“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.” (John 9:1 KJV)
Reading this chapter this morning really tugs on my heart for this entire chapter. What an extreme effort to develop a witness. What an awful tragedy. It begins so flighty as those Jesus, like a butterfly, was just passing by. Ha! Even the smallest happenstance things in our walk are so much deeper than we can see. This man had been blind since birth. He was at least 40 years old. He had been begging at this location for a really long time. The Lord had planted a witness here that was as primed as they come to help those who thought they could see to really see. He performed the obvious miracle with his disciples as witnesses of a physical healing. A washing was done. A testimony to leadership was provided. A chance to reason through both the physical attributes of what had been done and a realization that they had been done differently than the current leadership would have done them so that they would know it was God who did them. A back and forth of calling witnesses (the crowd who saw him daily and the parents). And yet, no testimony, however thorough, complete with cross examination, was able to open the eyes of those who thought that they could see.
Learning about God and about righteousness and about proper procedure and about how to care and all the other good things that you can learn about does not help us any until we first realize our guilt, confess our sin, and let Jesus forgive us. Then all that education, taken under the Lord’s direction, can begin to do us some good. If Romans 3:23 is accurate, there are many more of us that have been born blind than we realize. If 1 John 1:9 is accurate, he has provided a way! The blind man walked away seeing and forgiven. Those who thought that they could see remained guilty.
“Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” (John 9:41 KJV)