But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
Morris says, “The man was not of the stuff of which heroes were made.” He puts the blame for his violation of the Sabbath fully on Jesus. We must remember that the punishment for working on the Sabbath was death, so his fear was well founded. Notice that since he does not know who Jesus is, he describes his healer as the One who had made him whole and ordered him to break the Sabbath. To the man’s credit, there is an inference here that if this man had the power to heal him, surely he had the power to order the Sabbath rules circumvented. Obviously, the Jews did not pick up on this since they were so completely consumed with the breaking of their law. Do we ever get our eyes so firmly fixed on the legalities and methods of Christianity that we miss the wonder and the power that are part of it?