And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind ? Jesus answered: Neither hath this man sinned or his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him …. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam…….. He went his way, and washed, and came seeing.
We have seen this process before in these blog posts as we examine the way Christian spirituality works.
The man regains his sight because he
- believed what Jesus said to him – as absurd as it might seem
- he acted on what Jesus said, by going and washing as Jesus instructed, to the very specific place
Without both the belief and the obedience, the miracle would not have occurred.
And that is as true today as it was then.
We have to take God at his word, and we have to obey it.
Above all when it comes to our spiritual health.
Here in this example, we have physical healing. But the same principle works for spiritual healing.
To take God at his word, and to act on it. And that means primarily his moral teaching. To live as God says – in defiance of the norms of this pagan world – will see the blessing and reward of God in our spiritual health – in our inner wellbeing.
Conversely, when we live in defiance of God’s word, God’s teaching, but in agreement with this world’s dubious morals, then we gain not God’s blessing, but his repudiation.
It is no accident that to live in contravention of God’s teaching is to live with the emotional and spiritual problems we see so often in today’s broken and self centred world.
But the particularly shocking and profound teaching in the above passsage is this.
God can do as he pleases. After all, he is God.
The man was born blind because God had purposed that the miracle of sight should be demonstrated by Jesus in his life.
Seems harsh.
But look later in this account recorded in John chapter 9 and see now human beings treated this man.
They had no compassion whatsoever, but condemned him, casting him out of the temple.
He was excommunicated, and shut out of the community.
But his faith in what had been done for him and his faith in God were rock solid.
He knew the dramatic change in his life, and he knew that only the one true living and almighty God could have done it.
And no power or person or ostracism could take that knowledge or his precious sight from him.
Being of adult years he knew how precious sight is. What most of us can take for granted and expect as normal, he knew as the precious gift of God, totally dependent on God.
And because he knew his dependence on God and how futile and shallow is the confidence of mankind by comparison, he gained the ultimate reward.
He found Jesus Christ as his Saviour.
Saved from his sin, and the deceit of sin which causes people to believe that they have no need of God, indeed to go so far as to say that God does not exist …
He, however, had total faith.
And Jesus uses the miracle and the entire episode to teach a precious truth.
People are spiritually blind. And the people who suffer this blindness the worst are the religious ones who think they know God and his ways, but clearly do not.
Spiritual blindness is far worse blindness than physical blindness.
And it is only Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who can heal both conditions.
Christianity 