The Gospel According to John 9:1-17 [NLTse]

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. ² “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?”

³ “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. ⁴ We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us.^[a^] The night is coming, and then no one can work. ⁵ But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.”

⁶ Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. ⁷ He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing!

⁸ His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each other, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹ Some said he was, and others said, “No, he just looks like him!”

But the beggar kept saying, “Yes, I am the same one!”

¹⁰ They asked, “Who healed you? What happened?”

¹¹ He told them, “The man they call Jesus made mud and spread it over my eyes and told me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash yourself.’ So I went and washed, and now I can see!”

Sermon

One of the reasons I believe and love the Bible is because it deals with the hardest issues in life. It doesn’t sweep painful things under the rug, or complex things or confusing things or shocking things or controversial things. In fact, it seems Jesus sometimes went out of His way to create controversy with the Pharisees and others so that more truth about Himself and about unbelief would come out, so that we could be warned by examples of hardness and drawn near by images of His glory.

One of the hardest things in life is the suffering of children, and the suffering of those who love them—especially when that early suffering turns into a lifetime of living with profound loss. The issue may be autism or Down syndrome or spina bifida or blindness or any number of rare and hard to pronounce conditions. Each has its own peculiar sorrows, its own peculiar ways of turning lifetimes into what you never dreamed or planned they would be. Married life is changed from what you thought it would be. Everything is irrevocably changed, and life will never be the same again. And God didn’t ask you.

What would I do as a pastor if I had to face these things—these children, these parents—with a Bible that said nothing about what they are going through? What if I was stuck thinking up my own ideas about suffering and disabilities and illnesses? What if all I had was human opinions on such things? I thank God that this is not our situation. Suffering and sorrow are woven through the Bible. This is one of the things that makes it so believable to me. It is filled with things that God has said and done to shed light on our sufferings and sorrows.

It is no accident that after telling the crowds in the Temple that He was the light of the world that having noticed this man-born-blind the Son of God repeats it, saying, “I am the light of the world.” God’s light has come into the world, and it is shining on disabilities and sicknesses and on everything else. God has not left us to alone to despair of any meaning, nor has He left us alone to have to make up our own meaning.

Our reading begins saying, “As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man who had been blind from birth.” He is a man now. But he was born blind. And it did not go easily for him. We meet his parents later in verse 18. But they were not able to care for him at some point, so he’d become a beggar. We know that because of verse 8: “His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each other, ‘Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?’” So he was blind and he was desperately poor. Life had been very hard.

Jesus saw the man as he passed by. And the disciples saw that Jesus saw him. Verse 2 says, “Rabbi, why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” That question is key. But notice that the interaction did not begin with the disciples’ question, or even with the disciples seeing the blind man. It begins with Jesus seeing the man: “As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man who had been blind from birth.” The disciples have noticed the blind man because Jesus noticed him.

And just as an aside, I would ask us – all of us – see people with disabilities. Notice them. Engage with them. And I don’t mean see them or notice them like the priest or the Levite in Jesus’ parable about our neighbor, passing by on the other side. This is our natural reflex: To see, be uncomfortable, and avoid. But you and I are not natural people. We are followers of Jesus. We have the Spirit of Jesus in our hearts. We have been seen and touched in all our brokenness by a Savior Who has seen and noticed and engaged us.

If you want to be one of the most remarkable kinds of human beings on the planet – a true follower of Jesus – see people with disabilities. See them. Notice them. Engage them. God will show you what to do and say.

When the disciples saw Jesus’ attention to the blind man, they asked for an explanation of the man’s blindness. “Rabbi, why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” Jesus answers their question but not as they’ve asked it. They are seeking to understand the cause: What caused his blindness? The man’s sin? Or his parents’ sin? Is his blindness a punishment for sins his parents had committed, or is it a punishment for his own sins – some kind of punishment-ahead-of-time for sins God knew would come along?

And Jesus answers. But He doesn’t speak to the cause of the blindness. He points them to its purpose.

Jesus says, basically, specific sins in the past don’t always match up with specific suffering in the present. The explanation for this man’s blindness is not found by looking for its cause but by looking for its purpose. “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins. This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”

(Notice that Jesus is not denying that suffering came into the world because of sin. It did. Genesis 3 and Romans 8:18+ make clear that if there had never been sin then there would never have been suffering. All suffering is because of sin. And part of the meaning of the physical horrors we see going on around us is so that human beings might recognize the moral horrors of the sin we commit and that is committed all around us.

It’s a fine distinction: That the existence of sin in the world is the cause of suffering in the world, but that specific sins in the world are usually not the cause of specific sufferings in the world.)

“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins. This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.” So the explanation of the man’s blindness lies not in the past causes but in the present and future purposes!

Now, there are some pastors and teachers who do not at all like the idea that God might will a child to be born blind so that some purpose-of-God might be achieved. One of the ways they try to work around the teaching of this passage is to say that God had nothing to do with the man’s blindness but that his blindness merely gave God the opportunity to display His mighty works by restoring the man’s sight.

But that teaching doesn’t fit the context.

The disciples have asked for an explanation of the blindness, and Jesus’ answer is given as an explanation of the blindness. If you try to argue that God had no purpose, plan, or design in the blindness, but simply finds the blindness later and uses it, that doesn’t answer the disciples’ question. They want to know why he is blind? And Jesus give them an answer. He’s blind because God has purpose in it. There’s a plan. God means for His power to be seen in Jesus’ healing him.

Another reason that “work around” doesn’t work is that God knows all things. He knows exactly what is happening in the moments of our conception. When there is a defective chromosome or some genetic irregularity in the sperm that is about to fertilize an egg, God can simply say, “No.” He commands the winds. He commands the waves. He commands the sperm and the genetic makeup of the egg. If God permits a conception that He knows will produce blindness, He has reasons for it. And those reasons are His loving purposes. His grand designs. His eternal plans. God has never birthed a child for whom He had no plan. There are no accidents in God’s mind or hands.

And so, any attempt to deny God’s sovereign, wise, purposeful control over conception and birth runs head-on into Exodus 4:11 and Psalm 139:13, which say, “Then the Lord asked Moses, ‘Who makes a person’s mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I, the Lord?’” and “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

Jesus is saying to the disciples: Stop being so concerned with fault and blame in your concerns about suffering; nor should you give in to thoughts of helplessness or hopelessness or meaninglessness. Set your minds to the purposes and plans of God! There is no child and no suffering outside God’s purposes!

“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins. This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”

Now, this is not the whole explanation of suffering in the Bible. There are many other relevant passages and important points to make. But this passage and this point are huge! Suffering can have meaning, but it can only have ultimate meaning in relation to God.

Jesus says that the purpose of the man’s blindness was so that God’s power could be seen in Jesus. This means that for our suffering and any suffering to have ultimate meaning that God must be more important to us than anything else in life. More valuable than health; more valuable than our kids or our parents; more valuable than our husbands or wives; more valuable than life itself! Like many things according to the Bible, suffering makes no sense until God becomes more important to us than anything else.

For Jesus, blindness from birth and its challenges, poverty and hardship, etc… will all be worth it when God’s power is seen in Jesus through it all! In this case of the man-born-blind, God’s power shown in Jesus happens to be healing—the glory of God’s power to heal. And yet there is nothing that says it has to be healing. When Paul cried out three times for his thorn-in-the-flesh to be healed, Jesus said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). I will let My power be seen, not by healing you, but by sustaining you.

And so, healing displays God’s power in Christ in John 9, and sustaining grace displays God’s power in Christ in 2 Corinthians 12. What is common in both cases is the majesty and supremacy of God: The blindness is for the glory of God; the thorn-in-the-flesh is for the glory of God. The healing is for God’s glory in Christ; and the non-healing is for His glory in Him, as well.

Suffering can only have ultimate meaning when seen in relation to the majesty and supremacy of the God Who is worth everything to us.

One last thing. Jesus says, “We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the One Who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work.” And so, Jesus is going to heal this man’s blindness. Jesus’ works are God’s works.

But He must do so quickly, because night is coming and His work will be over. Jesus will turn from a ministry of healing to a ministry of dying. He will turn from the “day-work” of relieving suffering, and do the “night-work” of suffering in our place.

And we could join the disciples in asking: Why? Who sinned that Jesus must suffer? And the answer would certainly be: Not him. We did. That is the cause of His suffering. But that doesn’t explain it. The explanation is that Jesus suffered so that the power of God might be seen in Him: The works of wrath-bearing; and curse-removing; and guilt-lifting; and righteousness-providing; and death-defeating; and life-giving; and – in the end – suffering-removing—totally removing.

For “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Revelation 21:4). Because every time we embrace sorrow and engage disability and face loss in faith to display the power of God in Christ, we display the power of God in us as spoken in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18: “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

May God give us eyes to see that the display of His power in His Son’s suffering and in our sufferings and in our children’s sufferings are all expressions of His love.

A special thank you to Pastor John Piper, upon some of whose work this sermon is loosely based; desiringGod.org.