Lawfulness

So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” (John 5:10)

Jesus, out of compassion heals a man who had been “invalid” for thirty-eight years and the response to that healing miracle by the public is: “it is not lawful for you to take up your bed…” I’m no expert in Jewish Sabbath law, but I do know one thing– it wasn’t meant to be prohibitive. The sabbath was designed by God so that people can have the space from their normal busy body lifestyles to stop and thank God for everything in a beautiful act of contemplation and worship. Jesus, in healing a man, provided people with proof that the Sabbath was just another day where God works to deliver them from their lives. This person along with many others, the Bible says, were stuck at Bethesda (the healing pools) because they could not go anywhere else, not were they welcomed anywhere else. Jesus showed that God welcome them and that God gives them the ability to go and partake in worship. Lawfulness dictates that people, as an act of worship to God, must help improve the lives of others so that people who otherwise had no opportunity to worship God, for some reason or another, can have a reason to worship God. Jesus in an act of metaphoric realism shows us that he makes us valid (lawful) because we are invalid never ever getting to where we need to get to and cannot do anything on our own anyways. Isn’t that what the story means in terms of application for our lives? We can get so caught up in the “legitimacy” of things that we actually horribly miss the point. Lawful is a means to set ourselves apart so that we would be worthy to worship God, in all the fullness of things He does for us. God, through Jesus, sets us free from being invalid. He tells us pick up our mat it is time to worship God. Some of us need to stop invalidating God’s work for us and through us and worship God because that is what is lawful. Wake up, you don’t judge lawfulness, God does. Now go worship God because it’s Him that makes us lawful.