1After this there was a Jewish festival, so Jesus went to Jerusalem.
2Now near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem is a pool called Bethzatha in Hebrew, with five porches beside it.
3Crowds of sick people were lying in these porches—those who were blind, lame, or paralyzed.
5One man who was there had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus looked at him, knowing he had been lying there for a long time, and asked him,
6“Do you want to be healed?”
7“Sir,” the sick man answered, “I don't have anyone to help me get into the pool when the water is stirred. While I'm trying to get there, someone always gets in before me.”
8“Stand up, pick up your mat, and start walking!” Jesus told him.
9Immediately the man was healed. He picked up his mat and started walking. Now the day that this happened was the Sabbath.
10So the Jews said to the man who'd been healed, “This is the Sabbath! It's against the law to carry a mat!”
11“The man who healed me told me to pick up my mat and start walking,” he replied.
12“Who's this person who told you to carry your mat and walk?” they asked.
13However, the man who'd been healed didn't know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the surrounding crowd.
14Later on Jesus found the man in the Temple, and told him, “Look, now you've been healed. So stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
15The man went and told the Jews it was Jesus who had healed him.
16So the Jews started to harass Jesus because he was doing things on the Sabbath.
17But Jesus told them, “My Father is still working, and so am I.”
18This was why the Jews tried even harder to kill him, for not only did he break the Sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal with God.
19So Jesus explained to them, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does the Son does as well.
20For the Father loves the Son, and reveals to him everything he does; and the Father will show to him even more incredible things that will completely amaze you.
21For just as the Father gives life to those he resurrects from the dead, in the same way the Son also gives life to those that he wants.
22The Father judges no one. He has given to the Son all the authority to judge,
23so that everyone may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who doesn't honor the Son doesn't honor the Father who sent him.
24I tell you the truth: those who follow what I say and trust the one who sent me have eternal life. They won't be condemned, but have gone from death to life.
25I tell you the truth: The time is coming—in fact it's here already—when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live!
26Just as the Father has life-giving power in himself, so has he given the Son the same life-giving power in himself.
27The Father also granted the authority for judgment to him, for he is the Son of man.
28Don't be surprised at this, for the time is coming when all those in the grave will hear his voice
29and will rise again: those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.
30I can do nothing by myself. I judge based on what I'm told, and my decision is right, for I'm not doing my own will but the will of the one who sent me.
31If I were to make claims about myself, such claims wouldn't be valid;
32but someone else gives evidence about me, and I know what he says about me is true.
33You asked John about me, and he told the truth,
34but I don't need any human endorsement. I'm explaining this to you so you can be saved.
35John was like a brightly-burning light, and you were willing to enjoy his light for a while.
36But the evidence I'm giving is greater than John's. For I am doing the work that the Father gave me to do,
37and this is the proof that the Father sent me. The Father who sent me, he himself speaks on my behalf. You've never heard his voice, and you've never seen what he looks like,
38and you don't accept what he says, because you don't trust in the one he sent.
39You search the Scriptures because you think that through them you'll gain eternal life. But the evidence they give is in support of me!
40And yet you don't want to come to me so that you might live.
41I'm not looking for human approval
42—I know you, and that you don't have God's love in you.
43For I've come to represent my Father, and you won't accept me; but if someone comes representing themselves, then you accept them!
44How can you trust in me when you look for praise from one another and yet you don't look for praise from the one true God?
45But don't think I will be making accusations about you to the Father. It's Moses who is accusing you, the one in whom you place such confidence.
46For if you really trusted Moses you would trust in me, because he wrote about me.
47But since you don't trust what he said, why would you trust what I say?”