When it comes to treating Jesus and his relationship with the Sabbath, the Gospel of John, as is so often the case, presents material that is unique and not found in the different Synoptic accounts.[1] On one level, Jesus performs miracles that are controversial because he performs them on the Sabbath. Though different incidents, on the surface these Johannine miracles are similar to those found in one or more of the Synoptics. Just as Jesus restores a man with a withered hand (Mark 3:1–6; parallels Matthew 12:1–8; Luke 6:1–5), releases a woman bent over from a long infirmity (Luke 13:10–17), and heals a man with “dropsy,” a case of severe edema perhaps suggestive of congestive heart failure (Luke 14:1–6), in the Fourth Gospel he heals an invalid at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–15) and gives sight to a man who had been blind from birth (John 9:1–7).[2] Perhaps more effectively than Mark or Matthew and much like Luke, rather than demonstrating an abolition of the principles of the Sabbath, the incidents in John instead present a “clarification,” illustrating that this holy day should instead be used for the work of salvation and redemption.[3] Likewise, much as Jesus makes a pronouncement to justify his disciples’ gleaning grain on the Sabbath that appealed to scriptural precedent (Mark 2:23–28; parallels Matthew 12:1–8; Luke 6:1–5), in John’s Gospel he explains his own “work” on the Sabbath by drawing on parallels in the law and sacred practice (John 7:19–24). In these instances, the Johannine material provides additional attestation demonstrating that the historical Jesus deliberately performed miracles and otherwise acted in ways that sought to demonstrate a new understanding of the Sabbath day and his relationship to it.[4]

On another, deeper level, however, John’s treatment of the Sabbath is subordinated to the Fourth Gospel’s higher Christology.[5] Rather than simply being “powerful deeds” (Greek, dynameis), the miraculous Sabbath healings are, like all Johannine miracles, first and foremost “signs” (Greek, sēmeia) that reveal who Jesus truly is and what his greater work is.[6] Additionally, each of the miracles is followed by typically Johannine teaching in which Jesus speaks about himself, his divine identity, and his saving and exalting mission.[7] First, following the healing at Bethesda, Jesus engages in a sharp exchange with “the Jews” (John 5:16–18), his opponents among the Jewish leadership,[8] after which he delivers a discourse on how he is in fact the Divine Son (vv. 19–47). Similarly, after the healing of the blind man, the efforts of the Pharisees to undermine the miracle and cast aspersions on Jesus (19:8–34) lead Jesus to confront them about the difference between physical and spiritual blindness, underscoring that he is the true Light of the World and that rejecting him results in the persistence of sin (9:39–41). Although commentators have noted how these dialogues coordinate Jesus’s “works” (Greek, erga)[9] with those of the Father, Jesus’s seeming transgression of the Sabbath arguably says something even more specific about his atoning mission, which in this Gospel results in a new creation. Whereas the original creation, which the premortal Divine Word accomplished under the direction of the Father (John 1:3), was completed on the seventh “day,”[10] the Incarnate Word’s work of atonement, healing, and exaltation is ongoing. While it is in many ways realized for some people now, it will not be experienced generally until a future, eschatological Sabbath. In other words, whereas the Father’s initial work was in some sense complete, the Son’s work of “re-creation” is not. Finally, a foretaste of the completion of this new creation is seen in Jesus’s own resurrection on the first day of the week, making Sunday, “the Lord’s Day,” the new Christian Sabbath.[11]

Healing at the Pool of Bethesda

The Sabbath healings are two of the seven miraculous signs featured in John 2–11, a section of the Fourth Gospel also known as the “Book of Signs” because of the prominence of such signs in this portion of the narrative and the way they dramatically illustrate who Jesus is and what he came to do.[12] These Johannine Sabbath miracles also fall within a subsection of the Book of Signs that illustrates how Jesus fulfilled the meaning of various Jewish festivals such as Passover, Tabernacles, and Dedication.[13] In the case of the first Sabbath miracle, the healing at Bethesda, the story is set during “a feast of the Jews” (John 5:1; emphasis added) without specifying which one it was. Although many later Byzantine manuscripts read “the feast” (Greek, hē heortē),[14] perhaps suggesting Passover, older and arguably more secure manuscripts lack the definite article, and without clear seasonal references, any of the annual feasts, such as Tabernacles, might have been meant.[15] Although the Feast of Trumpets, or Rosh Hashanah, was not one of the pilgrimage festivals that would have likely drawn Jesus to Jerusalem, the surprisingly later notice that the healing took place on the Sabbath (v. 9) might suggest that the Johannine source or author also had some of the imagery of this feast in mind.[16] Rosh Hashanah, later known as “the birthday of the world,” was associated with the Creation, and the Sabbath was a weekly commemoration of creation’s completion. The creation and recreation images then figure prominently in the symbolism of both the miraculous sign and its following discourse.

The man whom Jesus healed was one of many sick people who gathered at the Pool of Bethesda, a double pool north of the temple complex. Water from the upper pool was periodically released into the lower through a sluice gate in the dike between the two pools,[17] perhaps to meet the requirements of making the water ritually pure. Possibly meaning “House of Mercy,” the pool or pools were thought to be a place of healing when the water was disturbed, either because of intermittent springs that fed it from below or perhaps from water flowing periodically through the sluice gate. This movement of water was subsequently explained by the curious story of an angel coming down to trouble the waters (John 5:4), an explanation that was inserted into later versions of the text.[18]

Nevertheless, the moving of the water, from whatever cause, that preceded healing may have been part of the original story. It certainly contributes to the symbolism of the miracle that Jesus performs given its resonance with the opening lines of the Creation story: “darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2; emphasis added). Primordial waters were a symbol of uncreated chaos; God’s spirit sweeping across them anticipated the first acts of creative organization.[19] This allusion to the first creation ties this, the third miraculous sign in John, to the first, the miracle at Cana (John 2:1–11), where the Incarnate Word’s ability to change water into fine wine symbolized, among other things, that he was in fact the Divine Word, who under the direction of the Father brought forth all things. For Latter-day Saints, who understand that creation is in fact an act of organization rather than production ex nihilo, this symbolism is even more clear: as the premortal Jehovah he had organized the heavens and the earth; now, as the man Jesus he reorganizes elements to fit the moment’s need.[20]

If we see healing as the act of restoring a disordered body back into its proper form and function, then it, too, is an act of re-creation. Whereas the Incarnate Word had reorganized inanimate matter in the first sign, with the second miraculous sign, the healing of the nobleman’s son, he reordered the ill body of the boy, restoring him to health (John 4:46–54).[21] The second sign thus serves as a bridge from the first to the third, so that Jesus’s appearance at the water’s edge signaled the beginning of yet another new creative event. Just as the Lord had created when his spirit moved upon the first waters, Jesus, as Jehovah made flesh, engaged in an act of re-creation by restoring the health and ability of the invalid waiting by Bethesda’s waters. This man had suffered with his infirmity for thirty-eight years, the same period of time during which rebellious Israel wandered in the wilderness between Kadesh-barnea and Wadi Zereb (Deuteronomy 2:14). Because journeys through the wilderness can symbolize our mortal probation, this invalid can be taken as a type of all of us in mortality. Much as the world had been created or organized in perfection but then fell into a state of disorder through the Fall, so all of us in mortality are physically imperfect, subject to illness and eventual death.

Jesus’s injunction to the man, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk” (John 5:8; emphasis added), uses a Greek verb (egeire) and an image that intimates resurrection, the healing of his particular infirmity representing the full, complete healing of the body that comes at the Resurrection. Inasmuch as the man in his disability represents all of us in our fallen, mortal state, his restoration can thus symbolize our own future resurrection, when “the soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame” (Alma 40:23; see also 11:43).

Only at the point when the now-healed man picks up the mat (Greek, krabbaton; KJV, “bed”)[22] and begins to walk does the narrator inform readers, almost as an afterthought, that “the same day was the sabbath” (John 5:9). We will see that the same delay in informing readers that the miracle took place on the Sabbath will happen in the case of Jesus’s healing the man born blind (9:14), and in both cases this might reflect purposeful narrative irony in that both Jesus and the recipients of his miracles are aware of something—that it was the Sabbath—that readers are not. Tom Thatcher sees this as “unstable irony” because it could undercut readers’ expectations of Jesus, who is unexpectedly revealed as a Sabbath breaker,[23] but better understanding the symbolism of the miracles might provide a better explanation for the delay. In the case of the invalid at Bethesda, it is true that the healing takes place on the calendrical Sabbath, but that Sabbath looked back to the old creation, while the miracle itself is part of a larger process of re-creating the world, a process that was not yet finished and pointed to a future, complete restoration of all things. As a result, while it was in fact the weekly Sabbath, the eschatological Sabbath, toward which Jesus was working, still lay ahead.

Narratively, however, the fact that the healing takes place on the Sabbath occasions a conflict with the Jewish authorities because developing interpretations of the Jewish law may have prohibited the transport of even such a small, light item on the Sabbath.[24] Such regulations began in certain sectarian circles—in groups such as the Pharisees and the Qumran community—but do not appear to have been normative until later in the rabbinic period, so we do not know whether they were yet widely accepted and observed across the population. Additionally, in all such discussions it is important for us to remember that such regulations were not intended to be burdensome or hypocritical: such “hedges about the law” likely developed as sincere efforts to worship God and live his law more fully.[25] Nevertheless, because both Jesus and the invalid knew that it was the Sabbath, they probably knew that their actions might be criticized by some authorities, Jesus for healing and the man for carrying his mat. As Cornelis Bennema notes, “Perhaps the man obeyed Jesus’ command because he would rather get well and violate the Sabbath than keep the law and remain ill. Willing to face the consequences, he believes Jesus’ word and obeys.”[26]

In any event, the Jewish leadership criticizes the newly healed man but does not seek to punish him (John 5:10). Instead, they are more concerned with discovering who performed the miracle, though the man cannot immediately tell them who healed him (v. 13), having not met Jesus before the incident. Part of this concern may have been the tendency of the Gospel authors to locate later controversies between early Christians and their Jewish competitors, Pharisees in particular, in the ministry of Jesus. But historically it might have been because the leadership in that period actually did see the healing itself as “work” prohibited on the Sabbath, a view that seems to have been increasingly the case with the depiction of Jesus’s activities in the Synoptics.[27] The bigger issue, however, may have been the authority that Jesus’s opponents felt he had assumed in determining what was and was not appropriate for the Sabbath, which was the case when he directed the man to carry his mat.

As for the man, Jesus finds him in the temple and calls on him to avoid sin. This does not suggest that previous sin had been the direct cause of his ailment but rather that continuing in sin might bring about something worse—spiritual death rather than a more severe illness.[28] Alternatively, in addition to symbolizing a future physical resurrection, the man’s healing might represent a spiritual healing comprising forgiveness and moral restoration. In other words, Jesus healed the whole man, spirit as well as body, and is now calling on him to “retain a remission of . . . sins” by persisting in the love of God (see Mosiah 4:12). Because in John sin is primarily a function of failing to believe, Jesus’s admonition that the man “stop sinning” is actually a call for him to leave his unbelief and instead place his trust in Jesus.[29]

Jesus as the Divine Son

When the newly healed man reports to “the Jews” that Jesus was the man who healed him, their anger reaches murderous proportions, suggesting that their preexisting animosity toward Jesus was the real factor in their reaction. This supports the idea that it was not the mere act of healing on the Sabbath but the fact that it was Jesus who performed the miracle on the Sabbath, especially since he also usurped what they felt was their authority by allowing the man to break their Sabbath regulations by carrying his mat. Jesus responded to them by declaring, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17; emphasis added), a declaration that both supports the creation/re-creation symbolism of the miracle and further angered his opponents.

Saying that God “worketh hitherto” (Greek, heōs arti ergazetai) acknowledged contemporary Jewish belief that God had continued to work since the Creation through his constant nurture, sustaining, and preservation of that creation.[30] Although we do not know what wording, presumably in Aramaic, Jesus originally used, the possible force of the phrase heōs arti of John’s Greek allows for different interpretations. The traditional interpretation of hitherto means until now, suggesting constancy and continuous creation. The emphatic position of this adverbial phrase before the verb, however, could suggest culmination, meaning that God has been working “even until now,” the time when Christ has come to bring the promised Sabbath rest to fruition. According to Samuele Bacchiocchi, after the initial rest on the first primeval Sabbath, God had resumed his work because of sin, a work that would be at last completed by the work of Jesus.[31] That is, God has finished his initial creation and found it good, but the earth having been marred by sin, Jesus’s re-creative efforts were still ongoing.[32] Indeed, in John’s cosmology, creation was never fully completed and Jesus’s mission is to finish it. Thus, while the Jews rested each Sabbath to commemorate the completion of the first creation, Jesus cannot rest until his new creation is finished and the true final rest can begin.[33]

Both Jesus’s actions and now his words, saying that he was working even as God had been working, reignited the intent of his opponents to kill him (John 5:18). While the KJV reads “had broken the Sabbath,” the Greek verb (eluen) is actually in the imperfect tense, which might suggest that their anger was not due to this single incident but because he had, in their view, repeatedly violated the Sabbath. Interestingly, this very verb can be used to mean “to loose” or “to set free,”[34] which is how Luke used it in the healing of the woman who was severely bent over by her infirmity, when Jesus asked, “And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16). Consonant with Jesus’s arguments in the Synoptics that it was permitted to do good on the Sabbath, here also he may have been freeing the observance of the Sabbath from unnecessary regulations and instead performing actions that were wholly appropriate for the Sabbath.[35] By undercutting the interpretations of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, however, he was threatening their power.

Above all, however, it was his claiming authority and status with God that angered “the Jews,” who complained that he also said that “God was his Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). While always subordinating himself to the will of the Father, Jesus not only does not deny his relationship to the Father but underscores it by saying, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” (v. 19).[36] Jesus’s discourse on his identity and role as the Divine Son continues by attesting his role with judgment, life, and resurrection (vv. 21–30) and concludes with discussion of witnesses of his divinity (vv. 31–38) and the role of scripture as additional, vital witnesses of him and his saving work (vv. 39–47). Taken with the preceding miracle at the Pool of Bethesda, with its images of creation and re-creation, this discourse shows how Jesus fulfilled and deepened the meaning of the Sabbath by turning from the first Sabbath, which looked back to the initial creation, toward a new Sabbath, on which creation was renewed and restored through Christ.

A Broad Johannine Eschatology

When and how God’s final purposes for humanity are accomplished is part of the larger theological question of eschatology. Literally “the study of the last things,” in Christian thought eschatology concerns itself with the glorious return of Christ, the end of the world, judgment, resurrection, and the final condition of the believers in the eternities.[37] Mark, Matthew, and in most instances Luke all exhibit future eschatology: whereas Jesus defeats the powers of Satan and heals during his ministry and his crucifixion defeats sin, the final vanquishing of evil, the vindication of God’s people, and the general resurrection of humankind all lie ahead.[38] On the other hand, John frequently portrays realized eschatology, meaning that it depicts the effects of Jesus’s saving work as being already realized in the lives of believers. For instance, in the Discourse on the Divine Son, Jesus proclaims, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” (John 5:24; emphasis added). Those who believe are described as already having eternal life, and they have passed from spiritual death to a new kind of spiritual life.[39] Examples elsewhere in John include Jesus giving power to those who receive him to become the children of God (1:12), his giving life to whom he will (5:21), those who eat his flesh and drink his blood already having eternal life (6:54), and his giving eternal life to those hear them (10:27–28).

While such passages have led many to suggest that John’s emphasis is largely on realized eschatology, there are nonetheless clear examples of future eschatology. Just four verses after Jesus taught that those who hear and believe already have eternal life, he went on to prophesy, “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28–29), locating these resurrections in the yet-unrealized future. Likewise, in the same Discourse on the Bread of Life in which he had maintained that those who ate his flesh and drank his blood already have eternal life, Jesus also taught, “Every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day” (6:40)

Noted Johannine scholar Raymond Brown described eschatology in the Fourth Gospel this way: “Much that is anticipated, hoped for, and expected in the future in ancient Jewish writings and other books of the New Testament is understood to be already present in a real sense in the Gospel of John. There is still the hope for the future realization of that which is not yet present, but John is distinctive in its proclamation that eternal life is already a present reality for those who believe in Jesus.”[40] In the main, other than Jesus’s own resurrection, the raising of the dead lies in the future, whereas forgiveness of sin, the healing of hearts and souls, and the restoration of people to a full relationship with Deity can be realized now. Because Restoration teaching usually defines eternal life as the kind of immortal, exalted life that God and the Risen Christ have enjoyed forever in their presence, Latter-day Saint readers in particular must bear in mind the way eternal life is understood in John. In his Intercessory Prayer, Jesus defines eternal life, saying, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3; emphasis added). It is this relationship, and the fuller, abundant spiritual life that Jesus brings to those who believe in him (see 10:10), that constitute the realized eternal life of the Fourth Gospel.

Alan Culpepper has observed, “John distinguishes eternal life from resurrection, claiming that it is the present experience of those who believe. . . . For the faithful, the experience of blessedness, the life of eternity, is not withheld until death—it is a present reality. Eternal life is the present experience of those in the Johannine community.”[41] Thus, while Jesus’s work was, in one sense, completed in the life of the invalid at the Pool of Bethesda, his full healing, in the sense of resurrection, awaits the resurrection at the end of the world. It is then that Jesus’s healing, atoning, and restoring work will be complete, ushering in an eschatological Sabbath. John’s eschatology is accordingly broad, beginning in the life of the believer now but completed in the future.

Tabernacles, the Sabbath, and the Law

After Jesus’s bold discourse to the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, the setting of John’s narrative abruptly shifts to the account of Jesus fulfilling the intent and imagery of Passover with his miracles of the feeding of the five thousand and walking on water, followed by his Discourse on the Bread of Life (John 6:1–71). The setting then returns to Jerusalem and the temple, where several discourses and another miraculous sign serve to demonstrate how Jesus fulfills the meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:1–10:21). Originally commemorating the wandering of the children of Israel in the wilderness and the Lord’s support of them in that period, Tabernacles (Hebrew, sukkôt, “booths”; Greek, skēnopēgia, “tent festival”) had become a joyous autumn harvest festival in the Holy Land. In the Second Temple period the festival acquired other features, such as the ritual pouring of water on the altars as part of the community’s prayers for winter rains (m. Sukkah 4:9–10) and the lighting of great lamps in the temple courts (5:3–4), which provided images for Jesus’s teachings, such as flowing rivers of water (John 7:37–39) and the light of the world (8:12–59).[42] For “the Jews,” however, behind this festival was the ever-present figure of Moses and the law that came through him and bore his name.

As a result, it was not surprising that as Jesus taught in the temple during the early part of the weeklong festival of Tabernacles, he would bring up both Moses and the law as part of his explanation of his Sabbath-day activities and what they symbolized. After declaring the divine source of his doctrine (John 7:16–18), Jesus challenged the Jewish authorities in regard to their own hypocrisy, saying, “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?” (v. 19). Then referring to one “work” (Greek, ergon), probably the healing of the man at the Pool of Bethesda, that had made them marvel (v. 21), Jesus proceeded to give an example of how the law itself mandated another work, or ritual, whose performance seemed to transgress the Sabbath: “Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; . . . and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man” (v. 22). Jesus’s observation here that the Jewish leaders allowed circumcision on the Sabbath because it was a weightier obligation[43] parallels his reference in the Matthean version to how priests regularly “broke” the Sabbath by profaning the temple (Matthew 12:5).

Noting that the sanctification of one member through circumcision affected only one part of the body, Jesus then declared, “If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?” (John 7:23). This was a type of qal vahomer, or “light to heavy,” argumentation that slightly later sources suggest was common in the first century,[44] but it was about more than part or all of the physical body. Within the context of the Gospel of John, Jesus’s reference to a man made “every whit whole on the sabbath day” (emphasis added) almost certainly refers to the recent healing of the man at Bethesda, with the reference to his becoming well or healthy (Greek, hygiēs; KJV, “whole”) connecting his declaration here not only to the man’s healing but also to Jesus’s greater work of re-creation that it symbolized. Accordingly, if Jews redeemed an infant boy by the “work” they performed circumcising a part of him to bring him into the covenant, even more so Jesus’s healing the whole body was a symbol of his greater work of redeeming and restoring fallen men and women.[45]

Healing Physical and Spiritual Blindness on the Sabbath

The story of Jesus’s healing the man blind from birth and its aftermath (John 9:1–41) parallels and builds on the story of the man at Bethesda, following the basic outline in most of its points while simultaneously adding detail, further personalizing it, and adding an additional theological point.[46] While there were several cases of restored sight in the Synoptics (Mark 8:22–26; 10:46–52, with parallels at Matthew 20:30–34 and Luke 18:35–43; Matthew 9:27–31), in typical Johannine fashion the miracle in this Gospel is greater and more momentous: “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind” (John 9:32). Both stories in John have Jesus take the initiative (5:6; 9:6); both involve the waters of pools (5:2; 9:7); both occur on the Sabbath, though this information is delayed (5:9; 9:14); both have Jewish leaders criticize Jesus for his timing (5:10; 9:16); and in neither does the man initially know Jesus or where he is (5:13; 9:12). Yet whereas the man at Bethesda was healed instantly, the blind man’s restoration involved several steps, including the application of mud to his eyes, which is more reminiscent of the colorful, detailed description of miracles in Mark than those in Matthew, Luke, or usually John.[47]

In fact, the details of Jesus making mud or a paste (Greek pēlos; KJV “clay”) by spitting on the ground, anointing the man’s eyes with it, and then having him wash in the Pool of Siloam are so unusual for John that they demand some explanation. As with the reference to the moving of the water at Bethesda, the answer might be found in seeing in the making of mud a reference to the original Creation story. In Genesis 2:7 the Lord God fashioned Adam out of the dust of the ground and then made him “a living soul” by placing in him “the breath of life” (Hebrew, nišmaṯ ḥayyîm). Because water so often serves as a symbol of spirit in John,[48] Jesus’s using his saliva to mix with the dust or dirt on the ground in front of him could represent God’s putting spirit in the first man. While Adam was perfect at first, since the Fall we are all mortal, imperfect, and susceptible to illness and disability. Just as the invalid at Bethesda represented all of us in a general fallen state that is overcome by Jesus, the blind man’s renewal involves additional detail, namely the need to “wash” away the effects of mortality. Indeed, if we extend the washing imagery to the symbolism of baptism, we see that it is necessary for all,[49] not just for sinners.[50]

Again, the notice that the miracle took place on the Sabbath is delayed until after the miracle (John 9:14),[51] perhaps suggesting that the meaningful Sabbath is the eschatological Sabbath that follows the completion of Jesus’s work. In any case, Jesus’s opponents, who in this account are specifically identified as Pharisees, saw the simple act of making paste as a work (v. 16). The now-seeing man, however, is not dissuaded by the Pharisaic claim that Jesus is a sinner and not of God; rather he maintains that Jesus must be a prophet (v. 17) and despite threats declares that God is with him (vv. 31–33). After he is cast out by “the Jews,” Jesus finds him, giving the man a chance to express faith and worship him (vv. 35–38). Recalling that this miracle took place during or soon after the Feast of Tabernacles with its association with light, the miracle takes on further associations. Not only was a man who once lived in physical darkness now able to see, but he has also come to know who Jesus is, the true Light of the World (8:12).

The story of the blind man ends with Jesus declaring, “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind” (John 9:39). Because this leads some of the Pharisees to question whether Jesus is claiming that they are somehow blind, Jesus closes the encounter by teaching, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth” (v. 41), indicating that rejecting Jesus means rejecting forgiveness and spiritual healing. If the healing of the invalid at the Pool of Bethesda represents the general overcoming of mortality through the Resurrection, then the more specific story of the blind man and the Pharisees represents specific cases of those who come to Christ and are baptized, thereby overcoming spiritual death, and those who refuse to see him for who he is and remain in their sins.[52]

The Resurrection and the Lord’s Day

As soon as Jesus says “It is finished” and surrenders his spirit on the cross, John notes that the Sabbath was beginning (John 19:30–31), linking the completion of that part of Jesus’s salvific work with the completion of the original creation and the start of the first Sabbath.[53] While the Synoptics had stressed that Jesus’s healing on the Sabbath had not abolished it but rather emphasized other, productive aspects of its observance, the Fourth Gospel’s motif of Jesus’s working a new creation placed him and his ministry on a different calendar, one that transcended the weekly observance of the old Sabbath and was oriented forward to a new, eschatological significance.[54] Yet overcoming sin and spiritual death was only part of the saving work of Jesus. While the seven miraculous signs, including especially the two Sabbath healings, represented the Son’s ongoing saving work, his resurrection, the eighth and greatest sign, signals the completion of the new creation.[55] Overcoming physical death and all the attendant effects of mortality through Christ’s resurrection made the first day of the week (John 20:1) the time that best celebrates the true rest of God. Indeed, at some point early in Christian history the weekly marking of the Lord’s Day (see Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10) led to its becoming the Christian Sabbath, a time to commemorate the completion of Christ’s work and to look forward to its full application to each of us at the end of time.

Notes

I am grateful for the research and editorial help of my long-time research assistant, Jackson Craig Abhau, who not only helps make my writing cleaner but also frequently provides me with important insights. Our collaboration over the past years has been stimulating and fruitful, and I wish him well as he begins graduate school. I also express appreciation for the final editing of Derek Kenton Baker.

[1] Henry Sturcke, Encountering the Rest of God: How Jesus Came to Personify the Sabbath (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2005), 204–65.

[2] Some source and form critics maintain that these two Johannine healings, perhaps having been preserved first in a postulated Signs Gospel, were originally unconnected to Sabbath controversies, only later being put in a Sabbath context that allowed them to become part of a larger controversy. See, for instance, Robert T. Fortna, The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 115–17; and Daryl D. Schmidt, “The Sabbath Day: To Heal or Not to Heal,” Dialogue 27, no. 4 (1994): 138–40.

[3] Samuele Bacchiocchi, “The Sabbath in John,” Endtime Issues 110, January 2004, 4–8, https://archive.org/details/Samuele-Bacchiocchi-Endtime-Issues-Newsletter-110.

[4] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John, I–XII, Anchor Bible 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 210.

[5] Sturcke, Encountering the Rest of God, 204.

[6] Eric D. Huntsman, The Miracles of Jesus (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2014), 3, 135–36.

[7] Huntsman, “Jesus on Jesus: John 5 and 7,” in Scriptural Theology, ed. James E. Faulconer and Joseph M. Spencer, Perspectives in Mormon Theology (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015), 69, 71–72.

[8] For the use of the Greek hoi Ioudaioi to refer to the ruling class and not to all Jewish people, see Brown, Gospel according to John, lxx‒lxxv; Daniel Boyarin, “The Ioudaioi in John and the Prehistory of ‘Judaism,’” in Pauline Conversations in Context, ed. Janice Capel Anderson, Philip Harl Sellew, and Claudia Setzer (Sheffield: Continuum, 2002), 216–40; Craig S. Keener, Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003); and Huntsman, Becoming the Beloved Disciple: Coming unto Christ through the Gospel of John (Springville, UT: Cedar Fort, 2018), 78‒79, 86‒87n13.

[9] Whereas the Johannine narrator consistently refers to and discusses Jesus’s miracles as sēmeia, or “signs,” Jesus himself simply refers to them as erga, or “works,” making them an integral part of his overall work of redemption.

[10] While English translations generally follow the Masoretic Text’s reading of “on the seventh day” (bayyôm haššəḇîʽî), interestingly the Septuagint reads “on the sixth day God finished his works” (kai synetelesen ho theos en tēi hēmerai heketēi ta erga autou).

[11] Huntsman, Miracles of Jesus, 145n9.

[12] Raymond E. Brown, Introduction to the Gospel of John, ed. Francis J. Moloney (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 300–307; Ruth B. Edwards, Discovering John: Content, Interpretations, Reception (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 170–71; and Eric D. Huntsman, “The Gospel of John,” in New Testament, Culture, and Society: A Background to the Texts of the New Testament, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2019), 311. The seven signs are changing water to wine at Cana (John 2:1–11), healing the son of the royal official (4:46–54), healing the invalid at Bethesda (5:1–16), feeding five thousand (6:1–15), walking on water (6:16–21), curing the man blind from birth (9:1–7), and raising Lazarus from the dead (11:34–46).

[13] Brown, Gospel according to John, cxli, cxliv, 201–4, and Introduction to the Gospel of John, 301–2. Brown often wrote of Jesus “replacing” Jewish feasts, but Francis Moloney, who posthumously edited Introduction, suggested that today Brown would have favored using the word fulfill.

[14] Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994), 178.

[15] Brown, Gospel according to John, 206; Leon Morris, Gospel according to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 265n6; and Keener, Gospel of John, 635–36.

[16] Huntsman, “Jesus on Jesus: John 5 and 7,” 72–73.

[17] Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 29–30; and Keener, Gospel of John, 636–39.

[18] Metzger, Textual Commentary, 179. See the competing arguments of Zane C. Hodges, “Problem Passages in the Gospel of John, Part 5: The Angel at Bethesda—John 5:4,” Bibliotheca Sacra 136 (1979): 25‒39; and Gordon D. Fee, “On the Inauthenticity of John 5:3b‒4,” Evangelical Quarterly 54 (1982): 207‒18.

[19] Huntsman, Miracles of Jesus, 52–53.

[20] James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982), 1146–49; Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah, vol. 1, From Bethlehem to Calvary (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979), 453–54; and Fred E. Woods, “The Water Imagery in John's Gospel: Power, Purification, and Pedagogy,” in The Lord of the Gospels, ed. Bruce A. Van Orden and Brent L. Top (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1991), 192. For this miracle as a symbol of the incarnation itself, see Eric D. Huntsman, “‘And the Word Was Made Flesh’: A Latter-day Saint Exegesis of the Blood and Water Imagery in the Gospel of John,” Studies in Bible and Antiquity 1 (2009): 55–57, and Miracles of Jesus, 15–19.

[21] Huntsman, Miracles of Jesus, 42–44.

[22] The Greek term krabbatos suggests a mat, camp bed, pallet, or perhaps a gurney that could be used to transport the sick. See Peter von der Osten-Sacken, “krabbatos,” in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneider, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1990–3), 2:313; and Kim Papaioannou, “John 5:18: Jesus and Sabbath Law: A Fresh Look at a Challenging Text,” Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 20, nos.1–2 (2009): 245.

[23] Tom Thatcher, “The Sabbath Trick: Unstable Irony in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 76 (1999): 53–77.

[24] The biblical foundations for the later rabbinic prohibitions seem to have involved carrying heavy loads, presumably for sale in the market, and would not have immediately applied to the man carrying his pallet (see Papaioannou, “John 5:18: Jesus and Sabbath Law,” 247). Instead, carrying the sleeping mat might have constituted transporting an object from one domain to another, an infraction of the oral law as it was later codified in the Mishnah (see m. Shabbat 7:2; compare Nehemiah 13:19; Jeremiah 17:21). Stephen Westerholm and Craig A. Evans, Dictionary of the New Testament Background (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2000), s.v. “Sabbath”; Keener, Gospel of John, 641–43; and Cornelis Bennema, Encountering Jesus: Character Studies in the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 190.

[25] This is important for Christians, including Latter-day Saints, to keep in mind, especially since bandying about unnuanced criticism of Pharisees today can unintentionally be taken as being critical of modern Rabbinic Judaism, since post-Temple Judaism developed largely from the Pharisaic school. In fact, historically, Jesus has more in common with the Pharisees than he did with other groups in the Second Temple Period, and it is worth noting that the most strident opposition to Jesus was from the Jerusalem leadership, which consisted of the chief priests and leading Pharisees, and not necessarily from all Pharisees. See Trevan G. Hatch, A Stranger in Jerusalem: Seeing Jesus as a Jew (Eugene, OR: WIPF & Stock, 2019), 168‒74.

[26] Bennema, Encountering Jesus, 189.

[27] Interestingly, Jesus’s first miracle in Mark, the casting out of a demon, which took place in a synagogue on the Sabbath (Mark 1:21–27), did not raise any question about violations of the Sabbath. Neither did healing Simon’s mother-in-law that same afternoon (vv. 30–31), although many waited until sunset to travel to be healed by him (vv. 32–24). Westerholm and Evans, “Sabbath,” 1032, note, “That not every record of a sabbath healing is linked with a dispute suggests that Jesus’ activities were not in flagrant transgression of existing formulations of sabbath law and that, perhaps in the initial stages of his career, public enthusiasm may have silenced whatever private compunctions may have been felt.”

[28] Bennema, Encountering Jesus, 191–92.

[29] “The ‘something worse’ than thirty-eight years of illness would be not knowing who Jesus really is, not receiving the divine life that he gives but experiencing divine judgment instead.” Bennema, Encountering Jesus, 193.

[30] Keener, Gospel of John, 646; and Peder Borgen, “The Sabbath Controversy in John 5:1–18 and the Analogous Controversy Reflected in Philo’s Writings,” in The Gospel of John: More Light from Philo, Paul and Archaeology (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 183–84. Philo, an important first-century Hellenized Jewish philosopher, tried to explain God’s working on the Sabbath by noting that the LXX text of Genesis 2:2 noted that because God was always active and creative, he actually “caused to rest” (Greek, katepausen), not “rested” (Greek, epausato), on the first Sabbath (Allegorical Interpretation 1.5, 18; On the Cherubim 87). A later rabbinic commentary, which might have preserved ideas from the earlier period, explained that since the heavens and the earth are the dwelling place of God and one is permitted to move items around in his dwelling, God is permitted to work (Genesis Rabbah 30:6).

[31] Bacchiocchi, “Sabbath in John,” 3.

[32] Huntsman, “Jesus on Jesus: John 5 and 7,” 73.

[33] A. J. Droge, “Sabbath Work/Sabbath Rest: Genesis, Thomas, John,” History of Religions 47, nos. 2–3 (2007–2008): 112–41.

[34] Karl Kerteleg, “lyo,” in Balz and Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, 2:368–68.

[35] Papaioannou claims, “The resultant implication is that Jesus was setting the Sabbath free from rabbinic casuistry, ‘unbinding’ tedious human prohibitions, and that in doing so he was moving within the sphere of his rights as a teacher of the law.” “John 5:18: Jesus and Sabbath Law,” 257. While we agree that Jesus in general came to set people free from bondage, including “burdensome” systems of all sorts, Papaioannou’s characterization is overly triumphalistic in its portrayal of Pharisaism.

[36] This passage seems to have inspired Joseph Smith, serving as a catalyst for his King Follet discourse, which is important for Latter-day Saint theology and its Christology in particular. In it Joseph Smith is reported to have taught, “What did Jesus Christ do the same thing as I se[e] the Father do see the father do what, work out a kingdom, when I do so to I will give to the father which will add to his glory.” “Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by Wilford Woodruff,” p. [135], The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org.

[37] Rather than being an ancient term, eschatology was a term first used in seventeenth-century Lutheran dogmatics as a way of discussing Christian scripture or doctrine “about death, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, the end or dissolution of the world, about hell or eternal death and, finally, about eternal life.” Jörg Frey, “New Testament Eschatology—an Introduction: Classical Issues, Disputed Themes, and Current Perspectives, in Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents, ed. Jan G. van der Watt (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 6.

[38] Examples of Synoptic future eschatology include Luke 6:35; Mark 8:35 (parallels Matthew 16:25; Luke 17:33); Mark 8:38 (parallels Luke 9:26); Mark 9:1 (parallels Matthew 16:28; Luke 9:27); Mark 9:43 (parallel Matthew 18:8–9); Mark 10:30 (parallels Matthew 19:29; Luke 18:30); Luke 20:35–36; Mark 13:26 (parallels Matthew 24:30; Luke 21:27); and Mark 14:62 (parallels Matthew 26:64; Luke 22:69). Luke occasionally depicts realized eschatology—for instance, in Luke 11:20 and 17:21. Outside the Gospels, apocalyptic is a particularly vivid manifestation of eschatology that presents a detailed imagination of the end time. See Frey, “New Testament Eschatology,” 20.

[39] “The verb here is perfect, indicating a completed action with continuing effects.” R. Alan Culpepper, “Realized Eschatology in the Experience of the Johannine Community,” in The Resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of John, ed. Craig R. Koester and Reimund Bieringer (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 526,

[40] Brown, Gospel according to John, cxvi–cxxi. See also Culpepper, “Realized Eschatology,” 253; Huntsman, Becoming the Beloved Disciple, 93.

[41] Culpepper, “Realized Eschatology,” 255.

[42] See Brown, Gospel according to John, 326–27, 343–44; Keener, Gospel of John, 722–24, 739; J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John, The International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 423–24.

[43] m. Nedarim 3:11. See Brown, Gospel according to John, 312; Keener, Gospel of John, 716. Importantly, it was because circumcision on the eighth day was a time-bound commandment that it could supersede the weekly Sabbath; any circumcisions other than those performed on the eighth day of a boy’s life were still forbidden on Sabbath (see Šabbat 19).

[44] For lists of references from Tannaitic literature, see Keener, Gospel of John, 716–17, and Borgen, “Sabbath Controversy in John 5:1–18,” 183.

[45] Bacchiocchi, “Sabbath in John,” 5.

[46] R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 139–40; Keener, Gospel of John, 639–40.

[47] Whereas the Marcan narrator seems to enjoy describing Jesus’s miracles in colorful detail, including his use of words, actions, and objects, Matthew and Luke generally shy away from portraying any of Jesus’s miracles in a way that would make them seem more magical than divine. Because of the even greater divinity of the Johannine Jesus, miracles in the Fourth Gospel generally just need Jesus to speak or will something for it to be done; see Huntsman, Miracles of Jesus, 133–36.

[48] Huntsman, “‘Word Was Made Flesh,’” 54–55, 57–59, 63–65.

[49] Huntsman, Miracles of Jesus, 96–99.

[50] Jesus, in fact, made it clear that this man’s blindness was not the result of either his parents’ or his own sin (John 9:3). Indeed, Jesus himself, though perfect, submitted to baptism “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).

[51] Thatcher, “Sabbath Trick,” 57.

[52] Huntsman, Miracles of Jesus, 99–100.

[53] Jeannine K. Brown, “Creation’s Renewal in the Gospel of John,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72, no. 2 (2010): 285–86.

[54] Herold Weiss, “The Sabbath in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 110, no. 2 (1991): 311–21.

[55] Brown, “Creation’s Renewal in the Gospel of John,” 287–88.