Spiritual Blindness and the Light of Life

Eschatology of John Part 19: John 9

In a way, this article is a continuation of last week’s from John 8. In John 8, Jesus began this extended text on the “light of the world,” which he identifies as himself. This is nothing new in John, of course, because the opening lines of the Gospel said,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. John 1:1–5

In John 9, the eschatological reality that Jesus is the Light of the world and overcomes the darkness of sin and death is exemplified in the healing of a man who was blind from birth.

God Doesn’t Work that Way

I am convinced that many of our doctrinal disputes and traditional squabbles could be resolved if we took the time to consider what God is like. The Gospel of John is a beautiful demonstration of who God actually is, and this purpose is stated in the prologue to the Gospel:

No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. John 1:18

In John 2, Jesus shows that God lives in Christ, and in us, not a temple made of stone.

In John 3, Jesus teaches that one cannot depend upon heritage, education, or wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven, but one must be born from above to enter the kingdom of heaven.

In John 4, Jesus challenges social and traditional norms by asking to drink from the unclean bucket of an unclean, socially ostracized woman of apparent ill repute.

In John 5, Jesus tells us that we will only find life in the Scriptures insofar as they point to the Word of God, which is himself.

In John 6, Jesus shows that what God really cares about is people who follow him, not earthly power and strength.

In John 7, Jesus showed that the cleansing waters of the feast of tabernacles flow from the bellies of believers via the Spirit, not just out of the vessel of the priest.

In John 8, Jesus challenges the meaning of life and death by showing that God is really about spiritual freedom through a resurrection brought about through knowing Truth, not through physical liberation from a foreign entity.

All of this is a radical reimagining of who God is, and this reimagining is only possible because of Jesus—he is the only one who has ever seen God.

Now, in John 9, Jesus tackles the idea of inherited sin.

As he walked 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?” John 9:1–2

This question assumes that someone must have sinned. It’s the same question Job’s friends must have had as they sat with him for seven days.

Think back through the summary above, and you will see this question in every chapter:

Chapter 2: Our sins have made it so that communion with the divine is only possible if we travel to a temple that took forty-six years to build.

Chapter 3: Those who have the right heritage, the right education, and an abundance of wealth are accepted in God’s sight; repentance and rebirth are for those who are outcasts, who are unlearned, and who are poor because they are outside of God’s favor and wretched sinners.

Chapter 4: Worship must be in the right place by the right people, so tell me who got it right.

Chapter 5: If we are to have fellowship with God, keeping holy days is so important that it would be a sin to scandalize the community through unauthorized mercy on a day of rest.

Chapter 6: Those who are faithful have all of their physical needs met and exceeded by God, and the most evident sign that God is with a people is domination through an earthly kingdom, which means the violent death of “those people” who are obviously sinners and outside of God’s care.

Chapter 7: Because of our sins, cleansing waters flow from the authorized place administered by the authorized people.

Chapter 8: We are children of Abraham, and, unlike those sinners outside of our heritage, we have never been in bondage to anyone.

So how does Jesus answer this question? The same way he does in each of these instances, by turning water into wine.

From Darkness to Light

The predominate views of God and religion in Jesus’s day tried to overcome the teaching and ministry of Jesus, but as John 1 says, the darkness would not overtake the light.

When Jesus meets this man who had been born blind, he exposes the flaw in the conventional stories surrounding this man’s plight by demonstrating how God can be revealed in tragedy. “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5).

After healing the man, a great controversy ensued. The man was put on trial. His parents were brought in to testify.

Why was this man’s miraculous healing being investigated?

John 9:14 tells us: “Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.”

Here we go again.

After the man brilliantly defends himself and the Christ, the leaders bring the lengthy investigation to a close by saying, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” ( John 9:34).

Isn’t it interesting that it was wrong to heal on the Sabbath but perfectly acceptable to call together an investigation and trial of a poor blind man, which took way more effort than what Jesus or the man himself did?

Here’s the challenge for us: do we have the willingness to listen out for wisdom from those we might consider (or have considered) “born entirely in sins?” What might someone from another denomination or even another religion be able to teach us? What might we learn from the immigrant? From those considered enemies of our particular country? What might we learn from those who we consider (or have considered) sinners or ungodly? What might we learn from the man who has been divorced? From the single mom? From the alcoholic? From the recovering addict?

Do we have eyes to see and ears to hear the wisdom of God from unlikely places? Or will we too be quick to drive them out of the synagogue as this man was drove out?

Could it be that the people we are quickest to drive out are the very ones Jesus has already healed?

This man whose world was changed from darkness to light may have been uneducated, but even in his blindness, he could see better than most, for he saw the Light of the world and went straightway to do his will by washing the damp clay from his eyes.

The band New Grass Revival has a song called “How About You” that says,

Why feel sorry for the blind man
His soul is a bird on the wing
While you might have eyes like a eagle
And never see one blessed thing

Though he was cast out of the synagogue, the Good Shepherd left the ninety-nine to go and find him.

Who is Actually Blind

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” John 9:35–39

Jesus told him, “You have seen him.”

When? In his blindness.

This is just awesome. Jesus demonstrates that true sight is spiritual. This is an invitation to us to see how God sees, to see in a new way (2 Corinthians 5:16-17).

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. John 9:39–41

“I came into this world for judgment” seems like it contradicts John 5, the other time Jesus healed on the Sabbath, in which Jesus said, “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:17, NASB95). But as the NRSVue and KJV render this passage, Jesus is saying he did not come into the world to condemn the world. The word in John 3 is krinō, whereas the word in John 9 is krima. The one word has to do with declaring someone as guilty, while the latter word means to render a decision.

And how is a decision rendered in this text? Well according to the last passage, it is the leaders’ action of saying “we see” that causes their sin to remain.

By the way, notice what Jesus says here, because we may read over it since it’s outside of our conventional wisdom: “If you were blind, you would not have sin.”

Remember that question the disciples had at the beginning of this chapter: “Whose sins caused this man’s blindness?” Here’s the answer: those who are blind do not have sin.

Now Paul teaches that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). So what could Jesus mean by this? The idea here is that they do not bear guilt. That is, God is not the kind of God to hold people accountable for things they could not know. It is when we arrogantly claim sight that our sin remains, which is what happened in the garden, right? The Pharisees’ sin here is eating of the forbidden fruit.

Do we readily admit our own ignorance? Do we humbly bow before the Light of the world and consent to a transformation that causes us to see in a way we couldn’t on our own? Or do we stand up and declare that we have the truth, suggesting that everyone else stumbles in the darkness?

Here’s the tricky thing Jesus does here: he causes those who do not see to see, and he causes those who claim to see to become blind. In other words, he sets them up for the same conversion experience and transformation demonstrated in the healing of the blind man.

Which, of course, is exactly what happened to another Pharisee named Paul.