In chapter five of John, Jesus and his disciples enter Jerusalem. They walk into a colonnaded area around a pool called Bethesda. Around this pool lay a “multitude of invalids.” These people were the worst of society in that time, people seen as cursed because of their sins or the sins of their parents. As Jesus and his crew walked through, they probably smelled and saw some nasty things. Apart from their societal “uncleanness,” they were physically dirty as well.

Jesus stopped in his walking and approached one man.

Imagine the disciple’s thought processes.  Were they surprised that Jesus approached such a man? Were they disgusted that the self-proclaimed Christ would associate himself with sick people, sinful people? Maybe so, but that’s what Jesus does.

Instead of a miraculous and strange anomaly like feeding thousands with a sack lunch, Jesus asks a question. He said to the man, “Do you want to be healed?” Rather than simply saying yes, the invalid tells Jesus that he has no one to help him and bathe him in the water. After this, of course, Jesus tells the man to get up and walk. This the man does, and goes along on his own feet.

This is a great story, one that shows us of Jesus’ power over the physical world and disease. Jesus, by his words, healed a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. He initiated this healing by asking a question. The question Jesus asked the man at the pool is the same question he asks us today.

“Do you want to be healed?”

“Do you want to be free of the sin you keep turning to, the disobedience that I died to save you from? Are you willing to give me your lies, your lusts, your greed?” As Christians, it’s easy to be so caught up in the too-good-to-be-true concept of Grace that we end up falling into our chronic sins. We say we’re fighting the sins, but if someone were to ask if we wanted them gone, what would we say?

Like the invalid at the pool, our sin is crippling. Jesus is asking us constantly if we want to be healed. What we must do in order to continue our progress in sanctification is to arrive at a certain point where we hate our sin so much that all we want is to walk in freedom with Jesus. That’s what Jesus wants for us.

Allow Jesus to ask you, “Do you want to be healed?”