John 5:9 - Exposition

And immediately £ the man became whole (well, sound in health), and took up his bed, and walked. This act of obedience was an act of faith, as in every other miracle upon paralyzed nerves and frames. The imagery of the sign explains the rationale of faith. The impotent man, the paralytic, and the man with withered hand, were severally called by Christ to do that which without Divine aid seemed and was impossible. The spiritual quickening of the mind was communicated to the ordinary physical volition, and the bare act was a method by which the palsied sufferer took hold of God's strength. Faith always lays hold thus of power to do the impossible. The words and the result are similar to those adopted on the cure of the paralytic. This is another instance of the identity of the Christ of John and of the synoptists. The various efforts of Strauss, Baur, and Weiss to identify this miracle with that wrought on the paralytic is, however, in defiance of every condition of time, place, character, and consequences. The energy of faith and love which led the Galilaean sufferer to secure the services of four stalwart friends, not only to carry him, but to make strenuous efforts to bring him into the presence of Jesus, contrasts powerfully with the loneliness and friendlessness of the impotent man; and the method adopted by the Lord to convey his grace, and the discussion that followed on that occasion touching the power of the Son of man to forgive sins, all suggest profoundly different circumstances. Nothing but the claim of the critic to be entirely superior to the document he is interpreting can account for so wild a conjecture.