Jesus did a good thing; He saw a need, and He met it. He did not wait to be asked, and He did not ask the disabled man to have faith in Him. The man could not have had faith in Jesus because he had never heard of Him and did not even know who He was. Though a redeeming and reconciling relationship with God requires us to both know and believe in Jesus, God’s goodness is not limited to salvation. God gives all manner of good gifts to all of humanity, both believer and non-believer. Jesus is the creator of the universe, and is the source of all that is good.

The enemies of Jesus acknowledged nothing good about Him, but even they could not claim that it was bad to heal a disabled man. Because they could not attack what He had done, they attacked His actions on technicalities. They claimed He did it at the wrong time (on the Sabbath), in the wrong place (Bethzatha was the site of a pagan shrine) and with the wrong results (the man worked on the Sabbath by picking up his mat). According to their thinking, the man who was healthy for the first time in 38 years, should have remained sitting on his mat. Jesus did not heal the disabled man with the intention that he would continue behaving as if nothing had changed. Jesus does good in our lives to change our lives. He did not allow arbitrary human interpretations of His Father’s law to dictate his timetable; He did what he needed to do when he needed to do it.

The church is the body of Christ in the world today. Our mission is to do the work of God. When we focus only inward, we miss the mark. When Jesus healed the disabled man He was helping the helpless. He lived his life focusing outward. When the church does the same thing, even a sinful world will admit it is good.