John 9:24-41

John 9:24-41

24 So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, “Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He then answered, “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 So they said to him, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?” 27 He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? You do not want to become His disciples too, do you?” 28 They reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.” 30 The man answered and said to them, “Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. 31 “We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him. 32 “Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 “If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?” So they put him out.  35 Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” 38 And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. 39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” 40 Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

We are often told to expect the unexpected.  This is good advice because people rarely do what we expect them to do.  We would expect that a man with the power to heal would be honored and respected by the people of his day.  We would expect that a man who had been healed of a blindness from birth would be embraced and accepted by a rejoicing community.  Unfortunately, the expected did not occur.  The Lord Jesus who healed the blind man was called a devil and the man who was healed was cast out of the synagogue.  The saddest thing is that the religious leaders have been so consistent with this kind of unexpected responses that we are no longer surprised by it and even expect it.  This kind of response should never be acceptable to us or we run the risk of imitating it ourselves. 

THE HEALED MAN IS REJECTED BY THE JEWS: The Pharisees call the man a second time and instruct him to simply give the glory from his healing to God and not mention that Jesus had done anything to heal him because Jesus was a sinner.  This statement reveals so much about these religious leaders, the most significant of which is that they did not consider themselves to be sinners.  The man simply responds that he does not know if the man is a sinner or not but he did know that Jesus had healed him and he did not plan to leave that out of his story.  So, they ask him again what Jesus had done.  He responds by saying that he has already answered this question and then asks if they too wanted to become disciples of Jesus as well.  The Pharisees jump on this response as it was his first admission that he was a disciple of Jesus.  They claim to be disciples of Moses because they knew Moses spoke on God’s behalf but they had no idea where Jesus was from.  The truth was that Jesus had repeatedly reveled where He was from; they just didn’t want to believe it.  The man simply states that he found it amazing that these religious, so called disciples of Moses did not know anything about a man who could give sight to a blind man.  Just based on that fact it was clear that Jesus, like Moses, was from God.  They could not believe that this simple man had the audacity to contradict, question and try to reason with them so they threw him out of the synagogue.  They considered him to be dangerous to the community because he would not follow their instructions to keep quiet or even lie about his experience.  They were so threatened by Jesus that anyone who had any allegiance to Him was considered dangerous and divisive.  Power and pride are a dangerous combination because the blind people from seeing or even wanting to see the truth. 

THE HEALED MAN IS REGENERATED BY JESUS: When Jesus heard that the man He had healed had been thrown out of the synagogue, He came to him as asked if he believed in the Son of Man.  The man asked who He was so he could believe and Jesus revealed to him that He was the Son of Man.  The response of the healed man is the response that God seeks from every one of us: belief and worship.  This was the greatest day this man could have ever had.  He was healed of physical blindness so that he could see for the first time in his life.  More significantly, he was healed of spiritual blindness as the eyes of his heart were opened to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and worship Him.  He may have been cast out of the Synagogue on this day; but he was welcomed into the family of God.  Jesus states that the reason He had come into the world was to heal men who recognized their sinfulness of their spiritual blindness and to warn those who refused to recognize their sin that they were truly spiritually blind and subject to judgment from God.  The Pharisees who heard this statement questioned if they were blind and Jesus assured them that they were because they were insisting that they could “see” so they remained in their sin.  It is our natural tendency to rationalize our sin away and try to justify ourselves.  This is the path to continue in spiritual blindness and eternal condemnation.  Our only hope for salvation is to recognize our sinfulness, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and worship Him.  This is the message of the Gospel that we must believe and then proclaim so that others might believe.

APPLICATION: Be careful not to allow pride and power to become the motivating factors in our lives.  They will blind us from recognizing our own sin and believing in the Lord Jesus.  Don’t be surprised if other misunderstand, criticize or condemn us for believing, loving, worshiping and testifying of Jesus.  We must learn to expect the spiritually blind to act spiritually blind.  Make knowing and worshiping Jesus our top priority.