John 5:14,15

“ Afterward, Jesus finds him in the temple and said to him: Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee. 15. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. ”

The sick man had, undoubtedly, come into the temple to pray or offer a thank- offering. The warning which Jesus addresses to him certainly implies that his malady had been the effect of some particular sin; but we need not infer from this that every malady results from an individual and special sin; it may have as its cause, in many cases, the debasement of the collective life of humanity by means of sin (see on John 9:3). By something worse than thirty-eight years of suffering, Jesus can scarcely mean anything but damnation.

In the revelation which the impotent man gives to the Jews, we need not see either a communication dictated by thankfulness and the desire to bring the Jews to faith (Chrysostom, Grotius, etc.), nor an ill-disposed denunciation (Schleiermacher, Lange), nor an act of obedience to the Jewish authorities (Lucke, de Wette, Luthardt), nor, finally, the bold desire of making known to them a power superior to their own (Meyer). It is quite simply the reply which he was not able to give, at John 5:13, and which he now gives to discharge his own responsibility; for he remained himself under the complaint so long as he could not refer it to the author of the act, and this violation of the Sabbath might draw upon him the penalty of death (John 5:16; John 5:18); comp. Numbers 15:35.