, “Pick up your mat and walk”‘.

¹² They asked, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Pick up your mat and walk”?’

¹³ The man had no idea who it was, since Jesus had disappeared into the crowd that filled the place.

¹⁴ After a while Jesus met him in the Temple and said, ‘Now you are well again, be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen to you’.

¹⁵ The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had cured him.

¹⁶ It was because he did things like this on the sabbath that the Jews began to persecute Jesus.

¹⁷ His answer to them was, ‘My Father goes on working, and so do I’.

¹⁸ But that only made the Jews even more intent on killing him, because, not content with breaking the sabbath, he spoke of God as his own Father, and so made himself God’s equal.

¹⁹ To this accusation Jesus replied: ‘I tell you most solemnly, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing: and whatever the Father does the Son does too.

²⁰ For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he does himself, and he will show him even greater things than these, works that will astonish you.

²¹ Thus, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses;

²² for the Father judges no one; he has entrusted all judgement to the Son,

²³ so that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father. Whoever refuses honour to the Son refuses honour to the Father who sent him.

²⁴ I tell you most solemnly, whoever listens to my words, and believes in the one who sent me, has eternal life; without being brought to judgement he has passed from death to life.

²⁵ I tell you most solemnly, the hour will come – in fact it is here already – when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and all who hear it will live.

²⁶ For the Father, who is the source of life, has made the Son the source of life;

²⁷ and, because he is the Son of Man, has appointed him supreme judge.

²⁸ Do not be surprised at this, for the hour is coming when the dead will leave their graves at the sound of his voice:

²⁹ those who did good will rise again to life; and those who did evil, to condemnation.

³⁰ I can do nothing by myself; I can only judge as I am told to judge, and my judging is just, because my aim is to do not my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

³¹ ‘Were I to testify on my own behalf, my testimony would not be valid;

³² but there is another witness who can speak on my behalf, and I know that his testimony is valid.

³³ You sent messengers to John, and he gave his testimony to the truth:

³⁴ not that I depend on human testimony; no, it is for your salvation that I speak of this.

³⁵ John was a lamp alight and shining and for a time you were content to enjoy the light that he gave.

³⁶ But my testimony is greater than John’s: the works my Father has given me to carry out, these same works of mine testify that the Father has sent me.

³⁷ Besides, the Father who sent me bears witness to me himself. You have never heard his voice, you have never seen his shape,

³⁸ and his word finds no home in you because you do not believe in the one he has sent.

³⁹ ‘You study the scriptures, believing that in them you have eternal life; now these same scriptures testify to me,

⁴⁰ and yet you refuse to come to me for life!

⁴¹ As for human approval, this means nothing to me.

⁴² Besides, I know you too well: you have no love of God in you.

⁴³ I have come in the name of my Father and you refuse to accept me; if someone else comes in his own name you will accept him.

⁴⁴ How can you believe, since you look to one another for approval and are not concerned with the approval that comes from the one God?

⁴⁵ Do not imagine that I am going to accuse you before the Father: you place your hopes on Moses, and Moses will be your accuser.

⁴⁶ If you really believed him you would believe me too, since it was I that he was writing about;

⁴⁷ but if you refuse to believe what he wrote, how can you believe what I say?’