"5 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 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?” 7 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.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath."
John 5:1-9
The second point about the question is this: even in the context of his misery, listlessness and despair, the question would still require to be asked, for it is possible for men to prefer to remain sick, conscious though they are of their need, rather than to be made whole again. Some invalids do not really want to get better. Illness is a necessity for some people; consciously or unconsciously, they have a need to be ill. And such people are the saddest of cases. What is true in the physical realm is also true in the spiritual; even in the context of real and conscious spiritual need, we need to be asked whether we really want to be made whole, and whether we want to deeply enough to receive it on any terms God cares to make. Indeed, it is precisely this problem and question that sometimes underlies men's seeming inability to understand or grasp the meaning of the gospel. Their eyes appear to be blinded to the truth that is so plain to us, but it is often a willing blindness. There are none so blind as those that will not see. This is how it was with Nicodemus: to understand what Jesus meant by new birth would have been too costly for him to grasp or understand. For the woman of Samaria to have understood what Jesus said about living water would have involved her in a revolution of life for which she was not at first prepared. To be made whole takes away from us the opportunity of feeling sorry for ourselves, and sometimes this is too precious a luxury to give up. This in itself is a sickness, both in the physical and the spiritual realm, and needs to be faced in all honesty. There can be no healing until we do.