This is the third post about what happened to cause the people to celebrate one of his final entries into the city and come to call him Messiah. They had been waiting a long time to be freed from the rule of the Romans, and even longer for the arrival of the promised Messiah, so how did they know Jesus was the one?
Healing of a man born blind
In John 9 we read about the healing of a blind man, a miracle that was done during the Feast of Tabernacles, a very Holy time when no work was allowed. This requirement will become important later.
As the man was blind, the disciples thought is was a result of sin, a way of thinking that still persists with some who think that God punishes people’s sin, even though we are in the New Covenant.
Under the Mosaic law in Exodus 34:6-7, a child can carry the sins of the father to the third or fourth generation. According to Pharisaic Judaism, a birth defect was due to a specific sin by the parent or the child before birth.
Who had sinned?
The leaders asked Jesus if it was the man or his parents that had sinned. Christ answered neither had, but that God’s works should be made evident in the man.
Christ revealed two flaws with this reasoning.
Children cannot sin while in the womb. Birth defects are not the result of a terrible sin. It is true that Adam’s original sin causes earthly death eventually, but this man’s blindness was to give God glory.
How did Jesus heal the blind man?
…“The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.” John 9:11
Jesus could have just opened the eyes of the blind man, but something significant about the revealing of the Messiah was taking place.
After Jesus placed mud on the blind man’s eyes, he was told to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. Why that particular pool when so many pools were available?
This was Holy Week – the Feast of the Tabernacles – where a special ritual called “the outpouring of water” took place.
As the priests came to this specific pool to fill their jugs for the ritual, there would be many people there to observe this highly visual miracle. And this blind man was known to people – they knew that he could not see. (John 9:8-9)
So after he had washed his eyes and found that he could see, the people were amazed when he told his story. They asked him who had healed him, but the man had not seen Jesus and so could not say where he was.
An investigation was required
This was another miracle that the Pharisees had to investigate because only the Messiah could do, especially as it was so public and many had heard the testimony. They questioned how the miracle occurred. John 9:15
As this healing work took place on a Sabbath day, some quickly marked Jesus as a sinner because he had broken the law of no work on the Sabbath. The people knew there was a discrepancy.
The parents of the blind man were questioned and they confirmed that he had been born blind. They knew this verdict of the investigation would impact the son greatly, for if the man affirmed Christ as the Messiah, he would be put out of the church.
There were three levels of excommunication:
- The first level was a rebuke that lasted 7 to 30 days.
- The second level was at least a 30-day discipline pronounced by 10 rabbis. (Examples: 2 Thes.3:14-15 and Titus 3:10) he third
- The third level meant separation from the Jewish community with the person being considered dead. (Examples: 1st Cor.5:1- 7 and Matt.18:15-20) This third level would be the man’s fate if he answered incorrectly.
The parents then decided to let their son speak for himself.
Crazy thinking
During the second interrogation of the man, the Pharisees became so disturbed that they became illogical. The passage says they praised God because they were sure Christ was a sinner. This was not a cause for rejoicing!
The man, although angry, correctly spoke that the Pharisees had been the ones to teach him the importance of this miracle.
He asked them to explain how this contradiction occurred. After much of the same questions, the exasperated man asks if they were listening to him and due to the importance of their persistence wonders if they wish to be disciples of Christ.
They responded in anger saying they were disciples of Moses and admitted ignorance as to who Christ was from. In the continuing battle, the man accused the priests of having no basis for rejecting Christ as the Messiah. Their response followed from their background understanding that surely this man was born blind in sin and yet he dared teach them about Holy things?
The irony is that the man truly was spiritually seeing clearer than they were. Still, he was excommunicated from the church. But, at the very end when Christ approached the man and told him who He was, the man gave Christ honor and worshiped Him in spite of all that he had endured.
inspired2think 