A Meditation on The Powerful One, The Weak One and The New One

Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.  In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk (without strength, powerless, weak) of blind, halt (limping) withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.  When the Iesou (Jesus) saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, "Wilt thou be made whole?"

The impotent man answered him, "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."

The Iesou (Jesus) saith unto him, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."  And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed and walked; and on the same day was the Sabbath.

The narrative of the impotent one is a powerful action picture of the Love of God.  This man, the weak one, was found by the Iesous at Bethesda, "The House of Mercy."

He had been in his condition for 38 years.  The etiology of his condition is not stated by the writer.  However, the behavioral result of his condition is clearly given to us.  He could only lay there, forlorn and isolated in "The House of Mercy."

The Iesous observed him and thereby acquired an experiential awareness of his condition.  The Iesous knew that he had been seized and held captive in embattled and chronic passivity for so long that he had become undifferentiated from his condition.  Today physicians talk of patients who become identified with their condition.

The Iesous said to The Weak One "Wilt thou be made whole?"  The Weak One could not give a direct answer to a direct question.  He could only answer Iesous out of the sphere of his chronic condition.  He answers with pronouns, wedded to negative statements.  (I..me...I...me...) vs 7.  The Iesous speaks into his chronic languor the powerful word of resurrection. 

We don't have to have the perfect answer when God visits us.  If  you have been held fast in a spiritually weak condition for a long time and have waited for God to speak in resurrection power He has through the Iesous.  He has the Word that will enable you to be made whole (created new).