In early days this miracle was allegorized by the gospel commentators who represented it as a symbolic story of the healing power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They taught that the lame, impotent and sick people all around the pool at Bethesda symbolized mankind unable to find salvation for themselves. The five porches around the pool at Bethesda symbolized the five books of the law upon which the Israelites were relying which could not help them, nor heal them. It was only when they responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ and his grace that healing came.

This is an allegorical interpretation of this story, but it contains a deep truth. What we see here presented in the confrontation between Jesus and this man who was totally lost is the Gospel being communicated in a dynamic and real way. Let us go through what happened here and analyze the message and the transformation that occurred in this individual through the person of Jesus Christ.

Immediately we see Jesus responding to the need of a most desperate individual who had been by the pool for a long, long time, hampered by his own inability to find help. The first thing that Jesus says to him is “Wilt thou be made whole?”

This question really is the key to all health, wholeness, and all salvation. What it involves is the cooperation of the individual who is infirm, with those healing powers that might help him. It is an interesting fact that behind a great deal of actual physical illness is an unconscious desire to be sick on the part of the patient. The pressures of life, and the weakness of the human soul, combine to drive down, and almost extinguish the will to be whole and well. There is perversity within the human soul which, without our realizing it, can transform us unconsciously where we do not desire to be well, strong, intelligent, and creative and good but just the opposite. We use our weaknesses to shield ourselves.

The great psychiatrist Carl Jung tells in his autobiography, how in his own life as a young boy he loved to run through the forest and sit and meditate. He loved the world of nature, of art and beauty. He detested school. He couldn’t bring himself to study. He was oppressed by the requirement of having to read and to translate his thoughts into term papers. He would become emotionally upset when he had to take examinations. One day, as a high school student, he was waiting outside of his classroom ready to go in for an exam, someone bumped into him and he fell down, hit his head and lost consciousness. The school teacher came out and with several students, carried him to the office. He thought to himself, “Now I won’t have to take the examination.”

The next thing he found when he was required to go back to class again and study was that he began to have fainting spells. When the load of Latin or mathematics became too heavy for him, he would collapse and they would have to take him to the hospital. His family sent him to doctors, who analyzed everything about him physically and could find nothing wrong. He took six months off from school, stayed home and loved every moment of it. He spent his time hiking in the forest, and enjoying all the world of nature while his whole family was puzzled and deeply troubled by what was the matter.

One day he happened to hear his father speaking to a friend who had come to visit. Carl hid behind a bush to listen. His father told the friend how troubled he was about his son’s illness. He was concerned because he had no financial resources. He said his son was going to have to make his own way in life and with an ailment such as this he wouldn’t be able to do it. The young boy decided that he would have to cure himself. He forced himself to start studying again. When he opened his books he would faint in his chair. He would get back up and keep on studying. Within six months he had cured himself. He also said that he had discovered the source of the neurosis. He saw in himself the system by which we human beings often fool ourselves. Because of the pressures of life, we let something happen in our unconscious mind which then leads us into ways of avoiding those things which would push down on us. We opt out. This process is not behind every form of illness of course. However, doctors tell us that half the hospital beds in this country are taken up by people whose illnesses are not physically induced, but are caused by emotional and mental pressures. The whole secret then of being well, of being normal, of being whole, comes not in some external factor at all, but from within us. What do we really want in our lives for ourselves? Do we really want to be sick after all? Do we want to stand up on our own two feet and be strong human beings? Jesus asked that question: “do you really want to be whole?” The impotent man answered him: “Sir, I have no man when the water is troubled to put me into the pool, but while I’m coming, another steps down before me.” As far as he was concerned, in his own conscious mind, of course he wanted to be well. But he was looking entirely in the wrong direction, this impotent man. He believed he was powerless; this is what impotent means. He was looking for someone else to help him. He was looking for someone to come along and make him well. That’s the way, very often in our physical weaknesses we go from doctor to doctor, from drug to drug, and from cure to cure, looking for that bubbling water out there and for someone to put us into it. On the moral level, even more so we do the same. When someone asks, “Do you really want to be good?” we say, “no one has made me good” “Someone has to change me before I’m going to be good.” Likewise we let out mental powers atrophy by excusing ourselves and saying “well I really am not that intelligent.” It’s much easier to watch television and let our minds decay because no one else has put that knowledge into our heads.

Jesus disregards all of these excuses and all of these evasions in his reply. There is no one else that can really make you healthy or intelligent or good. No one outside of you can do that. Not all the practitioners, not all the professors nor all the priests in the world can do anything for you. You have to do it yourself.

Jesus said to the impotent man directly, “Rise take up thy bed and walk.” You’re the one who has to cure yourself. That’s what Jesus is saying. You’re the one who has to have an overwhelming desire within to be whole to be healthy, to be well, to be good, and to be strong. Only you can generate that desire. It was in response to the word of Jesus Christ that the impotent man did just what he was told. He was cured. He stood up, he responded. All that weakness, all those years of dependence drifted away.

There is nothing miraculous about this. It is one of the basic laws of human health which we are just beginning to rediscover. Why is it that countless numbers of people with all kinds of anxieties, problems, weaknesses, and sicknesses, still fight them off and are creative, strong and live a full human life? And why is it that others who might have all the advantages of life around them still weaken, sicken, and die? It is because the ones who have given up have not really allowed the spirit of life in themselves to flourish. So our Lord comes before all of us, whatever our situation may be. Whether we are grieving because of a tragic sorrow in our lives, whether we are concerned about physical illness, or whether we have financial problems. He says to us don’t rely on someone else to bear this burden for you, stand up take up your own problems, and carry them. The bed symbolizes all of the weakness that this impotent man had been lying on for thirty-eight years. And what our Lord tells us to do is just carry it. Be brave, be bold, and step out into the future. Take all that sorrow and that anxiety and that pain and carry it. You will be amazed. You can do it. It is all true. The life force is overwhelming. It is God’s gift. We can’t stop it. If we turn it down and misdirect it, it will destroy us. If we let it flow in us in a constructive way, we become the people who can stand on our own two feet, as God intended us to do. What this involves, you see, is trust, absolute trust in the word of our Lord Jesus Christ. When He tells us to do something, we must do it. We must respond as if He were our commanding officer. That is why Jesus said to this man, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” What he is really saying is, go and do not lose your trust in me. Continue to carry your bed. By the power of your faith you are made whole. As soon as you begin to doubt and begin to look to others to carry you, you will decline back into a state of helplessness and of being lost once again. This is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Also it is the true understanding of what health is all about. It is an overwhelming desire to be well, to be whole in our hearts, and a hearty response to the word of God which comes from the Creator Himself, telling us to rise up, take up our bed and walk.