Session 15: September 24, 2022

Scripture Reading: John 9:1-41

1 Now as Jesus was passing by, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man or his parents?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind so that the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him. 4 We must perform the deeds of the one who sent me as long as it is daytime. Night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 Having said this, he spat on the ground and made some mud with the saliva. He smeared the mud on the blind man’s eyes 7 and said to him, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated “sent”). So the blind man went away and washed, and came back seeing.

8 Then the neighbors and the people who had seen him previously as a beggar began saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some people said, “This is the man!” while others said, “No, but he looks like him.” The man himself kept insisting, “I am the one!” 10 So they asked him, “How then were you made to see?” 11 He replied, “The man called Jesus made mud, smeared it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and was able to see.” 12 They said to him, “Where is that man?” He replied, “I don’t know.”

13 They brought the man who used to be blind to the Pharisees. 14 (Now the day on which Jesus made the mud and caused him to see was a Sabbath.) 15 So the Pharisees asked him again how he had gained his sight. He replied, “He put mud on my eyes and I washed, and now I am able to see.”

16 Then some of the Pharisees began to say, “This man is not from God because he does not observe the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such miraculous signs?” Thus there was a division among them. 17 So again they asked the man who used to be blind, “What do you say about him, since he caused you to see?” “He is a prophet,” the man replied.

18 Now the Jewish religious leaders refused to believe that he had really been blind and had gained his sight until at last they summoned the parents of the man who had become able to see. 19 They asked the parents, “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?” 20 So his parents replied, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. 21 But we do not know how he is now able to see, nor do we know who caused him to see. Ask him, he is a mature adult. He will speak for himself.” 22 (His parents said these things because they were afraid of the Jewish religious leaders. For the Jewish leaders had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. 23 For this reason his parents said, “He is a mature adult, ask him.”)

24 Then they summoned the man who used to be blind a second time and said to him, “Promise before God to tell the truth. We know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He replied, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. I do know one thing—that although I was blind, now I can see.” 26 Then they said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he cause you to see?” 27 He answered, “I told you already and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You people don’t want to become his disciples too, do you?”

28 They heaped insults on him, saying, “You are his disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses! We do not know where this man comes from!” 30 The man replied, “This is a remarkable thing that you don’t know where he comes from and yet he caused me to see! 31 We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is devout and does his will, God listens to him. 32 Never before has anyone heard of someone causing a man born blind to see. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 They replied, “You were born completely in sinfulness, and yet you presume to teach us?” So they threw him out.

35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, so he found the man and said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 The man replied, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37 Jesus told him, “You have seen him; he is the one speaking with you.” [ 38 He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said,] “For judgment I have come into this world, so that those who do not see may gain their sight, and the ones who see may become blind.”

40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and asked him, “We are not blind too, are we?” 41 Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, but now because you claim that you can see, your guilt remains.

Main Themes

The Setting

Since the beginning of chapter 7, we have had a continuous sequence of events. Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10 are one “scene.” Because the chapters tell one narrative, but we tend to study them separately (out of convenience, not for any theological reason), we need to be intentional in carrying over the information provided in the earlier chapters that apply to the later chapters in this story.

For purposes of chapter 9, we must remember the chronology of the Feast of Tabernacles. The feast lasted eight days. It began on a Sabbath (a Saturday) and it ended on the next Sabbath. Beginning with verse 7:37, all the action has been occurring “[o]n the last day of the feast.“ That means chapter 9 is happening during a Sabbath.

In chapter 9, Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath. Sounds familiar. It didn’t go well the first time, how will it go over this time? (Spoiler: not well.)

Who Committed the Sin

After Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath for the first time (see John 5), Jesus tells the man, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, lest anything worse happen to you.” (v. 5:14) As I discussed during Session 10, Jesus words should not be assumed to mean that sickness will occur as a supernatural result of the man’s sin. That very well may be the case, but one could also take Jesus’ words in a more ordinary way. Sometimes sin naturally leads to injury and disease. Sexual immorality can lead to sexually transmitted diseases. In some parts of the world, stealing could lead to one’s hands being lost. Drug use can lead to addiction and mental illness. The list could go on.

However, the first-century world did believe there was a strong connection between ailments and sin—particularly in the case of blindness. Jewish literature provides examples of the connection. For example, according to one contemporary source, one who saw a blind, lame, or otherwise seriously afflicted person should praise God as judge. Presumably, the assumption was that the person must have done something to properly merit such a condition. However, the case should not be overstated. Certainly the contemporary Jewish people understood that sin could cause affliction as a natural consequence (like the examples in the previous paragraph). They also believed that demons could cause disease, so God was not the only available cause.

What is curious (to put it mildly) about the blind man in chapter 9 is that he was blind from birth. This limits the range of options. The man could not have caused his own blindness in a natural sense, and no one seems to posit demon possession. Therefore God must have caused his blindness. Moreover, in a further logical leap, it must have been for someone’s sin. Who’s sin? That is how the conversation begins.

Many people at the time would have accepted the possibility that the man’s blindness was the result of the parents’ sin—most likely of the mother’s while she was pregnant. Some people at the time may have also believed in prenatal activity significant enough to constitute sin. This is not a Jewish example but Isis and Osiris were said to have copulated in the womb. (Weird, I know.)

As much as our modern sensibilities may be offended by the idea that someone may suffer illness for someone else’s sins, Jesus reply may be even more offensive to modern readers. He explains, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind so that the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him.”

God in his sovereignty orchestrated the man’s illness such that a great good would come of it. Notice that this is a very powerful response to the problem of evil and suffering in general. Why would a good God allow evil and suffering in the world? Perhaps God has a plan. Maybe he is working all this out for good. In fact, the logical “Problem of Evil” is no longer very popular in the philosophical community. It is impossible to show that God can have no justifying reasons to allow evil and pain. The philosophical battle is now the probabilistic “Problem of Evil.” In other words, given the current state of the world is it more or less probable that a good God exists.

Spittle and Dirt

Jesus spat on the ground and made some mud. In the ancient world, spittle was sometimes associated with curative powers. For example, emperor Vaspasian (who postdates Jesus by a few decades) reportedly also healed blindness with spittle. This tradition regarding spittle already existed in the Jewish world, although it was probably borrowed from the Gentile world. Perhaps Jesus uses spittle because his audience would have understood the reference: Jesus was curing someone. The other alternative is that this is an allusion to the creative act of Genesis 2:7. (Genesis 2:7 says, “The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”)

There is a potential double entendre in the word “smeared,” which other translations may translate as “applied.” This is the same word as “anoint.” To anoint means to apply oil. Anointing has a powerful religious meaning. Both in the Old and New Testaments, it means one blessed by God. In the New Testament, God anoints with the Holy Spirit (e.g., Acts 10:38). Perhaps Jesus anointing the blind man with mud giving him physical sight is a prefigurement of Jesus anointing believers with the Holy Spirit giving them spiritual sight.

Jesus sends the blind man to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. This was the exact same pool used in the water-drawing ritual during the Feast of Tabernacles (remember, the feast going on “right now” in the story world). Jesus uses the “holy water” of the festival for his own purposes. Talk about cultural appropriation.

What Will the Neighbors Think?

The blind man is healed and the “neighbors” are amazed and confused.

In Jerusalem, a man could survive as a beggar though he would remain poor. Jewish contemporaries emphasized charity. Charity towards the destitute was also commanded in the Old Testament. (However, I do not want to give the misimpression that a life of begging was viewed favorably in any way. Jewish contemporaries recognized begging as a shameful condition to be avoided—perhaps even to the point of death, i.e., it would be better to die than to live as a beggar.)

The main point is that the “neighbors” were probably Jerusalemites. These were people who had seen the blind man beg on a daily basis since, probably, a very early age. They had probably donated to him regularly. They had indisputable knowledge of the blind man and his condition. When the healing occurred, the neighbors are shocked to the point of denial.

Making Mud on the Sabbath

Jesus is doubly guilty of breaking the Sabbath, the Pharisees will claim. Not only did Jesus heal on the Sabbath like he did back in chapter 5, but he made mud on the Sabbath! Sadly, I am not kidding. Notice how the text keeps going back to the mud. “Now the day on which Jesus made the mud and caused him to see was a Sabbath.”

The Pharisees do not praise God for the healing. Even if they intend to investigate a potential violation, they do not seek Jesus first to obtain first-hand testimony. They simply accuse Jesus of being a sinner (i.e., he cannot be from God because he does not observe the Sabbath).

The Trial

The text immediately shifts into a sort of legal proceeding. The Pharisees treat the blind man and his parents as witnesses.

An Epistemological Conflict

Notice that there is an epistemological conflict between the Pharisees and the blind man. The Pharisees “know” from their interpretation of the law. They know that the law forbids working on the Sabbath. So they know that Jesus cannot be from God. The blind man “knows” from experience. He knows he was blind. He knows that he can see. So, he knows that Jesus must be from God. For the sake of clarity, I am not trying to make a larger point about epistemology here, like whether we should trust our own experience more than scripture. I think that would be a dangerous conclusion to draw. Jesus never undermines the Torah. Jesus does, however, also appeal to experience. See the miracles and believe. Even through clear and convincing miracles the Pharisees were unwilling to consider that perhaps they did not “know” the Torah as well as they thought. Or, more accurately, the Pharisees were unwilling to recognize their hypocrisy and ill intentions. It’s not so much that they “knew” the scriptures condemned Jesus as much as they were committed to that statement because it served their purposes. As we have seen throughout the Gospel of John, this inability to see is not an intellectual shortcoming but a moral one.

As an interesting side note, an example of biblical hermeneutics that accounts for both scripture and experience is the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which considers scripture as the first authority and then also takes into account tradition, reason, and experience. For example, Wesley praises the church fathers because not only did they remain faithful to Christian doctrine “[b]ut still they never relinquish this: 'What the Scripture promises, I enjoy. Come and see what Christianity has done here, and acknowledge it is of God.'“

Only a Man of God Could Do This

The Pharisees recognize a problem with their argument. They believed that no one would be able to restore blindness like Jesus did unless that man were from God. Remember John 3:1-2: “Now a certain man, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, came to Jesus at night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.’” So the Pharisees must deny the healing.

Rigging the Trial

The Pharisees call on the blind man’s parents to testify. Before the testimony, they rig the trial. Anyone who confesses Jesus as the Christ will be excommunicated. The text does not explicitly say this, but the Pharisees probably hoped that with enough pressure the parents would even deny that their child had really been blind. The parents would have earned great favor with the religious leaders if they had testified that their son had faked his illness to receive charity. The blind man’s parents are in fact intimidated. They are only willing to confirm that their son was blind and can now see. How that happened? They won’t say. Ask our son, they say instead, he is “mature” or “of age.” That means that the blind man is at least 13 but could be much older.

The Blind Man’s Faith

The Pharisees call the blind man to the stand once more. Notice the leading the question. They demand (if I paraphrase), “Condemn Jesus as a sinner.” But the blind man is an example of faith. He may not fully know who Jesus is but he will not deny the miracle. “Say what you will about Jesus, but I was blind and now I see.” The Pharisees give him one more chance to recant his statement. “Tell us again what he did to you.” The blind man responds with mockery. “Do you want me to tell you again so you also might believe?” Of course that’s not the reason for the Pharisees’ question.

The Pharisees go on the offensive. They insult the blind man, “You are his disciple!” This works on two levels. First, it is an accusation of bias. The blind man is lying for the benefit of his master. Second, as the Pharisees claim to be disciples of Moses, it is accusing the blind man of betraying their religion and their God. Notice that both the “you are” and “we are” are emphatic in Greek. It is like saying, “I myself had to fix it” to emphasize who performed the action. This is a heated debate filled with accusatory overtones.

The Pharisees make one more claim. “We do not know where this man comes from!” We have discussed this idea extensively in prior sessions. Jesus is from above; he is from God; he is from heaven. The religious leaders refuse to see this. In this case, the Pharisees may not only be accusing Jesus of being a stranger to Jerusalem and their religious community but also perhaps accusing him of being an illegitimate child.

The blind man goes on the offensive himself. Remember that everyone, the Pharisees included, granted the premise that only a man of God could do the miraculous signs that Jesus was doing. The blind man points this out and leaves the Pharisees with no excuse. Additionally, the blind man’s claim that no one had ever heard of a blind man from birth being healed appears to be historical when considered in context. Such claims existed in the Gentile world but they did not seem to exist in the Jewish world.

The Pharisees stoop low. Remember the assumption was that the man’s blindness was caused by sin. The Pharisees have no issues using that assumption. “You are a filthy sinner and you dare attempt to correct us, disciples of Moses?”

Notice that the blind man grows in his belief and understanding of Jesus as more information is presented to him. First Jesu is a “man” (v. 9:11), then a “prophet” (v. 9:17), and finally “Son of Man” (v. 9:35-37).

Jesus Comes to Judge

Remember John 3:17-18:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

The word for “condemn” in John 3 is the same as the word for judge in John 9 when Jesus says:

For judgment I have come into this world, so that those who do not see may gain their sight, and the ones who see may become blind.

This sure seems like a contradiction at first blush. Let’s consider what contradiction means. The law of non-contradiction says that two contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. Both verses quoted above refer to the same time: Jesus coming into the world. But, do both verses refer to judgment in the same sense? I do not think so. Consider John 12:47-50:

I have come as a light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not obey them, I do not judge him. For I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not accept my words has a judge; the word I have spoken will judge him at the last day. For I have not spoken from my own authority, but the Father himself who sent me has commanded me what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. Thus the things I say, I say just as the Father has told me.

What do all three passages in John tell us when read in conjunction? Jesus did not come to judge in the sense of inflicting immediate punishment—i.e., condemn. Those who hear Jesus and disobey he does not condemn. They may continue to do as they please. Jesus is on earth to save not to destroy. However, the revelation that comes through Jesus will eventually judge in the sense of deciding or determining. Jesus’ words divide people between those who believe and those do not. And in the last day, at the final judgment, that is the only consideration that will matter.

The Great Reversal

Jesus words at the end of this chapter are enigmatic. “For judgment I have come into this world, so that those who do not see may gain their sight, and the ones who see may become blind.” Jesus also says, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, but now because you claim that you can see, your guilt remains.”

To gain sight is only valuable to one who is blind. To anyone who who thinks that they can already see, that offer is worthless. A doctor is only valuable to a sick man, not to a healthy man. Salvation is only valuable to a condemned sinner, not to a righteous man.

Consider these statements found in Matthew 9:12-13:

“Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do.”

“I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The word “gospel” comes from “god-spell” meaning a “good story.” Gospel is in turn a translation of the Latin word evangelium (from the Greek euangelion) that means “good news.” [Edit: The original post mistakenly stated, “Gospel is in turn a translation of the Latin word euangelion . . . .” Thanks to the commenter below for pointing this out.] What is “good” about the news of Jesus? Christ has come to save the world. He offers this salvation freely to all who would believe in him. But notice that this message is not just pointless but offensive to someone who thinks that they need no saving. That offense, I think, is why those who see become blind. Whatever truth is held by those who see is intentionally discarded by the offense of the good news. They turn deliberately and vehemently from the truth of the gospel. In this way, those who recognize their need are given all things while those who recognize their good things lose all things.