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No Comments Troubled Waters
In John, Chapter 5 is the story of the impotent man who sat by the pool waiting and hoping someone would help him into the waters when they were troubled by the angel. Seems like an odd way for people to be healed, one at a time, and only whoever could make it to the water first; so the most capable of making it on their own or someone who had help.
I can’t imagine waiting by a pool all day with virtually no chance of making it into the water. I don’t understand why God would make such an arrangement but then His ways are higher than my ways. Who am I to question this weird arrangement. The most needy and helpless person gets screwed over and it would be easy to blame it on God.
As Christians, we’re supposed to take care of one another so I think that is what God expected out of the Israelites. The man said he had no one to help him. No one. But that shouldn’t have been the case. God gave the Jews a chance to do the right thing. They failed time and time again. Why? There was no new covenant. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, it was a cut-and-dry existence. The Jews had the law but the law on its own brings death.
They couldn’t have what we have the privilege of having, a new life in Christ. It was before the cross and like the rest of the world they had to rely on the blood sacrifice of animals. They had to keep the law and mercy was at best a whimsical thought.
Being born again is something we take for granted. That is the only difference between those before the cross and we who came after. They lived by hope and promise; we live by the Revelation of Jesus Christ. We know that men are incapable of righteousness, of being holy, of pleasing God unless they’ve humbled themselves to the cross and followed Christ.
By grace are we saved and not of works (keeping the law). Before Christ, the Jews prided themselves on keeping the law and pointing out those who didn’t keep it. This was pleasing to them but not to God. Jesus had to narrow all their laws down to two: love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. I think the first command makes the second possible. Loving God is a prerequisite to loving man. Mankind as a whole are not that loveable.