Understanding Jesus: He Gives Sight to the Blind
Reflections
“Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” If it is “the Jews” whose actions illustrate this fact, it is only because they are the representatives of us all – as Paul insists in Romans 2-3. Every achievement in “making sense” of the world, insofar as it succeeds, creates a claim to “see” which is threatened by the coming of Jesus who overturns all the “wisdom of the world,” all the systems which are extrapolations from the experience of a world turned in upon itself. The coming of the light must always threaten every such system, for it can only be received in the simplicity of a child, in the simple gratitude of a man who says, “One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.” This kind of “seeing,” this “wisdom from above” (James 3:17), begins and ends in worship, for the true light can never be a possession but only and always a gift.
— Leslie Newbigin
The Light Has Come
- Jesus reveals who God is
- Gives us new eyes to see who God is
- Jesus not only sees us, he has empathy for us
- “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we do know that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
- Our usual reaction
- Anger track – looking for scapegoat, blame it on parents
- Guilt track – blaming yourself
- It’s God’s grace when Jesus heals the man without being asked
- You could be so secured you can’t soften your heart
- Jesus finds rejected people (v35)
- The blind man’s conversion, from v11 “The man called Jesus”, to v38 “Lord”
- It wasn’t the blind man finds Jesus, it was Jesus finds him
