The authority for our life
I. The principle contained in these words of the healed man is a grand and far-reaching principle. When truly interpreted, it applies to the whole life of every saved man. He that saves the soul has a right to command and govern the life.
II. The motive I mean gratitude is the purest, the deepest, the strongest, the most constraining, the most abiding of all the motives which a Christian man can feel. There is nothing which it cannot impel us to do, nothing that it cannot enable us to sacrifice, nothing that is cannot strengthen us to bear; and if this ever dies within a man, all that is distinctively Christian dies with it.
III. It is a glorious thing to remember that whatever He commands us to do is right.Having assured ourselves that it is His command, then the obedience should be prompt as prompt as was the obedience of the healed man, who at once "arose, and took up his bed, and walked."
E. Mellor, In the Footsteps of Heroes,p. 17.
References: John 5:11. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxv., No. 1479. John 5:13. Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 129.