IT was the Sabbath in Jerusalem. The pool of Bethesda, as the Gospel of John reveals, was the gathering place for invalids who had been informed that at certain times an angel would descend into the pool, stir up the water, and give it healing power, so that the first one who entered would be healed.
As they waited on this day, Christ Jesus appeared, and to one of them he said, "Wilt thou be made whole?" The impotent man replied, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me." Jesus said, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk," and it is recorded that the healing was immediately manifested.
Many wonderful truths unfold as one studies this beautiful demonstration of the love of God as Jesus understood it. One such truth is that Jesus was constantly aware of the uninterrupted perfection of God's creation. Jesus knew that God is the only cause, infinite good, thereby all-inclusively ever present, and that man is the image, or reflection, of God. He was aware that man, therefore, could never lapse from perfection, could never get outside of God's allness, and that no error, or evil, could possibly enter or dwell in infinite perfection. So clearly did Jesus discern that God and man are inseparable—man being the effect of the one divine cause—that in spite of appearances there was no resistance in the thinking of the individual who had been waiting so long by the pool, but an instant responsiveness to the command, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." There was no self-justification or fear. He did not say: "I cannot arise. I have been helpless for thirty-eight years," but he obeyed and was at once free.
