1 Now as Jesus was passing by, He saw a man blind from birth, 2 and His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him. 4 While it is daytime, we must do[A] the works of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

6 When Jesus had said this, He spit on the ground, made some mud, and applied it to the man’s eyes. 7 Then He told him, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing.

REFLECTIONS

Written by Stephen Shead

What a spectacular way for Jesus to illustrate that he is – as he claimed in chapter 8 – “the light of the world”! The point of the healing wasn’t to say that all Christians with a disability will be healed in this life. At the final resurrection, we will be raised in bodies that are healed of all sickness and disability, but when Jesus says, “Night is coming, when no one can work” (v 4), I think he’s saying that we should not expect the miracles he did in his earthly ministry to continue in the same way.

Anyway, the purpose of this healing was to prove that Jesus isn’t just words. He claimed to be “the light of the world” for everyone – the great “I AM”, as we saw yesterday. He is the one through whom the world was made, and he can bring us from the darkness of sin and death and spiritual blindness, to knowing God and finding new life in him.

But I think Jesus’s words in this passage are especially comforting to people with a disability or a chronic illness. It’s true that, in a very general way, all the things we suffer come from mankind’s sin in rebelling against God. That doesn’t mean that specific conditions must be because of that person’s sin, or even their family’s sin - Jesus knocks that firmly on the head. But he tells us something far more beautiful as well, when he says about the blind man, “this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him” (v 3). For the person who trusts in Jesus, God uses even disability or chronic illness for his good and life-giving purposes. It might be a long time before we see how that is; and it might be by healing, or it might be by our growth in endurance and hope and joy through suffering. Either way, God is more than capable of using our brokenness to shine the light of Jesus so that other might see him and live.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen is our senior minister.