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THE NORTHERN KENTUCKY SEARCHER VOLUME 6, NUMBER 8, FEBRUARY 26, 2006 A MAN BORN BLIND (JOHN 9) PART 2 Remember that the Pharisees have now called in the parents of the man who was born blind, and had asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?” This is where we will pick up our study The parents answered clearly and affirmatively the first two questions. “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind.” However, they demonstrated a decided lack of courage concerning the third question. It is obvious that the Pharisees had already let it be known, however informally, that confession of Jesus would result in removal from the synagogue, the focal point of Jewish life. Fearing that, the parents said, “How he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he shall speak for himself.” Verse 24 and the statement of the Pharisees deserves special notice. “So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” Two different views of this statement seem possible. (1) They were very subtly urging the man to be as pious as they were. They had judged this Jesus to be a sinner and this man should go along with them. (2) They were seeking to get this man to confess that he and Jesus had concocted this story together and the whole thing was a fake. It is said that the phrase, “give glory to God” was an adjuration to a criminal to admit what he had done. No matter how the statement of the Pharisees is understood, this healed man would have none of it. He stuck strictly to the facts he knew. He didn’t know Jesus well enough to say if He was a sinner or not, but he did know that he had been blind, and now he could see, and there was nothing fraudulent about it. Seeking some way to answer the simple honesty of the healed man, the Pharisees again asked for the details of what had happened. His response is inspiring to all those who have faced skeptics. He simply asked them two questions which laid bare their hypocrisy. First, “I told you already, and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? and “You do not want to become His disciples too, do you?” This man’s faith in Jesus, a man he had not known at all prior to this event, was very quickly growing under the harassing questioning of the Pharisees. His response really upset these unbelieving Pharisees. “You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses; but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.” This is a powerful argument. If they could make it appear that Jesus was forsaking Moses, and that this fellow was doing the same thing by following Him, they would rightfully label him as an apostate. What courage this formerly blind beggar demonstrated as he exposed the ungodly motives of the Pharisees! “Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes.” This remark is dripping with sarcasm. These were the Pharisees, the scholars of the law, and they can’t draw the right conclusion from the evidence before their faces. “We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing, and does His will, He hears him. Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.” There was only one conclusion that could be honestly reached. Jesus had to be from God. It is interesting that this simple man, healed by Jesus of life-long blindness, reached the same conclusion that the great Nicodemus reached in John 3:2, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” First the Pharisees had denied that the man had been blind. Now they find themselves being out-smarted by this simple, honest man. So they attempt to use his blindness as proof of the fact that he was a sinner. As a sinner, how could he possibly teach them? With that they cast him out, meaning that he would not be welcome in the synagogue or the temple anymore. Jesus, hearing of the persecution of the man, sought him out. He had been cast out of that which pertained to Moses, but Jesus was leading him into fellowship with the Son of God. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “And who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” We must acknowledge that to this man the idea of knowing the Son of God, the long awaited Messiah, was beyond his wildest dreams. But here, to an outcast from the synagogue, Jesus clearly identified Himself as He – the Son of God.” The man believed and worshipped Jesus. Since God only deserves worship, surely this is an example of Jesus acknowledging that He was God even as He was man. While the discussion between Jesus and the man He had healed has all the earmarks of having been private, Jesus next turned His attention to the crowds. He contrasted the physical blindness of the man who had been healed with the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees who thought they saw and understood all; but in reality refused to see. Some of the Pharisees made the application and said, “We are not blind too, are we?” Of the Lord’s reply, Augustine wrote that if they had realized their blindness then they would have sought the Light and He would have taken away their sin, but as now they boast of their vision, their sin remained because they reject the Light.” What a wonderful chapter! Greg Litmer
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