John 5:5-18

5Now a man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years.

6When Jesus saw him lying there and when he realized that the man had been disabled a long time already, he said to him, “Do you want to become well?”

7The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get into the water, someone else goes down there before me.”

8Jesus said to him, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

9Immediately the man was healed, and he picked up his mat and started walking. (Now that day was a Sabbath.)

10So the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and you are not permitted to carry your mat.”

11But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

12They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?”

13But the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped out, since there was a crowd in that place.

14After this Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, lest anything worse happen to you.”

15The man went away and informed the Jewish leaders that Jesus was the one who had made him well.

16Now because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began persecuting him.

17So he told them, “My Father is working until now, and I too am working.”

18For this reason the Jewish leaders were trying even harder to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was also calling God his own Father, thus making himself equal with God.