Why That Guy?

John 5:6-7 -When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

There were a lot of sick and lame people by the Pool of Bethesda the day Jesus showed up. We know he had the power to heal them all, but, based on John’s account, it sounds like only one was healed. He was not the prime candidate for a miracle. He had suffered with his physical issue for 38 years. When Jesus asked him if he wanted to get healed, he didn’t even say yes. Instead, he whined about why he could not get healed. In most of Jesus’ healings, the faith of the one asking and receiving – or at least his or her friends – was specifically stated as the reason the healing happened. That man uttered no words hinting any kind of faith in even the remotest sense. Why did that guy get healed and no one else?

Even after the healing took place that guy manifested an attitude. He blamed Jesus for his own ”breaking of the Sabbath” (by the Pharisees’ definition) through carrying the pallet he lived on for those 38 years (5:11). Then, after at first not knowing who Jesus was then being checked up on by Jesus, he turned him in to the authorities (5:15-16). Certainly, there had to be a nicer, more deserving person Jesus could have healed that day by the pool. Why did he pick that guy? Perhaps a related question more relevant to us is, “Why does Jesus do some really good things for some really (seemingly) undeserving people?”

If you took five minutes, I am sure you could put some names on that list: the high school deadbeat who is now a millionaire business owner, the jerk who dumped you but now has a happy family, and that guy who cut you off in traffic this morning and beat the red light you did not. Why is God so unfair?

The answer is that we are upset when God does not meet our own definition of fairness. Look closer at the text and you can see that Jesus knew that man had been suffering a physical distress for 38 years. Can you imagine that? That is almost a lifetime. Perhaps he had been suffering longer than all others. Maybe that’s why he had such a bad attitude.

Also, he probably did not know who Jesus was when he gave that initial hopeless response. Yet, notice what he did do. He obeyed Jesus when the Lord told him to pick up his mat and go home. That took real faith. It was in his action the healing came. What looked like a man lacking faith was not so lacking after all.

It may feel like it is easy to judge the fairness of what happens to others. In some cases earthly benefit is not well earned, but we do not always get to know why God does what he does. Let us not be too quick to judge God’s fairness since he knows and see so much we do not. I know I have been that guy more than once.