John 9:1-12

Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind

1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

6 Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. 7 "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means "Sent"). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, "Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?" 9 Some claimed that he was.

Others said, "No, he only looks like him."

But he himself insisted, "I am the man."

10 "How then were your eyes opened?" they asked.

11 He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."

12 "Where is this man?" they asked him.

"I don't know," he said.



Dig Deeper

It just seemed like the fair thing to happen. The high school boy’s team that I coached was full of young men that were not supremely talented, but they were hard-working. They were, in fact, a great group of young men. They were a real joy to be around. They worked hard in the classroom, they were respectful to their teachers and other classmates, and they had the respect of all of the other players and coaches around the Conference. Everything they had accomplished that season, which was just a few victories, they had worked hard for and absolutely earned. We were getting ready to play a team in the opening round of the playoffs, however, that was just the opposite. They were loud, obnoxious, talked a lot of trash, barely listened to their own coach, and never seemed to work very hard or take things very seriously, yet they had not lost a game all year. The match-up seemed like a movie in the making. The young, plucky upstarts against the hated foils who didn’t seem to deserve their spotless record. Everyone agreed that an upset would be fitting and fair, and seemed like a very real possibility. It started out so well as we scored the first four points of the game, but then everything fell apart and we lost the game by over forty points. Life just isn’t fair sometimes.

We’d all like to think that the world is a place of divine justice where good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. We’d like to think that when things in the world seem unfair, it is because they only seem that way. If we only knew the truth, we tell ourselves, then we would realize that when bad things happen it is because of some divine justice or secret sin that we simply don’t yet understand. Yet, that’s simply not the case if we’re honest. My team really deserved to win that game, but they didn’t. Infants are born deformed, children get cancer, a young man with the world in front of him, dies in a tragic car accident at the hands of a drunk-driver who walks away without a scratch. The reality is, we do live in a fallen world. We cannot simply dismiss or diminish evil as though it doesn’t exist. Evil is real. It exists. And it there simply is no perfect justice or order to which we can appeal to give ourselves anything more than a false sense of security. In fact, if we want perfect justice and to live in a place where everything really is fair, then the only place to which we can turn is the new creation, the age to come. That is exactly the point that John will make through this sixth sign in his Gospel (the previous signs have been in 2:1-12; 4:43-54: 5:1-15; 6:1-15; 6:16-24).

It was a common belief in the ancient world that there was a general cause and effect relationship of some type between sin and suffering. If someone was suffering, then they, at least at some level, had deserved that situation through their own sin (in a past life according to some beliefs), or at the very least, through some sin of their parents or ancestors. The Bible does not deny that suffering or illness may at times be the result of sin (Rom. 1:18-32; 1 Cor. 11:30), but that is not an automatic state of affairs (2 Cor. 12:7; Gal. 4:13). Jesus’ disciples, in fact, are operating under this sort of assumption. If this man had been blind from birth, then it must be as a result of his sin or his parent’s. This explanation is nothing more than a way to make sense of evil in the world. Humans don’t like the idea of being somehow at the mercy of evil. Christians are not immune to that sort of thinking and neither were the Jews of Jesus’ day. If there is an all-powerful, kind and loving God that rules over the universe, then how can evil exist? One way around that is to claim that things only seem unfair but they are not. This works well, of course, for those that are well-off and able-bodied. Jesus denies that simplistic sort of thinking, however. It was not the sin of this man or his parents that caused this. This man was blind as a result of a fallen world entangled in sin. That sort of answer might seem hopeless, but the reality of a fallen world is that God was doing something about it. This man’s blindness was simply a sign of the old creation despoiled by sin and an opportunity for the works of the new creation of God to be displayed.

This is, above all else, a moment of new creation. It was a sign that God’s new creation, the age to come, was breaking into the here and now. What John presents goes far beyond just an act of restoration. He harkens back to the very imagery of God’s creation of the universe. Genesis 1 and 2 gives us a picture of a created world in a state of chaos and darkness. It is God who steps into this chaos and creates light where there was darkness. He alone is the one capable of creating man from the very clay of the ground. While Jesus is alive, it is the day, and during the day he must do the creative works of the Father who sent him. Jesus has brought the day himself and he steps into the chaos and darkness of this man’s blindness. He picks up the clay from the ground and brings forth the light. He is the light of the world doing the type of work that only God can do. In 1:4, John told us that life was in him, and we see that more clearly nowhere than we do right here. He is the creative almighty that can bring order from chaos, light from darkness, and life from the clay on the ground. This man who was blind from birth has just been touched by God’s new creation and he can now see. What Jesus did for this man is precisely what God desires to do for the entire creation through Jesus.

Everything that Jesus said and did was a challenge to the old world and the way of thinking that accompanied the old creation. Not only did his brining of the light challenge and overwhelm the darkness of the world, but at the same time, his words challenged the belief that when the Messiah came, he would at that time begin the messianic age that would last forever. That was true, but not in the way that they thought. He would be the light of the world while he was in the world, but that time would be for only a little while. His stay would be short, his time limited. The Messiah would bring about the new creation but there would be a period of time, of which we are now a part, but he would go away. The reconciliation of the creation to God would be a process completed by those who followed the Messiah in faith (cf. 2 C or. 5:16-21), not by the Messiah himself. This is what was so puzzling about his message. The age to come would not be brought at the end of time through some great battle or act of God but through his own death. The new creation would enter into the present world, one act at a time, one person at a time. These outposts of the new creation would anticipate the age to come itself which will only come when the Messiah returns.

Jesus sent the man to the pool of Siloam, but has not yet healed him. Like Naaman, whom Elisha ordered to dip in the Jordan river, this man must go in faith based on nothing but the word of Jesus and wash in the pool of Siloam (perhaps John wants us to see a connection between Jesus’ repeated statement that he is "the light of the world" during the Feast of Tabernacles and the fact that the water for the great water pouring ceremony came from the Pool of Siloam). When he acts obediently based on this faith, the man encounters the new creation. Being blind didn’t mean that this man or his parents sinned. The truth is far more powerful than that. All humans are stuck in the darkness of a fallen world. There is no fairness or justice in this kind of place. But Jesus stepped into that world and brought this blind man into the light of God’s new world, and those who had known him his whole life weren’t sure what had happened. Could this be him? Perhaps it merely looked like him. In all of this lies the wonderful, mysterious truth of God’s new creation. He brings light and life out of the chaos and darkness of the old order. When we come to Christ in faith and act obediently, we too enter into the new creation (2 Cor. 5:16-21) and people may have just as hard of time recognizing us.

This man will have no part of denying that Jesus has done something incredible. He is the man that was healed and Jesus is the man that did it. His eyes were opened, not through his own effort or anything that he did. He was brought into the light simply through faith and the life-giving miraculous power of the son of God. He stands in contrast to the man healed in chapter 5, who seemed more than happy to distance himself from and blame Jesus for his alleged acts of law-breaking. This man didn’t seem to know much about Jesus, but he knew enough to take him at his word. This too stands in contrast to the Pharisees and chief priests who didn’t really know much about Jesus but were quite convinced that they knew all that they needed to.

How did all of this happen? How did this man come in contact with the miraculous, with the new creation itself? Through Jesus, which is the only way to experience it. In him alone, is life (1:4). New creation does happen. The broken chaos of the old can be transformed and healed, but it comes through Jesus alone. The world is so busy frantically looking around for bits and pieces of something that can only come through the man they call Jesus. So where is this man Jesus? The healed man didn’t know, but John wants to make sure that through the pages of his Gospel, we do (20:31).



Devotional Thought

Who do you know who is spiritually blind, unable to see or even recognize that they are lost in a world of darkness and chaos? Don’t be fooled by how nice they are, how much you love them, or even how many good things they might do. Those who are not in Christ, who are not part of the new creation, are in darkness and their ‘good works’ are little more than attempts to find the peace and light that comes only in Christ. Let God move your heart this week and allow him to put someone that is still in the dark on your mind and heart. spend a significant amount of time each day praying for them to experience the new creation that comes through Jesus alone. Also spend some time praying that God would reveal what you can do to bring them to the new creation in Christ.