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NASB | John 5:14 Afterward Jesus *found him in the temple and said to him, "Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you." |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 5:14 Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "See, you are well! Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." |
Bible Question: About Jesus' statement saying "something worse may happen to you". Do you think that Jesus was saying that sin is what caused his sickness or that that he is referring to the results of sin being eternal death? |
Bible Answer: Dear DPOAG, The man's affliction was divinely arranged for this interaction with our Lord to take place -- for His glory, the man's good, and our instruction. There are no accidents. A command to a lost person to "sin no more" is like telling a corpse to "rot no more." Only through God given sanctification are men able to pursue righteousness. John Calvin comments on this phrase in John 5:14 as follows, "If God does not succeed in doing us good by the stripes with which he gently chastises us, as the kindest father would chastise His tender and delicate children, He is constrained to assume a new character, and a character which, so to speak, is not natural to Him. He therefore seizes the whip to subdue our obstinacy, as He threatens in the Law, (Leviticus 26:14; Deuteronomy 28:15; Psalm 32:9;) and indeed throughout the Scriptures passages of the same kind are to be found. Thus, when we are incessantly pressed down by new afflictions, we ought to trace this to our obstinacy; for not only do we resemble restive horses and mules, but we are like wild beasts that cannot be tamed. There is no reason to wonder, therefore, if God make use of severer punishment to bruise us, as it were, by mallets, when moderate punishment is of no avail; for it is proper that they who will not endure to be corrected should be bruised by strokes. In short, the use of punishments is, to render us more cautious for the future. If, after the first and second strokes, we maintain obstinate hardness of heart, he will strike us seven times more severely. If, after having showed signs of repentance for a time, we immediately return to our natural disposition, He chastises more sharply this levity which proves us to be forgetful, and which is full of sloth." Compare also the following from the writer of Hebrews: "It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness." (Hebrews 12:7-11 NASB) In Him, Doc |