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?"
My, aren’t we all judgmental people? How often do we see someone who is ill, in poverty, homeless, or in some other way afflicted by life and assume that it is their moral deficiency that has caused the problem? This is nothing more than pride in our own moral superiority. Jesus is the only one who can cut this out of us, and he does so with his disciples.
But let us give the disciples a break and look at it from another perspective. Perhaps, they ask because this is a question that haunts many people today. It isn’t simply about why someone is blind, but strikes at the deeper question, why do bad things happen to people? The disciples present Jesus with what is called a false dilemma. They only present two options for answering their question. We have to give them a break because they were most likely brought up with this notion that it had to be the man’s sins or his parents that caused the blindness. They believe that all calamities are a result of sin. (In a sense it is true because of the fall but that is not the point here.) Even a quick reading of the Book of Job reveals the prevalent belief that when someone does wrong, God will get them. Job’s three friends and Elihu badger him from Chapter 4 through Chapter 37 with the concept that Job’s misfortune has to do with his sin. Nothing Job says satisfies them. They say it one way then another until it becomes a mantra, “You sinned, God is punishing you.” They didn’t have the advantage of reading Chapters 1 and 2.
This is still a commonly held belief among many Christians, especially among the name-it-and-claim-it heresy. I know of a lady who had cardiomyopathy and needed a heart transplant. Some of her friends told her she would be healed if she would only confess her sins and repent. She said she confessed every sin she could think of and even some others just in case. She wasn’t healed. Jesus’ answer to their question should dispel all the accusations of so-called prophets who speak for God in condemning the faith of believers who have suffered a calamity.
3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
Jesus knows the correct answer to the question and how to dispel the improperly phrased question without getting trapped by it. Not that the disciples were trying to trap him like the Pharisees and Sadducees had. The famous question, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” does not need to be answered with a yes or a no, but with a statement. Sometimes we fall into a trap of thinking we need to answer with a yes or a no, or we make a long answer when only a yes or no is required. But I digress.
The clear point of this one verse dispels all the misconceptions of people who believe that all illnesses and calamities are a result of sin. Jesus makes it clear that in this case, God worked the calamity for his own glory. This isn’t something new. The Lord revealed it to Isaiah in pieces. He first tells him that everyone is created for his glory (Isa 43:7) and then specifically says, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isa 45:7 NIV).
This is not to say that sometimes a person’s sins do cause calamity. Certainly, long periods of smoking, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, thievery, murder, slander, and other sins usually end up causing illnesses and other calamities that come upon the perpetrator. It is also true that the victims of crimes are the results of the perpetrator’s sins. But Jesus has even more to say than simply correcting the disciples’ misconception.
4 “As long as it is day, we must do the work 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."
Notice that Jesus is directing the disciples to engage in work with him. He didn’t say that he must do the work that God gave him. We must do the work. When we see clearly that people are put into our path by God’s sovereign will so that we can minister to them, we are doing the work that God has provided.
What does Jesus mean by working during the day and the night is coming? If we take it literally, we will have problems because we can work at night. So, just as we have applied Jesus’ other references to bread of life and living water to things other than physical bread and water, we see that Jesus is not talking about literal days and nights. He is telling us that we can only work to do God’s will on the earth while we are alive. We shouldn’t waste our time here being judgmental and get to work.
Jesus points out that even he, who is the Light of the World will only be physically here for a short time. When he is gone, we will still be here to carry on God’s mission.
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.
This seems like quite a prelude to finally getting around to healing the blind man. Even the elaborate means of making mud to apply to the man’s eyes seems unnecessary. Indeed, it is unnecessary in the sense that Jesus has healed people from a distance or by simply touching them. Even the woman with a flow of blood was healed when she touched his cloak and power went out from him. So why the mud, spit, and requiring him to wash?
We don’t learn from this passage, but it is stated in verse 14 that this was a Sabbath day. Everything Jesus did was an in-your-face indictment of the Pharisees who condemned any kind of work on the Sabbath. So Jesus made mud. That was illegal. He spit, that was an insult, unclean mud, spiritual yuck. He required the man to take part in it by washing. That was just as much of a problem because it was requiring the man to participate in the healing. It was making the recipient of God’s grace to become a victim of their legal system.
Take a moment to put yourself in the man’s place. He has never seen anything in all his life. He hears and talks and is able to hear a few things, but he is dependent on others to provide for him. He is a beggar. He has heard it all his life. This man is a sinner because he was born blind. He is an outcast. Then one day he hears some more people saying the same old stuff about him. He probably tunes it out until he hears Jesus spit. The next thing he knows, he has mud in his eyes. What would you do? He doesn’t react the way most of us would, but he does as Jesus says without really knowing anything about Jesus.
And he comes away seeing. We believe that it takes a baby’s brain quite a while to start processing images correctly. Not only does this man have eyes that work but his brain is able to immediately process the images and understand them. He is able to make his way back from the pool, no longer feeling his way, but seeing his way.
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 demanded.
What an opportunity he has to glorify God and immediately, people try to make him out to be a fake. When we come to Jesus, do people see the difference? They should, just as they saw the difference in him. Hopefully they ask us why we are so different. If we have been Christians a long time, then there won’t be the contrast between our former life and current life. However, we should still be significantly different from the world so that people will ask how our eyes were opened.
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.
He immediately points the questioners to Jesus. He explains the process by which he came to see. When they want to know where Jesus is, he doesn’t try to answer a question he doesn’t know.
When we are asked about how we come to believe, we should answer with what we know. Jesus found us, called us, brought us out of darkness into light. We didn’t see and now we do. We were sitting around not really knowing what was going on around us when Jesus slapped mud in our eyes and give us new life in him. We weren’t even honestly looking for him. He had to open our eyes first. The good news is that we know where Jesus is and can tell others.
I can’t wait to get into this next section as he interacts with the Pharisees.
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