“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be made well?’” (John 5:6) It sounds like a stupid question, doesn’t it?  Jesus meets this fellow at the crowded pool, this poor crippled chap who had been coming there for perhaps thirty-eight years waiting to be healed, and asks him point blank, “Do you want to be made well?” We can imagine the look the crippled man must have given Jesus.  We can imagine him saying something like, “Do I want to be made well?  What a silly question!  What do you think I’ve been coming here for thirty-eight years for...my health?  Oops!  That’s just what I’ve been coming here for.  My health.  And now you ask me whether I really want to be made well.  What a stupid question!”

Let’s look at the backg…