Digging Deeper: The Family in the House

One Sabbath day, Jesus and his disciples see a man born blind, and the disciples want to know whose sin caused him to be born blind – his own or his parents. 

Jesus thinks this question is ridiculous, and tells them that it wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was born blind, but rather it happened so that God might be glorified in him. 

The disciples were correct in their realization that pain and suffering are the result of sin in the world, but they were incorrect in thinking that it is only the sinful who are affected by the results of sin. The whole of creation has been bent.

So Jesus spits in the dirt, makes some mud balls, sticks them on the man’s eyes, and tells him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam. 

The man does so and is healed. 

Later, the Pharisees find out that Jesus healed this guy on the Sabbath, so they drag the guy in for questioning. 

The man tells them that he thinks Jesus is a prophet. 

They bring the man’s parents in to identify him and to confirm that a miracle actually took place. 

They confirm that the man is their son, but claim they don’t know who healed him or how it happened. 

They were afraid they might get kicked out of the synagogue if they repeated any of the rumors they’d heard about Jesus being the Messiah, so they said, “Why are you asking us questions? Talk to our son – he’s a grown man!” 

They put the man under oath and ask him if Jesus is a sinner. 

He’s like, “I don’t know if he’s a sinner or not! All I know is this: I was blind! But now I can see!” 

They then tell him to tell them exactly what happened. 

He’s like, “I told you already, but you weren’t listening. Do you also want to become his disciples or something?” 

They then began throwing insults at him, and they tell him he would be far better off being a disciple of Moses like themselves rather than being a disciple of Jesus. 

They add, “We know where Moses came from, but we have no idea where Jesus is from!”

The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 

They then accuse him of being a sinner since he was in the womb and they throw him out. They actually preferred to believe that a baby could sin in the womb rather than believe this man’s testimony about Jesus. They probably thought, surely this man’s mother must have gone to worship in a pagan temple, and the baby in her womb must have also worshiped idols while she was there. They of course had no evidence for this ridiculous claim, but then, people tend to make ridiculous claims without being able to support them when they don’t want to admit to the truth.

Later, Jesus finds the man and says, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 

The man says, “Show him to me and I will believe in him!” 

Jesus says, “He’s the one speaking to you right now.” 

The man believes and worships Jesus. 

Jesus says, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” 

But the Pharisees just scoff when they hear this. 

The miracle of the blind man is remarkable in two respects: firstly, that although there are other accounts in both the Old Testament and the New of the blind having their sight restored, this is the only time someone born blind was given sight for the first time.

Although the biblical text does not explicitly say so, the traditional interpretation is that not only was this man born without sight, he was born even without eyes. 

Jesus' act of making clay is an act of creation (creating eyes where none were before), a repetition of the first act of the creation of man in Genesis 2:7. 

This indicates the traditional Christian teaching that in the act of salvation Jesus makes his disciples a "new creation." 

The second remarkable aspect of the miracle is that not only did Jesus give the man physical sight, but he bestowed upon him spiritual sight as well. In the blind man's dialogue with the Pharisees, he holds his own in the dispute, engaging in reasoned theological discourse as though he were educated.

And so John tells us this whole story about the blind man who could see in order to illustrate what Jesus has already stated in chapter 8, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” In Jesus, those who are blind can see and those who claim they see but don’t are lost in the darkness.