I love the blind guy in John 9. In the middle of a crowd of chickens – including his parents – he cares about the truth and doesn’t give a rip what might happen to him. It’s so refreshing to see Him state it so clearly and simply for all the hedging religious people:
God doesn’t listen to sinners; he listens to people who respect Him and do what He wants. Since the beginning of the world, nobody’s ever heard of giving sight to somebody born blind. If this man weren’t from God, He wouldn’t be able to do a thing.
It’s a little trickier to understand the connections Jesus makes between working on the Sabbath and spiritual blindness/light:
He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him. As long as it is day, we must keep on doing the work of Him who sent me; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
I confess I don’t get all of this. The reason he’s blind is so that the “works of God might be displayed in him” (ESV) or “God’s power might be seen at work in him” (GNT). So it looks like there might be some word-play between the man getting sight and God’s work being displayed/seen. As well as the correlation between this being done on the Sabbath and the idea that God wants to display His works.
But when Jesus says that “night is coming, when no one can work” – is He just using nightfall as an illustration that, just like when night comes and no one can work – in a similar way when He leaves the planet, He cannot work? And therefore He needs to be busy now, even on the Sabbath? Surely He’s not saying that there will come a time when literally no one can work – that would be stretching the illustration too far, right?
At any rate, it scares and enamors me just how controversial Jesus is among religious people like me. Like Adam said at the Quiz Meet, the religious establishment in this country – in many ways the modern-day Pharisees – are conservative Christians. We are the ones careful to play by the rules, careful to look good. We are so careful not to offend. We’re not usually concerned about whether we might lead others to sin (what Romans 14 is actually about), instead we’re concerned about whether we might offend them (two very different things).
But Jesus, not Him! He’s purposefully offending people left and right — but not for the sake of shock value. Rather, He’s driven by a passion for God’s glory. Like earlier in John, “passion for Your house consumes Me”. I love what Mark Driscoll says: “we need to call sinners to repent of their sin and we need to call religious people to repent of their religion.”
Man, I want to be more like Jesus and less like the Pharisees. The scene here in John 9 is so ripe with human depravity it’s chilling (and would make a good plot for a sci-fi messianic fiction like Dune or the Matrix): when “the One” finally does come, the religious communities who’ve been waiting for Him hate Him so much they excommunicate anyone who believes in Him.
God:
I will send my beloved Son, perhaps they will respect Him.
Us:
This is the heir. Let’s kill him and take the inheritance.
