When Christ Jesus encountered a man with "an infirmity" at the pool of Bethesda, he asked, "Wilt thou be made whole?" John 5:5, 6. This question might seem startling in view of the man's physical condition and the duration of it, which the Bible tells us was thirty-eight years. Under such circumstances, who wouldn't want to be made whole? Yet instead of giving an affirmative reply to Jesus' question, the man told the Master why he hadn't been healed. He thought the only way he could be cured was by getting into the pool when the water was disturbed, and being first in the pool. He lamented that he had no one to help him into the water.
Jesus knew the excuse given by the man had no bearing on God's spiritual idea, the real and only man. It was no more than a superstitious belief. Jesus healed him of the mistaken beliefs that had held him in bondage all those years. Even the duration of the infirmity didn't matter in the least to the call of the Christ. How decisively the Master cut through the red tape of false beliefs with his injunction "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk"! John 5:8.
The Christ-power, expressed by Jesus, evidently roused the man to see something of his God-given perfection, untarnished by sickly beliefs. And this is the basis of the Christly method of Christian Science healing—man's present perfection as God's spiritual likeness. The Bible tells us in its first chapter that God made man in His own image and likeness, and that God saw all that He had made as "very good."
