The Great Physician, full of compassion, still knew that faith must precede the miracle and therefore told them, “Go shew yourselves unto the priests” ( Luke 17:14).Īs they went in faith, the miracle occurred. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us,” they cried ( Luke 17:13)-in other words, importuning, “Isn’t there something You can do for us?” Because of their infirmity, they “stood afar off” ( Luke 17:12). In another tender scene, Luke tells us that the Savior, while traveling to Jerusalem, met 10 lepers. “And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked” ( John 5:8–9). To the man’s seemingly impossible challenge, Jesus provides a profound and unexpected answer: The man replies, “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” ( John 5:6–7). In the painting, the afflicted man huddles on the floor in the shadows, exhausted and demoralized after suffering his infirmity for 38 years.Īs the Savior raises the edge of the cloth with one hand, He beckons with the other and asks a penetrating question: “Wilt thou be made whole?” Here the word impotent refers to someone who is powerless and emphasizes the mercy and grace of the Savior, who came quietly to minister to those who could not help themselves. Bloch captures Jesus gently lifting a temporary canopy, revealing an “impotent man” ( John 5:7) who is lying near the pool, waiting. The Savior’s visit is depicted in a beautiful painting by Carl Bloch titled Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda. “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had” ( John 5:3–4). The Gospel of John tells us that near the pool “lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. He found them at Bethesda, the five-porch pool by the sheep market that was renowned for attracting the afflicted. During a time of joyful feasting at Jerusalem, the Savior left the multitudes to seek out those in greatest need.
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