Standing Firm

Psalm 38:19-22                       Acts 26:9-11                         John 9:8-34

Standing Firm

On April 18, 1521, a single monk from an obscure town in Germany stood in the midst of a hall crowded with religious intelligentsia assembled before the most powerful man in Europe at the time. He was asked whether he would defend the books and tracts he had written or withdraw them in whole or in part. In a speech that shook the religious world, the monk ended with the following statement:

“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in the councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise. So help me God.”

These bold and uncompromising words caused quite a pandemonium, as can be expected…but Martin Luther held to his convictions despite ridicule and threats.

The healing of the blind man should have brought unfettered joy from all who knew him. Instead, his joy was turned into a nightmare as person after person interrogated him and doubted his word.

This man would have been well known to all who frequented the temple precincts, but the change in him was so radical that many were confused as to his identity. Often such confusion arises when God performs a great work of change in the life of an individual. The confusion might be due to the absolute thrill of beholding a miracle of God…the changing of something thought so imponderable that it was not even considered a vague probability until it suddenly became a reality…but here, in the case of this man born blind, it seems the confusion appears to have been one of unbelief. 

“Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” they asked sceptically. Some claimed he was, but others said it was someone who just looked like him. Can you hear the unbelief here? “Nah, that’s just not possible…it can’t be him.” 

And when he insisted that he was the same man, they demanded to know how his eyes were opened. But even after he told them, they still could not, or perhaps would not believe him and so they swept him off to the Jewish leaders for professional verification. No joy here…no rejoicing in another’s good fortune.

Sometimes a life dominated by frustration or hard knocks can make one super cynical. So, when something good happens to someone else, but not to you, doubt or even distrust prevents you from responding appropriately. And certainly, life was hard for many living in Jerusalem during the First Century. 

So, the crowd escorted the healed man to the Pharisees and once again, we are confronted with a blindness far worse than the physical disability. 

In some respects, the Gospel of John can be likened to a good slow-drip coffee percolator. If you recall, it was shortly after the Feast of Tabernacles…a Feast during which water was drawn from the Pool of Siloam and poured out on and around the altar in anticipation of a good rainy season and consequently a good harvest…it was shortly after this Feast that Jesus revealed himself to be the Light of the World. “I AM the light of the world,” he said. “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but have the light of life.” And, if you recall, there were some who believed in Jesus and there were some who did not…in fact, they were downright hostile. 

Now, in this record of the healing of the man born blind, we once more read about Jesus being the Light of the world…and we also read about the Pool of Siloam where the man washed the clay off his eyes, his subsequent belief in Jesus, as well as the hostile refusal of those who did not believe in Jesus. 

So, it is almost as if John was trying to show us that Jesus would say something profound (like “I am the light of the world, those who follow me will not walk in darkness”) and then he would let it percolate for a while. And then he would repeat what he had said, but in an acted parabolic manner, as we see here, with a man who had been living in darkness suddenly seeing the light both physically and spiritually. A good slow-drip percolator type teaching.

Now, one would think that the restoration of the blind man’s sight would have broken open even the hardest of hearts, but, instead, the hearts of the leaders remained impenetrable. The main reason for this, John tells us, was that Jesus performed this miracle on the Sabbath. One of the 39 Melakhot (thirty-nine categories of work which the oral law identified as forbidden on the Sabbath) prohibited the combining of “solid and liquid together to form a paste or dough-like substance” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/39_Melakhot). Remember, Jesus made clay by mixing dirt (a solid) with his spittle (liquid) and he applied the mixture (a paste or dough-like substance) to the man’s eyes. This act would have been considered a prohibited work on the Sabbath. 

So, the question is, why did Jesus use spittle and dirt? He could have simply spoken, and the man would have been healed. Was this intended to provoke the Pharisees by exposing the preposterousness of their hair-splitting minutiae? Was it perhaps an image of recreation using the ground to “remake” a man? Was it a validation of the use of poultices or medicine in curing people? I don’t know. 

But my gut feeling would be that he wanted to point out the blind and oppressive enslavement of God’s liberated people through the multiplication of prohibitions. While God does certainly want his children to follow his law for their own good, some had and still some have taken it upon themselves to abstract the law from its original context and isolate it from the God who commanded it, producing a set of extrabiblical rules and regulations that seek to control and manipulate people. That drains the law of its relational content. We do what God commands because we love him. Living in abject fear of whether or not we may tie our shoelaces on a Sunday robs us of the kind of relationship encouraged in Scripture. 

Nevertheless, it was because they believed that Jesus had broken the Sabbath in his healing of the man born blind that these leaders called into question the spiritual allegiance of Jesus. Here’s another one of those wonderful slow-drip percolations of John. Remember, we dealt with Jesus' teaching on his origin versus the origin of those who did not believe in him in the previous chapter. So here once again we are confronted with the question: Was Jesus from God or not? 

The healing of the man born blind created an immediate dilemma for these leaders. Jesus broke their law; therefore, he must be a sinner. But how could a sinner perform such a miracle? The healed man’s later questions are really a reflection of their own inner struggles…but, interestingly enough, they arrived at vastly different conclusions. 

The interrogation began simply enough: How did this happen? So, the blind man repeated his story to the leaders. Now, it is important to realise that there is a shift in the story here…it is at this point that the great comparison between physical and spiritual blindness began. The leaders were themselves divided on how to explain what had happened and consequently, they found it impossible to reach a consensus.

And so, they, the judges, asked the man, the witness in this case, to pronounce the judgment! “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” Instead of admitting that their thinking was faulty, these so-called teachers of the law wanted the one healed to condemn his healer. But the healed man could not simply brush aside the miracle…after all, for him, this was not a theoretical abstraction…it was very much concrete. 

Now, what he meant by calling Jesus a prophet is not clear. Did he mean that Jesus was someone like Elijah or Elisha both of whom performed amazing miracles, or did he mean that Jesus was a messianic figure…the Prophet to come who would be like Moses? My gut feeling here is that as his understanding was progressive (because it is only later in the chapter that he comes to believe in Jesus as the Son of Man) he must have thought more along the lines of the former…that Jesus was a prophet like Elijah or Elisha. 

Of course, his reply did not satisfy the Pharisees. Perhaps they suspected that the man might be in collusion with Jesus like so many unscrupulous people have been throughout history, claiming that they have been healed or resurrected by a self-proclaimed prophet or apostle or even a messiah, for a substantial fee of course. 

But even so, agreeing with the man’s conclusion at this point (that Jesus was a prophet) would have been the same as admitting that their theologizing was wrong. Either the healer was a sinner, or they had to rethink their extrabiblical rules for work on the Sabbath.

So, they called in the man’s own parents. Their question to the parents appears to have been a veiled threat, as the parents only answered it in part. “We know he is our son,” they replied, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know.” 

And then they passed the buck right back to their son. “Ask him. He is of age (which means he was older than 13 or 14); he will speak for himself.” The cost of confrontation was too high for the parents and so they turned away from an opportunity to defend both Jesus and their son, and consequently, they failed to glorify God.

It is sad that people could be so afraid of their spiritual leaders, don’t you think? It is easy for us to judge the parents for being faint-hearted, but what kind of religious institution generates such fear?

Nevertheless, any thought of possible collusion was exploded by the parent’s testimony. The miracle was real…no doubt about that…which only goes to prove once again that even remarkable wonders do not necessarily produce faith. 

So, the healed man was once again left standing alone. Just like Martin Luther, he was called upon to testify against his own conscience and his own better judgment. The statement in verse 24 is in the form of an oath. “Give God the glory! We know that this man is a sinner.” Now, this sounds a lot like an oath uttered by Joshua at the judgement of Achan in Joshua 7:19. “My son,” Joshua said to Achan, “I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession to him, and tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me.” 

While this healed man can hardly be compared with Achan, the Pharisees may have wanted him to confess his role in encouraging someone considered a ‘deceiver’ by allowing him to heal him. So, in other words, they would have viewed this man as being involved in an activity that they considered unlawful or morally wrong. The charge then would be one of complicity or collaboration. 

Ironically then, what the Pharisees were expecting of this healed man, was for him to condone and uphold their insincere conclusion by denying what he knew to be true. But for him this was impossible. “Whether he is a sinner or not,” he replied, “I do not know. But one thing I do know. I was blind…but now I see.” 

And with this very simple statement, he exposed the ridiculous nature of the whole deliberation. Clearly, something amazing had happened that did not fit into any of their theological categories. But they were so well-entrenched in their rigid regulatory religion, that they could not acknowledge an act of God…even one as incredible as this.

Just as an aside, there may be a comparative contrast here between this healed man and the man healed at the pool of Bethesda in chapter 5. Both were healed on the Sabbath, both were instructed to do something (pick up your sleeping mat, wash in the Pool of Siloam), both were interrogated by the Pharisees, and neither of them asked to be healed…but the one “betrayed” Jesus while the other “defended” him. 

But to get back to this story, the Pharisees began interrogating him all over again. “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 

At this point, things got rather humorous. The healed man became the interrogator and questioner. “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?” And perhaps there was a hint of sarcasm in his voice when he asked, “Do you want to become his disciples too?” Interestingly, the word “too” or “also” may indicate that he already considered himself to be a disciple of Jesus. 

Be that as it may, the Pharisees found themselves in a corner with only two possible options open to them. Either defeat or defence…and their defence was to yell at him and insult him. “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from!”

There is an interesting parallel here to when Jesus asked them if John the Baptist’s baptism was from heaven or not in Luke 20:4. They discussed the question among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven’, then he will ask, ‘Why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men’, all the people will stone us, because they are persuaded that John was a prophet.” And so, they answered, “We don’t know where it was from.”

By stating that they did not know where Jesus was from (in other words, whether he was from God or not), they were, in one sense, admitting their inconclusive judgment. Their defence was ignorance (“we don’t know where he is from”),  but ignorance is easily remedied by investigation…something these interrogators apparently failed to do. Ironically, by confessing their lack of knowledge about Jesus here, they contradicted their own previous claim in verse 24 where they claimed to ‘know’ that he was a sinner.

It is interesting to note that while just about every character in this passage maintained repeatedly that they either knew something or did not know something, here at the climax of this bizarre interrogation, the Pharisees, who were reputed to know the law, claimed to know nothing. 

At this point, the healed man’s boldness rose to the occasion. “You utter an absurdity,” he said. “You say you don’t know whether this man is from God or not, but he has done what is considered impossible…he has opened my eyes…a man who was born blind! The Scriptures clearly teach that God does not hear sinners, but only godly men who do his will (Psalm 34:15; Proverbs 15:8, 29; 21:27; 28:9). If my healer was not from God, he would not have been able to do this miracle.” 

What happened next was a gross violation of their own rules for interrogation, but this is the kind of behaviour one expects from those who refuse to confess their own errors. Being unable to refute the perfect logic of the healed man’s defence and being unwilling to withdraw from their moral high ground, they excommunicated him from the synagogue. 

“Excommunication was one of the severest forms of discipline administered by a synagogue community and was apparently rare and thus very harsh in the time of Jesus.” (Keener, Craig S.. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (IVP Bible Background Commentary Set) (p. 277). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.) But when you cannot win on your own terms, walk out, or kick out.

It is possible that at the time this Gospel was written, many of those who were reading it “had faced the danger or reality of expulsion from their synagogues (16:2; cf. 12:42-43). The faithfulness of this man (in contrast to the betrayal of the man in 5:14-16) would (have encourage(d) them to remain faithful too.” (Keener, 277)

Like this healed man, who once was blind but now could see, Martin Luther was excommunicated. Other reformers were excommunicated too and executed by fire or by axe. Their bold stand for the truth cost them dearly. The religious institutions of their day turned on them like ravenous wolves. Nevertheless, they remained faithful and true to God’s Word.

There comes a time in the life of every follower of Jesus when we have to make a choice to either stand with him or to betray him. When we come to these crossroads, we are faced with the same options as all those involved in this passage about the healing of the blind man. If we feel incompetent to deal with the situation on our own, we can seek counsel from those who should be able to help us. But ultimately, as Martin Luther so clearly stated, the only trustworthy instrument to which we have ready access is the Word of God. It is the only firm foundation we have to stand on that will prevent us from either capitulating under pressure or from embracing error. May God, in his mercy, keep us at all times in humble submission to his Word.

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2023