John 9:13-23

It sounds as though the formerly blind man’s neighbors did not know what to think of his testimony. They took him to the Pharisees, probably hoping the Pharisees could figure out what happened.

 

A new detail comes out: Jesus had restored the man’s sight on the Sabbath. This is part of what concerned the Pharisees. They wanted to make sure that the Sabbath had not been violated. So they asked the man again exactly how he had been healed.

 

The seeing man again gave the same testimony: He (Jesus) applied clay/mud to my eyes, I washed, and now I see.”

 

The Pharisees were not sure what to think. Some of them heard the first part about making and applying mud to a man’s eyes. Making mud and applying it to a man’s eyes is a form of work. Work was done on the Sabbath. Therefore the Healer is bad, wicked.

 

Others heard the last part, the formerly blind man’s testimony: “Now I see.” Who restores sight? Satan has been known to afflict people, but health is from the LORD. This man was blind but now sees. This sounds like the work of God! Therefore the man who did this is not a sinner, for He works on behalf of God. The Pharisees disagreed among themselves. Jesus was always bringing disagreement between people.

 

With all this disagreement, they decided to ask the blind man for his impression. In his judgment, Jesus was a prophet. Now, Jesus was a prophet, and His followers knew Him as such (Mt. 13:57; Mark 6:4; Luke 24:19; John 4:44). This statement was intended to give Jesus great honor. A prophet was a man who did as God said and spoke God’s words. A prophet was in close communion with God and received his direction from God. So to call Jesus a prophet was to say that He was a true man of God, for God would not offer such a close relationship to a sinful man or honor a sinful man’s attempts to heal a man born blind if that man was sinning in the process. 

 

The Jews didn’t want to honor Jesus. They didn’t want to believe that He had actually healed the eyes of a blind man. They were looking for some way to demonstrate that this blind man’s healing was a deception. So they called in the blind man’s parents.

 

The man’s parents confirmed that he was their son and that he had indeed been born blind. But they refused to join their son in saying that Jesus had healed him.

 

John tells us why. The Jews had already agreed to exclude from the synagogue anyone who said that Jesus was the Christ, and the man’s parents did not want to appear to support Jesus. Their son was saying some dangerous things about Jesus, things very close to getting him kicked out of the synagogue. He was honoring Jesus in the face of men who had already decided to oppose Him.

 

The seeing man’s testimony was becoming more difficult. The reason he had to keep repeating his testimony was because no one would accept it. They heard his testimony, but they couldn’t believe it, so they would pass it off to another group for judgment. It was becoming like a trial, with the people sitting as judges and lawyers over the man’s testimony, examining it from every angle for evidence that the story was false. The seeing man would probably have been much more encouraged to re-tell his story if he’d had a receptive audience. But this was beginning to be more of an ordeal than a pleasure. No one would accept what he had to say.

 

On the other hand, no one could disprove his story. Every time they thought they might have found a way to prove the seeing man a liar, the Pharisees and the people found further evidence for its truth.

 

But there was certainly opposition. The seeing man’s parents, called in to testify that he was their son and had been born blind, refused to say anything more than the bare facts because they were afraid of being excluded from the synagogue. The Jews had already decided to oppose those who thought that Jesus was the Christ, and the blind man’s testimony wasn’t helping!

 

Too often we make our decisions before we have all the evidence. Of course, the Jews had a lot of evidence by this point that Jesus was the Christ. But they had refused to accept it. And now that further evidence was coming in, they couldn’t stand it! It galled them to see something else come along that might convince more people that Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be. But we do the same thing. We decide that something is unbelievable, and then we discredit it in the face of rising evidence until we are clearly in the wrong. Even then we stubbornly refuse to accept the truth. By that point we have too much at stake. We can’t admit we were wrong (even though that would be the humble, gracious, and honorable thing to do).

 

Father, keep me humble. Or make me humble. Whichever is required. Help me to recognize truth and to honor it as truth. May I not ignore truth, oppose truth, or do anything else that would keep me (and maybe others) from walking in the truth. May I encourage those whose testimonies support the truth, and may I take a stand on their side. Ultimately, may I stand for you!