November 1924
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T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
point where it called Him a prophet. It took another step and called Him the Sinless One. Then it reached the climax, confessing and worshiping Him as the Son of God. This is the normal and practical method of growth. The man did what Christ told him to do and found that Christ was all that He claimed to be.
born blind. The disciples raised a question concerning the reason for his blindness and Jesus answered it by saying that God takes all the responsibility for the deformities which men bring with them into the world. This is what God told Moses in Exodus 4:11. This poor beggar may have thought that he was living a useless life, but God had a mission for him as really as He had for any one of the twelve apostles. God meant him to be one of the telling witnesses of the Messiahship and Deity of Jesus. He meant him also to be a witness for all time of the value of the practical method of testing the claims of Christ. Christ gave the blind man exactly what he needed, the power of sight. He always adapts Himself to the needs of men. To the woman at Jacob’s well, He is the living water. To Mary and Martha at the grave of Lazarus, He is the resurrection and the life. To this poor blind man, He is the light of the world. The method of Jesus was extremely simple. He made clay out of dust and saliva, anointed the man’s eyes, and sent him to wash in the fountain of Siloam. No surgical operation was performed, no powerful chemicals were used, no magic formulas were repeated. The means were absurdly inadequate to the end in view and purposely so, in order to snow that a Divine power was at work. The cure was complete. The man returned from Siloam with seeing eyes. He was in a new world. We ought to thank God every day for the marvelous gift of sight. Grat itude for such a gift should keep our eyes from beholding vanity. This miracle is a picture and parable of redemption. It is a type of our translation from the kingdom of darkness into the marvelous light of the Gospel. Have we a spiritual sight corresponding to this man’s natural sight? Have we a spiritual joy like,unto his natural joy? The healing of the blind man called forth a prolonged discussion and investigation. It began with his neighbors. It was continued by the religious leaders. They first under took to show that no miracle had been wrought and that the man had never been blind at all. They examined and cross-examined the man, but they could not shake his testimony. He refused to be cajoled or brow-beaten. They had theories and he had facts. They argued that Jesus could not be from God because He disregarded their laws in respect to Sabbath-keeping. The man argued that to press the Sabbath question was to admit the miracle; and to admit the miracle was to admit that God was in Jesus and working through Him, for no man since time began ever gave sight to one born blind. To maintain that God works a miracle like this through a sinner was to compro mise God, for He will not contradict Himself. The record closes with the fuller instruction and devel opment of the man’s faith by Christ. He did not lose track of the man. The phrase “ when He had found him” implies that He had been hunting for him. Christ sought him out and revealed Himself to him. The man recognized the voice and looked into the face of his deliverer. Jesus began the development of his faith by asking a question, “ Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” The man had heard of men of God and prophets of God, but the Son of God was new to him. So he asked: “Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him?” Then Jesus told him plainly that He who was speaking to him was the Son of God. Wonderful as this declaration was the man at once responded, “ Lord, I believe,’’ and bowed and worshiped Him. This was the highest homage that Jesus had yet received from man. The faith of this man began at the far-off point where it merely called Christ a man. Then it advanced to the
Introduction. The disciples thought all sickness must be the direct consequence of sin. Jesus plainly declares this is not so, that there is another purpose in physical
‘That the works of God should be made manifest.” They were made manifest in this man’s case by his healing. Some times they are made manifest by God’s sustaining grace in weakness (2 Cor. 12:8-10). Doubtless sickness is often the direct result of sin (Jno. 5:14; Mk. In other cases it is the indirect result
infirmity, viz.: COMMENTS FROM THE COMMENTARIES Thomas L. Colwell 2:5; Acts 12:23).
(Job 33:14-30). But sickness does not always arise from this cause (Phil. 2:27, 30; 2 Ki. 13:14). Jesus did not teach by verse 3, that neither this man nor his parents had ever sinned, but that they did not sin as the cause of this blindness (see R. V .). The parents, so far from being sin less, sinned before the chapter ends.— Torrey. V. 1 . As regards time, it was the day after the close of the Feast of Tabernacles, and that a Sabbath, v. 14 (see Lev. 23:39). As for the place, Jesus had just quitted the temple, and we are most probably to imagine the blind beg gar as seated at the entrance to the temple (comp. Acts 3 :2). Possibly the beggar himself proclaimed the fact of his native blindness as giving additional force to his appeal for alms. It makes the miracle all the greater, and places it beyond the reach of an extraordinary medical cure (Ammon and other rationalists), but does not warrant the extravagant notion of some fathers (Irenaeus, Theodorus Mopsu, Nonnus) that Jesus created the eyes out of the clay, as God made the first man out of clay.— Lange. V. 2. The motive for this question on the part of the disciples could, in their present situation, scarcely be dog matical interest, being, as they were, just reunited to the Master after His escape from stoning. We suppose that they wish to induce the Lord to pass by the man as unworthy of His self-sacrificing interest, in order that He may hasten on; and that hence their question, uttered on the spur of the moment, derives a decided Pharisaical coloring from the popular notion.— Lange. V. 4. It is probable that with this saying He encounters their urgent entreaties to hasten away from the dangerous position. Hence, with the “ we,” He holds them fast also to the place where it is their duty to remain, and reveals to them that in the future they, as the prosecutors of His work, must stand firm in similar situations.—Kuinoel. The day-time of the day’s work of Christ was at the same time a day-time of redemption, of visitation for Israel, which ter minated with His night, viz.: His death (see v. 5). Only we must not convert this relative antithesis into an absolute one by the declaration: now is the time of grace, afterwards the time of darkness.—Paulus. V. 5. The sun, throughout the day, as long as it is in the world, is the light of the world. The sun, however, opens and enlightens only the eyes of the seeing; Christ, as the real Son, opens and enlightens the eyes of the blind like wise. And along with this is expressed the fact that He is the Sun of the world in a spiritual sense.-—Lange. V. 7. How can a man that is a sinner do such signs? That is an unanswerable question for all deniers of the deity of Christ, for if He is not divine He is the chief of blasphemers.— Torrey. V. 14. A rabbinical statute specially prohibits the spread ing of saliva on the eyes on the Sabbath. If this ordinance was not yet extant or sanctioned, still the general law was in force which forbade all healing on the Sabbath except in cases where life was imperiled,'-¿—Meyer. Meyer justly draws attention to the circumstance that the man relates only what he has himself felt, and hence does not mention the saliva. V. 21. They lack strength to prove their gratitude for the healing of their son hy uniting their testimony to his,
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