John 5:15

The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(15) The man departed, and told the Jews.—We are not told what reason underlay his report to the Jews. It is natural that he should give the answer which he could not give before (John 5:13), and that he should wish to secure himself from the charge of Sabbath-breaking by supplying his authority. The narrative does not suggest that he did this in a tone of defiance, which has been found here from a remembrance of John 9, still less that he used his new strength immediately to bring a charge against the Giver of it. The impression is rather, that he felt that this power came from a prophet sent by God, and that he told this to those who were God’s representatives to the nation, supposing that they would recognise Him too.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:10-16 Those eased of the punishment of sin, are in danger of returning to sin, when the terror and restraint are over, unless Divine grace dries up the fountain. The misery believers are made whole from, warns us to sin no more, having felt the smart of sin. This is the voice of every providence, Go, and sin no more. Christ saw it necessary to give this caution; for it is common for people, when sick, to promise much; when newly recovered, to perform only something; but after awhile to forget all. Christ spoke of the wrath to come, which is beyond compare worse than the many hours, nay, weeks and years of pain, some wicked men have to suffer in consequence of their unlawful indulgences. And if such afflictions are severe, how dreadful will be the everlasting punishment of the wicked!

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Findeth him - Fell in with him, or saw him.

In the temple - The man seems to have gone at once to the temple - perhaps a privilege of which he had been long deprived. They who are healed from sickness should seek the sanctuary of God and give him thanks for his mercy. Compare the notes at Isaiah 38:20. There is nothing more improper, when we are raised up from a bed of pain, than to forget God our benefactor, and neglect to praise him for his mercies.

Thou art made whole - Jesus calls to his remembrance the fact that he was healed, in order that he might admonish him not to sin again.

Sin no more - By this expression it was implied that the infirmity of this man was caused by sin - perhaps by vice in his youth. His crime or dissipation had brought on him this long and distressing affliction. Jesus shows him that he knew the cause of his sickness, and takes occasion to warn him not to repeat it. No man who indulges in vice can tell what may be its consequences. It must always end in evil, and not unfrequently it results in loss of health, and in long and painful disease. This is always the case with intemperance and all gross pleasures. Sooner or later, sin will always result in misery.

Sin no more - Do not repeat the vice. You have had dear-bought experience, and if repeated it will be worse. When a man has been restored from the effects of sin, he should learn to avoid the very appearance of evil. He should shun the place of temptation; he should not mingle again with his old companions; he should touch not, taste not, handle not. God visits with heavier judgment those who have been once restored from the ways of sin and who return again to it. The drunkard that has been reformed, and that returns to his habits of drinking, becomes more beastly; the man that professes to have experienced a change of heart, and who then indulges in sin, sinks deeper into pollution, and is seldom restored. The only way of safety in all such cases is to "sin no more;" not to be in the way of temptation; not to expose ourselves; not to touch or approach that which came near to working our ruin. The man who has been intemperate and is reformed, if he tastes the poison at all, may expect to sink deeper than ever into drunkenness and pollution.

A worse thing - A more grievous disease, or the pains of hell. "The doom of apostates is a worse thing than thirty-eight years' lameness" (Henry).

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. The man departed, and told, &c.—little thinking how unwelcome his grateful and eager testimony would be. "The darkness received not the light which was pouring its rays upon it" (Joh 1:5, 11) [Olshausen].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

It were very uncharitable to judge that this poor man went to the Jewish magistrates to inform against Christ, who had been so kind to him; and much more probable that he went in the simplicity of his heart, desirous both to publish what Christ had done to his honour, and also to do good to others, who might also stand in need of his help.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The man departed,.... From Christ, and from the temple, not through displeasure, or as resenting what was said to him, but as highly delighted that he had found his kind benefactor and physician; and went either to Bethesda, where the miracle was wrought, and where a multitude of people were, and where he might expect to find some of the persons that had questioned him about carrying his bed, and who it was that bid him do it; or rather to the sanhedrim; see John 5:33 compared with John 1:19;

and told the Jews; the members of that great council, the chief priests, "scribes", and elders, whose business it was to judge of a prophet, and of anyone that should set up for the Messiah:

that it was Jesus; of Nazareth, of whom so much talk was about his doctrines and miracles, and who was thought to be the Messiah:

which had made him whole; this he did, not out of any ill will to Christ, with any bad design upon him, to impeach and accuse him as a violator of the sabbath, for what he had said and done to him; for this would have been most ungrateful, and even barbarous, brutish, and diabolical; but with a good intention, that Jesus might have the glory of the cure, and that others of his fellow creatures in distress might know where, and from whom to have relief; and chiefly that the sanhedrim might be induced hereby to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and to declare and patronize him as such: and that his end was good, is clear from this, that he does not say it was Jesus that bid him take up his bed and walk, which was what the Jews cavilled at, not caring to hear of the cure; but that made him whole: he observes the miracle to them with a grateful spirit, to the honour of his physician, and that he might be thought to be what he really was.

Geneva Study Bible

The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

John 5:15. ἀπῆλθεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος. “The man went off and reported to the Jews that the person who healed him was Jesus. He had asked His name, and perhaps did not consider that in proclaiming it he was endangering his benefactor.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. told the Jews] Not in malice against Jesus, nor in any hope of converting His opponents. Neither of these is probable, nor is there the least evidence of either. Rather, he continues his defiance of them (John 5:11). He had given as his authority for breaking the Sabbath ‘He that made me whole.’ Having found out that it was the famous teacher from Galilee, he returns to give them this additional proof of authority.

Bengel's Gnomen

John 5:15. Ἀνήγγειλε, reported) He wished to please the Jews, who had asked him the question, John 5:12 : nor however did he bring them back word with bad intention; for whereas he had said at John 5:11, ὁ ποιήσας με ὑγιῆ, He who made me whole, and also εἶπεν, ἆρον, He said, Take up, of which statements the former was favourable to Jesus, the latter might seem to His prejudice; and whereas the Jews had laid hold rather of the latter of these, John 5:12, “What man is that, which said unto thee, Take up thy bed and walk,” the man himself rather dwells on the former in his report to them.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 15, 16. - The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole. Therefore the Jews persecuted Jesus, (and sought to slay him ), because he was doing these things on the sabbath. The motive of the man may have been one of gratitude, or may have arisen from a sense of duty, seeing that he had not answered the question of the Jews, and had been himself charged with doing the unlawful thing (Weiss). He may have sought to win from his interlocutors some reverence for his Healer; but everything points the other way. He was a loveless being; he seems to have been nettled by the charge and warning he had just received, and went with the name of his Benefactor on his lips to those who in his hearing had already condemned the Saviour's conduct. The connection is close between the two facts, viz. the man's eager implication of his Healer in the responsibility of his own act, which was said by "the Jews" to be unlawful; and the course of cruel persecution and deadly hate which was there and then inaugurated against the Saviour of the world. The sixteenth verse represents a course of conduct on the part of the Jews which led to open conflict with the dominant party. Christ's view of the sabbath lay, indeed, in the heart of the old Law, and was even recognized by some of the wisest and noblest spirits of Judaism; but it ran counter to the current traditionary interpretation, and cut as with a sharp sabre through the knots and entanglement of the schools. It was the unpardonable sin that ideas and rules which sustained and fed the authority of the hierarchical party should be swept away as valueless and perilous accumulations, and as fungoid encrustations upon the Law of Moses. Weiss justly remarks that there is no colour for the charge that the fourth evangelist antedated the sabbath controversy, for Mark (Mark 3:6) shows that it had already commenced in Galilee. In John 4:1-3 we see that the Pharisaic party distrusted Jesus; here we see that the authorities are in arms against him. John 5:15

Vincent's Word Studies

Told (ἀνήγγειλεν)

See on John 4:25. The best texts, however, read εἶπεν, said.