The Divine Healer

The Divine Healer

John 4:46-5:18

Main Idea: The healings and words of Jesus reveal His compassion and divinity.

I. Seeking Jesus (4:46-54)

Parallels Between The Signs in Cana

  • A need is communicated (4:47 cf 2:3)

  • but he initially rebuffs the petitioner (4:48 cf 2:4)

  • When the petitioner responds in faith (4:49 cf 2:5)

  • Jesus gives a command that is obeyed (4:50 cf 2:7-8)

  • at which point the need is met (4:51-52 cf 2:9-10)

  • These are then identified as the first and second signs, in response to which people believe in Jesus (4:53-54, cf 2:11)

"If he leaves to return home without Jesus, there is probably not enough time to seek help from anyone else. If he does not believe Jesus can speak the word and the healing comes to pass, he will be inclined to stay and plead with Jesus to come to his son. He can depart in peace only if he believes Jesus can say the word and make his son well."

~ James Hamilton, ESV Expository Commentary

II. Sought by Jesus (5:1-9a)

“If John intends any symbolism, it may be along the following lines: just as the water from the purification pots of the orthodox could neither produce nor be mistaken for the new wine of the kingdom (2:1–11), and just as the water from Jacob’s well could not satiate the ultimate thirst of religious people who may have looked to genuine revelation but whose views were widely viewed as aberrant (4:1–42), so the promises of merely superstitious religion have no power to transform the truly needy”

~ D.A Carson The Gospel According to John (Pillar NT Commentary) 

III. Stalking Jesus (5:9b-18)

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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