Chapter 5

1After this, during a Jewish festival, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2In Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, there is a pool called Bethesda in the Hebrew language. It has five covered walkways.

3A large number of sick people lay in these walkways—people who were blind, unable to walk, or had limbs that had wasted away.

5One man there had been ill for thirty-eight years.

6Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been in this condition for a long time. He asked him, “Do you want to become well?”

7The sick man answered, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get there, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8Jesus told him, “Get up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk.”

9The man immediately became well. He picked up his mat and began walking. That day was the Sabbath, the Jewish weekly day of rest.

10So the Jewish authorities told the man who had been healed, “Today is the Sabbath. You are not permitted to carry your mat.”

11He answered them, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

12They asked him, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Pick it up and walk’?”

13But the healed man did not know who Jesus was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd gathered there.

14Later, Jesus found the man in the temple complex and told him, “Look, you are well now. Stop sinning, so that something worse does not happen to you.”

15The man went away and reported to the Jewish authorities that Jesus was the one who had made him well.

16Because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish authorities began persecuting him.

17But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still at work, and I too am working.”

18This made the Jewish authorities even more determined to kill him. They believed that he was not only breaking the Sabbath but also calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

19So Jesus answered them, “I tell you this with absolute certainty: The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son does in the same way.

20Jesus continued, “The Father loves the Son and shows him everything he himself is doing. He will show him even greater works than these, and you will be amazed.

21“Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, the Son also gives life to whomever he chooses.

22“The Father does not judge anyone. Instead, he has placed all judgment in the Son’s hands,

23“so that everyone will honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

24“I tell you this with absolute certainty: Anyone who hears my message and trusts the one who sent me has eternal life—life that does not end. That person does not come under judgment but has already crossed from death into life.

25“I tell you this with absolute certainty: The time is coming—and is already here—when the dead will hear the voice of God’s Son, and those who hear will live.

26“Just as the Father has life in himself, he has also enabled the Son to have life in himself.

27“The Father has given him authority to carry out judgment because he is the Son of Man, the human figure with God-given authority.

28“Do not be amazed at this. The time is coming when everyone in the tombs will hear his voice

29“and come out. Those who have done good will rise to life, but those who have practiced evil will rise to face judgment.

30“I can do nothing on my own. I judge according to what I hear, and my judgment is fair because I do not seek what I want, but what the one who sent me wants.

31“If I testify about myself, my testimony does not count as valid.

32“There is another who testifies about me, and I know that his testimony about me is true.

33“You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth.

34“I do not depend on testimony from a human being. I am telling you these things so that you may be rescued.

35“John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and for a while you were willing to celebrate in his light.

36“But I have testimony greater than John’s. The works the Father has given me to complete—the very works I am doing—testify that the Father sent me.

37“The Father who sent me has himself testified about me. You have never heard his voice or seen his form,

38“and his message does not remain in you, because you do not trust the one he sent.

39“You study the sacred writings because you think that you have eternal life in them. Those very writings testify about me,

40“yet you refuse to come to me so that you may have life.

41“I do not accept praise from people.

42“But I know you, and I know that you do not have love for God within you.

43“I have come with my Father’s authority, yet you do not accept me. If someone else comes claiming his own authority, you will accept him.

44“How can you trust God when you seek praise from one another but do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?

45“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. The one accusing you is Moses, the lawgiver in whom you have placed your hope.

46“If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me.

47“But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”