A man born blind is healed with mud and a walk to a pool, and it should be the end of the story. Instead it becomes an interrogation — his neighbors, then the Pharisees, then his own frightened parents, then the Pharisees again, each round circling the same question they refuse to answer honestly: who is this man who can open the eyes of someone born blind? The healed man never wavers. He doesn’t know theology, doesn’t know Jesus’s credentials, doesn’t know how the miracle worked. He knows exactly one thing, and he says it plainly enough that it gets him thrown out of the synagogue.
A study in John 9 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 24 min read
That The Works Of God Should Be Made Manifest In Him
“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”
John 9:1-3
The disciples’ question assumes something Jesus flatly refuses to confirm — that every disaster in a person’s life has a sin somewhere behind it, waiting to be found.
“It was generally believed by the Jews that sin is punished in this life. Every affliction was regarded as the penalty of some wrongdoing, either of the sufferer himself or of his parents. It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God,—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 471
Jesus does not stop to correct the theology in detail. He simply moves past the question entirely and does the one thing that actually answers it.
“I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
John 9:4-5
He repeats, word for word, the claim from the previous chapter that had nearly gotten Him stoned — and then, rather than defending the claim with more words, He simply demonstrates it.
“When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.”
John 9:6-7
“It was evident that there was no healing virtue in the clay, or in the pool wherein the blind man was sent to wash, but that the virtue was in Christ.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 471
The clay and the pool are theater, not mechanism. A man who has never once seen anything in his life washes his face in a public pool and comes up seeing color, distance, and faces for the first time.
Is Not This He That Sat And Begged
“The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he.”
John 9:8-9
“They looked upon him with doubt; for when his eyes were opened, his countenance was changed and brightened, and he appeared like another man. … Some said, ‘This is he;’ others, ‘He is like him.’ But he who had received the great blessing settled the question by saying, ‘I am he.’”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 471
Even the men who begged beside him for years cannot quite believe their own eyes, which is a strange kind of compliment to how completely his face has changed. The neighbors drag him before the religious authorities, expecting a celebration and getting a trial instead.
“They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. … He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see. Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them.”
John 9:13-16
“They knew not that it was He who had made the Sabbath and knew all its obligation, who had healed the blind man. They appeared wonderfully zealous for the observance of the Sabbath, yet were planning murder on that very day. But many were greatly moved at hearing of this miracle, and were convicted that He who had opened the eyes of the blind was more than a common man.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 472
The council splits over the wrong question — whether a Sabbath-breaker can be from God — and never gets around to asking the only question that actually mattered: what kind of power just gave a blind man his sight.
“They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet.”
John 9:17
Under questioning, his own understanding of who healed him is already growing — a man, then a man sent from God, and by the end of this chapter, something more than either.
Will Ye Also Be His Disciples
“His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind: But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself.”
John 9:20-21
“The parents feared to compromise themselves; for it had been declared that whoever should acknowledge Jesus as the Christ should be ‘put out of the synagogue.’ … The great work wrought for their son had brought conviction to the parents, yet they answered … Thus they shifted all responsibility from themselves to their son; for they dared not confess Christ.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 472
The parents believe. They simply will not pay the price of saying so out loud, and hand their own son back into the fire rather than stand beside him in it. He, unprotected now and with everything to lose, does not flinch the way they did.
“He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples? Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.”
John 9:27-29
“The Pharisees did not realize that they had to deal with any other than the uneducated man who had been born blind; they knew not Him with whom they were in controversy. Divine light shone into the chambers of the blind man’s soul. … The Lord Jesus knew the ordeal through which the man was passing, and He gave him grace and utterance, so that he became a witness for Christ.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 474
An uneducated beggar out-argues the nation’s most trained legal minds using nothing but common sense and the one fact he refuses to let anyone talk him out of.
“If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.”
John 9:33-34
“The man had met his inquisitors on their own ground. His reasoning was unanswerable. The Pharisees were astonished, and they held their peace,—spellbound before his pointed, determined words.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 474
Unable to answer him, they fall back on the one insult that requires no evidence at all — the very affliction the disciples asked about in the opening verse, thrown at him now as a verdict.
Lord, I Believe
“Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?”
John 9:35
“For the first time the blind man looked upon the face of his Restorer. Before the council he had seen his parents troubled and perplexed; he had looked upon the frowning faces of the rabbis; now his eyes rested upon the loving, peaceful countenance of Jesus.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 474
Everyone else who examined this man’s eyes that day was looking for a reason to disbelieve him. Only now, cast out and alone, does he finally get to look into the face of the One who actually did it.
“He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.”
John 9:36-38
“The man cast himself at the Saviour’s feet in worship. Not only had his natural sight been restored, but the eyes of his understanding had been opened. Christ had been revealed to his soul, and he received Him as the Sent of God.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 475
The healing that made the neighbors argue and the Pharisees rage turns out to have been the smaller miracle. The larger one happens in this last quiet exchange, when a man who spent his whole life unable to see anything finally sees, and worships, the One who made his eyes in the first place.
“And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.”
John 9:39-41
“But in this very revelation, judgment was passing upon men. Their character was tested, their destiny determined. The manifestation of divine power that had given to the blind man both natural and spiritual sight had left the Pharisees in yet deeper darkness.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 475
The same light that gave one man everything left the men who examined him, cross-examined him, and finally threw him out no better off than before — not because the light failed, but because they were the only people in the whole chapter who never once admitted they needed it.
