John 9
This chapter contains the story of Jesus healing a blind man on the Sabbath. The chapter gives us big answers to two main questions in Christian life: the reason for our personal limitations and how to treat worldly authority.
The chapter starts with Jesus and His disciples passing by a blind man, and the disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” They attempt to apply a worldly idea of fairness to the situation, which would help them rationalize why the man deserved to be born blind, maybe to save them from feeling some sort of sympathy. I often fall into this mental trap when passing by a homeless person, assuming it was their choices or mental handicap that led them to their position.
But Jesus responds, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” I don’t think anybody reading this is blind, but each of us is born with some sort of ailment that we may feel is unfair. While we recognize that’s just how life is, Jesus shows us that it’s much more than that. Every problem we have can be used by God for good, whether we realize it in the present moment or not. Even if you totally fail in fixing your problems, somebody could have been watching and learned from your failure. God’s plan is infinitely more robust than we can comprehend, and so are all the moving pieces in our day-to-day lives. One failure could save you from another, and one shortcoming could cause you to uproot another part of your life, without you realizing it. God created us to pull good out of bad. We don’t know why we have these problems, but we do know that they are meaningful.
After Jesus heals the man, the Pharisees begin to question him. When he plainly tells them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see,” they leave. They come back later and ask him the same thing. He says, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become His disciples?” The Pharisees then try to assert their authority by saying, “You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.” This perfectly illustrates the radical shift in authority when you enter the Christian life. The day you become a Christian, your obligations to men are now gone. You don’t answer to your job, business, friends or government. You now clearly see that the only authority is God. Does this scare you? It should. Because when you take up true Christian action in your life, it can produce a visceral response from anybody who doesn’t understand. Just like with the Pharisees here. At the end of the chapter, they proceed to cast the newly seeing man out of the synagogue. It’s not pretty. But we can have solace in knowing that we are on the right path.