John ch. 5, Do I want to be healed?

Well, I didn’t get through both chapter 5 and 6 of John this morning. We only finished chapter 5, and that’s OK. Chapter 6 is challenging enough all on its own. Below, are only a few excerpts from our study.
Our group this morning spent a lot of time on discussing the thought, “do I want to be healed?” In the first part of chapter 5, Jesus heals a man who has had some type of illness for 38 years. Jesus asks the man, “do you want to be healed?” Initially, one could ask, “well, who doesn’t want to be healed?? Especially if I have been sick for long!” And I’ll be honest, that is how I took it. My gut reaction to this passage, is “why does Jesus ask Him the question?” The discussion this morning centered around this thought.
Do I want to be healed? There are things in our life that we put in front of God. For some, we even worship aspects of this world, and these are a sickness to us. So the question is then raised, do we want to be healed from these sicknesses in our body? I think part of the reason why the question is so powerful has to do with the result if we say yes. If we allow Jesus to heal us, then we actually have to get up and do something, just like the man in the passage. It would no longer be expected for him to beg for his daily living. He would now have to get a job. He would have to work. There would now be expectations from others of him. Do we want to be healed of our sicknesses, and have expectations placed on us? This line of thought is part of what it means to know Jesus.
We also talked about Jesus’ declaration of who He was. This is mainly from the passage of 5:31 – 47. We see where the religious leaders sent messengers to John, and John told them about Jesus. Jesus himself did miracles in front of them. God, written in the Old Testament, testifies about Jesus. These leaders of the law would have known this. They searched the scriptures, and those scriptures would have told them about Jesus. So the thought in our discussion this morning was raised, “they knew Jesus, they just didn’t believe Him.”
For Christians today, this should be eye opening. Do we believe what we say about Jesus? We are taught, even from an early age who Jesus is. But when is it that we actually believe Him? Belief requires action on our part. At some point we have to confront this concept. We either believe what Jesus says, and try to change our lives accordingly, or we don’t and keep living our lives the way we always have, without any attempt to become better people. If we are not careful, we will busy our lives with “good things”, and over look Jesus in our lives. We try to distract ourselves from this inevitable confrontation.
Knowing Jesus also means seeing Jesus in others. By this, I mean understanding that every person is a unique creation from God. This morning, I used the example of having to see Jesus in someone who may have abducted my child. What I mean by this is that my initial reaction should take me back to the fact that everyone is created by God. Evil exists in this world. That I truly believe. But every human being was created by God. When we look at people (EVERYONE) in this light, if nothing else, it allows us to stop and think, even for a split second, about who this person is. I am not saying I am perfect. I am saying I think that is how true Christianity starts.