Camden Baptist Church
What really matters? That’s a good question depending on the circumstance and who is asking the question. To some, what matters is gainful employment. To others, what matters is rescuing a rebellious teenager. To some, what matters is to be noticed, appreciated, making the team or being married. “What really matters?” It depends on the circumstance and who is asking the question.
If you are paralyzed, let’s say for 38 years like the man mentioned in John 5, what really mattered would be walking. Yes, that is obvious, and that’s the point. When the opportune time came for possible healing, no one helped him to the front of the line (John 5:7). What mattered then was every man for himself.
Into this sad scenario Jesus inserts Himself: “Do you want to get well?” In other words, “What really matters to you right now?” What mattered to this invalid and what mattered to Jesus were two different things. This man’s obvious need revealed a much deeper and urgent condition. Jesus addressed this after taking this man to the front of the line (read about it in John 5:8–9).
The lame man can now walk, but to Jesus, there was something that mattered even more than his healing. What seems to be mission accomplished is actually mission unfolding.
Such is the beauty of helplessness. Actual wholeness deals with what truly incapacitates us — our sin. “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” What could possibly be worse than paralysis? Unreconciled sin, according to Jesus. Strong legs cannot bear the weight of a guilty soul. Only the intervention of grace can do that.
To Jesus, that was what mattered and that is why He would offer up His own life for everyone bound and paralyzed by sin. What matters most to God is that you and He be rightly related, and that is why He has pursued you just as He did the man mentioned in John 5. Like that man, we too will report that only Jesus could have made us completely well.
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