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Jesus says, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” Amen. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints, what an absolutely stunning text, John chapter 9, that’s set before us today. I want to point out how this text both begins and ends with questions to Jesus and his answers to those questions, and in the middle, we have the healing of this sassy blind man. In fact, Jesus heals him with mud on his eyes, tells him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. He goes and he washes, and now everybody’s trying to figure out, is this the one who was born blind, or is it not?
The Pharisees are upset about it, and we find out halfway through the text it’s because it’s on the Sabbath day, and you’re not supposed to do this kind of thing on the Sabbath day. In fact, the Jews had come up with a law that said that if you spit on the Sabbath day, you had to spit on a rock lest you spit on the dirt and water a plant. So the very fact that Jesus spat on the ground and made mud was in violation of the Pharisaical Sabbath law, and this man going to wash his face is also a violation of the same.
And so they say, “Who did this? It’s Jesus. I bet it’s Jesus!” They were after him from the beginning, and this guy says, “Why are you asking so many questions?” They bring in his parents. His parents are asked, and he says, “Are you trying to become his disciples?” So they kick him out of the synagogue. Jesus finds him, restores him, and brings him back in. Absolutely amazing!
But remember, the text begins and ends with these questions. The first question is, as they were walking into Jerusalem, the disciples see this blind man, and they ask Jesus, “Who sinned? Who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” I don’t wonder if the disciples might have whispered that question so the blind man couldn’t hear. They didn’t know that he wouldn’t know they were talking about him. Maybe they didn’t care. Either way, I think Jesus would have answered them so that this man could have heard it.
He said, “It wasn’t that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” The disciples saw this blindness. They knew it’s connected to sin. We know that blindness is because the world’s broken, but they wanted to connect it to a particular sin, a person’s particular sin—this man or his parents that would have sinned. Then Jesus says, “No, you’re thinking about it the wrong way. You see that man’s blindness? That’s for the glory of God.”
Now, to have eyes to see like this, I mean, especially in these days, we ask, “Who sinned that this affliction of the coronavirus should be unleashed on the world? Who sinned? Was it the world out there or was it the church in here that the Lord has laid upon us the affliction of not being able to gather in his house to taste his body and his blood and to know—to reassure ourselves and encourage one another that the Lord is our Lord and that we are his people?”
That’s the question we want to ask, but Jesus says, “You’re looking at it the wrong way. All of these things are so that the works of God and the glory of God would be revealed.” But then the text also ends with a question. In fact, the Pharisees had come back to the disciples’ question when they were talking to the man, when the man says, “You want to become his disciples?”
They chastise him and say, “You were born in sin; get out of the synagogue.” But then Jesus says, the Pharisees are overhearing Jesus talking about sight and blindness, and they ask— they come to Jesus and they ask him, “Are we then also blind?” Jesus answers them with a riddle: “He says, if you were blind, you would have no guilt. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”
Now it turns out—and this is the kind of joyful surprise of the text and always the joyful surprise of the Scriptures—that Jesus is intent on opening more eyes than just this man, just more than just this one man’s eyes. He also is opening the eyes of his disciples. He’s also trying, if he can, to open the eyes of the Pharisees, and he is also opening your eyes and mine.
So this last riddle, it’s like another riddle that Jesus says. He says, “I came not to heal the righteous, but the sick. If you are well, you don’t need a doctor, but only the sick.” Now we know that everybody is sick, especially the Pharisees that Jesus was talking to. We know that they’re sick, but what’s the trouble? Is they didn’t know it yet. The symptoms were not manifesting themselves yet so that if you don’t know that you’re not sick, if the symptoms aren’t showing up, then you don’t know that you need to go to the doctor. You don’t know that you need to go and be tested.
But if you do know that you’re sick, then what do you do? You go to the doctor. So Jesus is saying the same thing: If you don’t think that you’re a sinner, if you don’t think that you have fallen from God’s grace, if you don’t think that you deserve the wrath of God, then you never go looking for a Savior. You think you’re your own savior, or that you don’t even need saving.
So, Jesus teaches that the way to health is through sickness, through the acknowledgement of being sick. The way to righteousness is through sin—at least acknowledging and recognizing that you’re a sinner. And the way to sight is through blindness. Jesus says, “If you say, ‘We see,’ then you are still blind. But if you recognize that you’re blind, then you have no guilt.”
So Jesus is teaching us the way to true Christian enlightenment, to true Christian sight, to true Christian health, and to true Christian righteousness. We, first, recognize that we are blind, that we don’t see things rightly, that we don’t even see ourselves rightly—our neighbor and creation and God—that we recognize that we are not well, that we are sick and that we are dying, and that we recognize that we are not righteous, that we are not holy, that we are not good people who will be simply welcomed into heaven as if we deserve to be there.
No one is righteous. No, not one. No one seeks after God. No one loves the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and no one loves their neighbor as they love themselves. So we come to Jesus recognizing our blindness, recognizing our weakness, recognizing our sin, and then he spits on the ground, and he mixes some mud, and he smears it on our eyes and our heart and our conscience, and He gives us eyes to see.
He’s thrown to the ground and crowned with thorns and nailed to the cross, and all of this so that we would be made holy. We would be made righteous. We would be declared innocent and to be His own dear people. And in this, we see things rightly. Our eyes are opened to see God as he truly would have us see him. Not as an angry judge, not as a faraway deity, but as a good and kind and merciful Savior and as a dear friend who is with us even now.
He’s the one who said, “I will never leave you or forsake you, but I will be with you always, even to the end of the ages.” And although the ages might end soon, they haven’t yet. So that you know, dear friends, dear saints, that Jesus is with you. And by His Word and by His Spirit, He gives you the eyes to see it, and the heart to trust it, and the lips to proclaim it, and the conscience to rejoice in it.
May God be praised. As Jesus says, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt, but if you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” We come to Jesus confessing our blindness, confessing our weakness, confessing our sickness, confessing our sin, and He says, “Be of good cheer. Your sins are all forgiven.” God be praised. Amen.
And the peace of God that passes all understanding and guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
