What Happens When You Are Converted ? (1) Calling

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralysed. ⁵ One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’

⁷ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’

⁸ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, ¹⁰ and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’

¹¹ But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Pick up your mat and walk.”’

¹² So they asked him, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’

¹³ The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

¹⁴ Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’ ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’

⁶ ‘“Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, ‘Live!’ ⁷ I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.

11 ‘When Israel was a child, I loved him,
    and out of Egypt I called my son.

¹⁶ As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁷ ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ ¹⁸ At once they left their nets and followed him.

⁸ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,

⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth round his face.

Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’

¹⁴ He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.

²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.