Blindness & Light

When their meeting with the parents did not prove helpful, they come back to the man and say, “Give glory to God. We know this man is a sinner.” But the blind man said, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:24-25). He didn’t understand how he was healed. He didn’t know all the theology of it. He didn’t even have a real clear picture of who Jesus was. He thought he was only a prophet. But there was one thing he understood — he had been blind, and now he could see. That he knew! This man could see, and we begin to understand that the people who are really blind are the religious leaders, the Pharisees. Oh they had good physical eyes, but they were spiritually blind. They approached the whole incident, and Jesus himself, with blind eyes. They were not about to see what was so obvious. It was willful blindness.

The Pharisees claimed that Jesus could not have come from God. But the man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:30-33). So I ask you: Who is seeing and who is blind in this story? Here we have a blind beggar seeing more clearly than the religious leaders. Later on, when Jesus returned to the man, the man fell at Jesus’ feet and worshiped him. He not only saw with physical eyes, but he saw with spiritual eyes as well. Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind” (John 9:39). The religious leaders were those prophesied about by Ezekiel when he wrote, “They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people” (Ezekiel 12:2). For all their knowledge of the Scripture and religious practice, they missed the kingdom, and a poor blind man found it. His eyes were opened; theirs remained closed. You can enter the kingdom if you are physically blind, but you cannot enter when you are spiritually blind. Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains” (John 9:41).

In More Jesus, Less Religion, Steve Arterburn writes: “Some time ago, I read about the work of a Wycliffe Bible translator in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. When the opening chapters of Genesis were first translated into the native language, the attitude toward women in the tribe changed overnight. They had not realized or understood that the woman had been specially formed out of the side of the man. Without even hearing this concept developed, these people immediately grasped the ideas of equality between the sexes and began adjusting their behavior. The people heard. They believed. They obeyed. They changed. Just like that. That change doesn’t mean everyone in the tribe immediately came to faith in Christ, however. While they immediately recognized the respect God has for both men and women, the members of this tribe had their own hard-to-abandon gods and superstitions. One of their practices was to spit on the wounds of the sick. Their medicine men were known as the spitters, and they did not want someone like Jesus to take away their status in the village. However, the attitude changed as more of the Bible was translated into the tribe’s dialect. When translators read the passage where Jesus cured a blind man in a most unusual way, the medicine men pricked up their ears. The Master spit on the ground, made a paste of mud, put it on the man’s eyelids, told him to wash it off — and the man was healed. When these tribesmen heard this story in their own language, they saw that Jesus was not against them, but for them. They found one of their own, a Savior who was also a spitter! And they came to the Lord because of this connection.” These simple people heard the story and responded. They saw with spiritual eyes, 2000 years after the event, what the religious people who were actually there, and saw the miracle, were not able to see.