John 5:5-20

⁵One man who was there had been crippled for thirty-eight years.

⁶Jesus saw the man lying there, and, finding that he had been in this state a long time, said to him, “Do you wish to be cured?”

⁷“I have no one, Sir,” the sick man answered, “to put me into the bath when there is a troubling of the water, and, while I am getting to it, someone else steps down before me.”

⁸“Stand up,” said Jesus, “take up your mat, and walk.”

⁹The man was cured immediately, and took up his mat and began walking.

¹⁰Now it was the Sabbath. So the religious authorities said to the man who had been cured, “This is the Sabbath; you must not carry your mat.”

¹¹“The man who cured me,” he answered, “said to me ‘Take up your mat and walk.’”

¹²“Who was it,” they asked, “that said to you ‘Take up your mat and walk’?”

¹³But the man who had been restored did not know who it was; for Jesus had moved away, because there was a crowd there.

¹⁴Afterward Jesus found the man in the Temple Courts, and said to him, “You are cured now; do not sin again, or something worse may happen to you.”

¹⁵The man went away, and told the authorities that it was Jesus who had cured him.

¹⁶And that was why they began to persecute Jesus — because he did things of this kind on the Sabbath.

¹⁷But Jesus replied, “My Father works to this very hour, and I work also.”

¹⁸This made the authorities all the more eager to kill him, because not only was he doing away with the Sabbath, but he actually called God his own Father — putting himself on an equality with God.

¹⁹So Jesus made this further reply, “In truth I tell you, the Son can do nothing of himself; he does only what he sees the Father doing; whatever the Father does, the Son does also.

²⁰For the Father loves his Son, and shows him everything that he is doing; and he will show him still greater things — so that you will be filled with wonder.