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- Oct 26, 2007
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He answered and said, "Whether He is a sinner [or not] I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see." John 9:25 NKJV
When John’s Gospel describes a lame man’s healing at the Pool of Bethesda, it notes he’d suffered for thirty-eight years (chapter 5). But in John 9, where Jesus heals a blind man, no length of affliction is given. Perhaps twenty to thirty years—the person healed was a “man blind from birth” (v. 1), whose parents were both still alive (vv. 18-23).
Read the whole story in John 9—it’s comical in places. Jesus applied spit-mud to the man’s eyes, telling him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. When he returned seeing, people who’d known him only as a blind beggar debated his identity. “Others said, ‘He only looks like him.’ But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man’” (v. 9).
Then the Jesus-hating Pharisees got involved, declaring the Healer was a sinner. But this beneficiary of Jesus’ touch showed some real spunk: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (v. 25).
Our own experience with Jesus will go against this world’s grain. But like that formerly blind man, we know Him to be good and true and powerful. Let’s say what we know, sharing His truth with a world that desperately needs it.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, give me the courage to honor You publicly.
When John’s Gospel describes a lame man’s healing at the Pool of Bethesda, it notes he’d suffered for thirty-eight years (chapter 5). But in John 9, where Jesus heals a blind man, no length of affliction is given. Perhaps twenty to thirty years—the person healed was a “man blind from birth” (v. 1), whose parents were both still alive (vv. 18-23).
Read the whole story in John 9—it’s comical in places. Jesus applied spit-mud to the man’s eyes, telling him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. When he returned seeing, people who’d known him only as a blind beggar debated his identity. “Others said, ‘He only looks like him.’ But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man’” (v. 9).
Then the Jesus-hating Pharisees got involved, declaring the Healer was a sinner. But this beneficiary of Jesus’ touch showed some real spunk: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (v. 25).
Our own experience with Jesus will go against this world’s grain. But like that formerly blind man, we know Him to be good and true and powerful. Let’s say what we know, sharing His truth with a world that desperately needs it.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, give me the courage to honor You publicly.