[5:1] After this, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a religious festival.
[5:2] Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool with five porches; in Hebrew it is called Bethzatha.
[5:3] A large crowd of sick people were lying on the porches—the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.
[5:5] A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years.
[5:6] Jesus saw him lying there, and he knew that the man had been sick for such a long time; so he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
[5:7] The sick man answered, “Sir, I don't have anyone here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there first.”
[5:8] Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.”
[5:9] Immediately the man got well; he picked up his mat and started walking. The day this happened was a Sabbath,
[5:10] so the Jewish authorities told the man who had been healed, “This is a Sabbath, and it is against our Law for you to carry your mat.”
[5:11] He answered, “The man who made me well told me to pick up my mat and walk.”
[5:12] They asked him, “Who is the man who told you to do this?”
[5:13] But the man who had been healed did not know who Jesus was, for there was a crowd in that place, and Jesus had slipped away.
[5:14] Afterward, Jesus found him in the Temple and said, “Listen, you are well now; so stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
[5:15] Then the man left and told the Jewish authorities that it was Jesus who had healed him.
[5:16] So they began to persecute Jesus, because he had done this healing on a Sabbath.
[5:17] Jesus answered them, “My Father is always working, and I too must work.”
[5:18] This saying made the Jewish authorities all the more determined to kill him; not only had he broken the Sabbath law, but he had said that God was his own Father and in this way had made himself equal with God.