Spiritual blindness

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

"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing…

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see."

Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.

Finally they turned again to the blind man, "What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened." The man replied, "He is a prophet"…

To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"

"Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him."

Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you."

Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.

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"13-39a).

Today’s Gospel lesson is all about blindness. To be blind is to be unable to see something that ought to be perfectly obvious. A blind man cannot see the sun, the brightest object in our lives; a blind woman cannot see the face of her parents, spouse or children, the most precious things that any person can gaze at. But blindness can also afflict our hearts and minds, keeping us from seeing what should be perfectly obvious. When a man tries to win the heart of a woman, she cannot see his overtures of love and affection if her heart is blind; when a man is faced with facts that challenge him to change his outlook on life, he cannot see the truth if his mind is blind. The problem is spiritual blindness, the inability to see those things which are invisible, yet nevertheless are very real. It is this kind of blindness that runs rampant in today’s Bible account.

Blindness first rears its ugly head among Jesus’ disciples as they are walking along a road on the Sabbath. They came upon a man who had been blind from birth, who had to resort to begging in order to fill his belly. A tragic picture, to be sure—but even more tragic is the disciples’ question to Jesus: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

The disciples were expressing a commonly held Jewish belief—if something bad happened in your life, it was evidence that God was angry with you. Those who suffered greatly had obviously angered God with terrible sin. And when tragedy befell a man already at birth, Jews typically concluded that he was suffering for the sins of his parents.

This attitude towards people who are suffering is tragic. This attitude assumes that the person is getting his "just desserts" from God; that being the case, no one would offer such a person sympathy or a helping hand—the poor sufferer is left alone in his misery. Think of how that would affect people today: if you had diabetes or epilepsy or a degenerative nerve condition, your fellow Christians would assume that you were suffering because God was punishing you; instead of offering you sympathy or support, you would be coldly told to repent of whatever it was that had gotten you into this mess to begin with. And lest you think that this could never happen among us today, I’d like to take you back to the mid 1980s when AIDS first burst out into the open. Some of you might remember pious people at the time who said that the disease was what?—God’s punishment on homosexuals! That blind thinking of Jesus’ disciples is alive and well in today’s world.

When we look for the cause of suffering in this world, there is only one place to look—sin. Before sin entered the world, everything that God had made was perfect. Now that mankind has brought sin into the world, Paul tells us that the creation was subjected to frustration…the whole creation has been groaning…right up to the present time (Romans chapter 8). Our world is home to things it was never intended to support—miscarriages, birth defects, sudden infant death syndrome, diseases of body and mind, and inevitably death. All these things are unnatural, the product of sin.

And who is subject to these problems? Everyone! Everyone is a sinner; everyone lives in the midst of the sin that infests our world. In Romans chapter three Paul writes: There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…death came to all men, because all sinned. Because of this, we all suffer the effects of sin—pain and frustration and encroaching death. God does not need to send such things to us—we all receive them to one degree or another by the mere fact of our sinful existence.

No, the real issue is this: why doesn’t God protect me from each and every manifestation of sin? Jesus gave the disciples His answer to that very question there along the road: this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. What causes us to repent of our sins? What causes us to seek to have God in our lives? Is it not trouble? Is it not frustration? Is it not pain? If God automatically shielded you from every consequence of your sinful actions, would you ever learn that sinning is wrong and should be avoided? If God routinely protected you from every frustration and problem, would you ever learn to go to Him in prayer? The sad fact of the matter is that we need a certain amount of rough times in our lives; without them, we would inevitably come to ignore God as being unnecessary, irrelevant. When we struggle with the effects of sin, we are driven to our loving Savior who gives us hope and healing as He did for the blind man along the road. God often allows us to struggle with problems in order to encourage our reliance on Him as our only Lord and Master in life. It is then that the work of God is displayed in our lives.

The first lesson about spiritual blindness that Jesus seeks to teach us is this: we are all sinners; none of us dare claim superiority by looking at another person and thinking, "I’m better than him." To think ourselves spiritually above others is to be too blind to see the truth—the truth about ourselves. We all have to struggle with sin and its consequences—but we are not to use those struggles as a basis for prideful comparison with others.

We next encounter spiritual blindness when the religious leaders question the formerly blind man. These religious leaders knew their Old Testament inside and out—they knew the prophecies about the Messiah that God was going to send: "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come…he will come to save you." Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy (Isaiah 35:4-6). Jesus was fulfilling these prophecies! Here before them was proof that Jesus was doing the work ascribed to the Savior from heaven, yet they could not see what was patently obvious! Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.

The problem was one of expectations. The Pharisees had their own interpretation of the holy Scriptures, and Jesus did not conform to their teachings. In the Ten Commandments God had said, Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work. The Pharisees, being the legal experts that they were, had taken this command and figured out exactly what constituted work on the Sabbath, and what did not—they had even calculated how many steps you could walk on the Sabbath before you had crossed the line into unacceptable work-like behavior. The Pharisees were legalists, and they took great pride in keeping the hundreds of laws they had extrapolated from the Ten Commandments; their strict obedience to these, they believed, proved their moral superiority.

So they could not accept that Jesus would heal a blind man on the Sabbath. Jesus did work in violation of the law—He healed someone. To make matters worse, He told the blind man to work on the Sabbath as well—walk to the Pool of Siloam and wash! If Jesus truly were a righteous man, He would have waited until the next day, Sunday, to heal the blind man.

And so the Pharisees show themselves to be doubly blind. Not only did they not see the Savior for who He was, they could not even read the holy Scriptures correctly! In Deuteronomy chapter four God had said quite clearly, Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God. They had added hundreds of interpretations to God’s given laws, and they dared to hold Jesus accountable to these man-made additions! Of course Jesus would fail to meet their standards—the sinless Son of heaven would never be constrained by laws set down by sinful men! The whole purpose of the Sabbath Day had been grossly distorted—God’s intent was that, one day a week, His people would set aside the affairs of the world and focus on their relationship with Him. And this is exactly what Jesus had done—He had focused the blind man’s attention on heaven by miraculously restoring his sight on the Lord’s Day!

The second lesson about spiritual blindness that Jesus seeks to teach us is this: only by going to God’s pure Word alone can we know what His will is for us--His good, pleasing and perfect will. And it is only through the revelation of God’s Bible that we can see the truth of who Jesus is. Jesus fulfilled every prophecy of Scripture—but if you don’t know the Scriptures, Jesus has given no proof of His divinity that you can understand. To commit yourself to those who misrepresent God’s teachings, or try to show you a way to heaven that does not involve Jesus, is to fall victim to the foolishness of the blind leading the blind—you will only end up taking a hard, painful, eternal fall with them.

The Pharisees’ pride blinded them to the reality that was staring them in the face. When the blind man dared suggest that Jesus was sent from God, they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out. To "steep" a food is to soak it in something to change its flavor; to be "steeped in sin" is to be soaking in sin, absorbing it until it permeates your entire being. In one sense, the Pharisees were right—the formerly blind man had indeed been steeped in sin since birth. But what the Pharisees meant by their remark was that although he was steeped in sin, they were not; their spiritual blindness prevented them from seeing that they too were steeped in sin and needed to see Jesus.

Jesus had freed the man along the road from his physical blindness, but that man had not yet fully received spiritual sight; when Jesus sought him out and asked him if he believed in the Son of Man, he replied, "Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him." When Jesus said "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you", it was then that the blind man received spiritual sight as well. This is why Jesus had sought him out; by itself, being able to see with one’s eyes is not enough. It is essential that we see Jesus with the eyes of faith, with a mind that recognizes the truth of who Jesus is and a heart that trusts in His forgiveness and His loving promises.

The third lesson about spiritual blindness that Jesus seeks to teach us is this: only by looking to Him can we be saved. Hebrews chapter 12 urges, Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Jesus is the only hope for we who have been steeped in sin from conception. Only Jesus can take out of us the sickening taste of death that we have gained by our soaking in sin. Only Jesus can give us the taste of life—the life that He poured out for us in His holy blood while He suffered and died in our place on Good Friday.

For our sins to be forgiven, we must see Jesus for who He clearly is—the Son of God Himself, who pleads to heaven for us every day: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). When we are spiritually blind, we cannot see what we are doing; this is why we need Jesus to open our spiritual eyes, so that we can see what repulses God and reject it—and so we can see what pleases God and ask Jesus’ help in doing it.

Seek Jesus’ mercy. Let Him open your eyes, and you will see the world in a whole new light—the light of God’s truth.