John 9:18-34

¹⁸The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man's parents. ¹⁹"Is this your son?" they asked. "Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?" ²⁰"We know he is our son," the parents answered, "and we know he was born blind. ²¹But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don't know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself." ²²His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. ²³That was why his parents said, "He is of age; ask him." ²⁴A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God," they said. "We know this Man is a sinner." ²⁵He replied, "Whether He is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!" ²⁶Then they asked him, "What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?" ²⁷He answered, "I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become His disciples, too?" ²⁸Then they hurled insults at him and said, "You are this Fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! ²⁹We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this Fellow, we don't even know where He comes from." ³⁰The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where He comes from, yet He opened my eyes. ³¹We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does His will. ³²Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. ³³If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing." ³⁴To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out.

The Pharisees (here called Jews) are not willing to believe that this man was truly healed of blindness until they had called his parents to testify. They had just divided over the miracle, and now they try to justify their disbelief by saying that there really is no miracle – only some kind of hoax. They find the man’s parents, hoping that their testimony will prove their faulty thinking to be correct, but instead, the parents testify that this man is their son, who had been born blind.

However, unlike the man himself, as we will see by his second testimony, his parents are afraid of the Jews, and so they refused to answer any questions beyond the circumstances of his birth, pointing out instead that he was of legal age to answer for himself. They prudently avoid danger in the presence of the Jewish leaders, though they reveal their ingratitude by their unwillingness to glorify God by attesting to the miracle. By this time, the Pharisees had already made it clear that they would expel from the synagogue anyone who professed that Jesus was the Christ; being excommunicated was not a sacrifice they were willing to make, and so they chose not to pursue any further knowledge of Jesus, being content with their comfortable ignorance. And they further shift this burden of testimony onto their son. How many today are the same, and would rather live in their comfortable sins than be willing to listen to the truth that Jesus will one day come to judge the world! Let us assure our hearts that the pursuit of the truth, which is in Jesus, is well worth any sacrifice that comes with it, including excommunication. Consider Martin Luther and countless others…

The Pharisees question the man again, this time exhorting him (ironically) to “give glory to God” by telling the truth – which for them seems to be that Jesus is a sinner (Joshua 7:19 – “Then Joshua said to Achan, ‘My son, give glory to the LORD, the God of Israel, and give Him the praise. Tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me.’”). They don’t really want the truth, which would glorify God, unless it happens to coincide with their beliefs. The man claims nothing about Jesus’ moral condition, but simply restates that he has experienced an extraordinary miracle. He does not fear those who have the power to excommunicate him, for he has been an outcast his whole life. He knows what Jesus has done for him, and he will not deny it. But the Jews continue to press him, asking him again of the details of the affair. At this point, he turns to sarcasm – he has already told them all about the healing, so maybe the reason they want to keep hearing about it is that, deep down, they actually want to be Jesus’ disciples.

Calvin says, “Not only does he persist in his opinion, but he freely and severely reproaches them, that after having abundantly ascertained and known the truth, they endeavor to bury it by their continual inquiries. He charges them also with wicked hatred of Christ, when he asks, ‘Do you want to become His disciples, too?’ For he means that, though they were a hundred times convinced, they are so strongly prejudiced by wicked and hostile dispositions that they will never yield. It is an astonishing display of freedom, when a man of mean and low condition, and especially liable to be reproached on account of his poverty, fearlessly provokes the rage of all the priests against himself.”

In a way, this man was similar to the crippled man at the Pool of Bethsaida (John 5) – Jesus healed him physically, at first, but the man did not yet know and believe in Jesus as the Christ until He came to him later and explained the Gospel. But in another way, he was much different. The crippled man seemed unwilling to say anything definite about the Man who had healed him, for fear of the Jews. But this man is very straightforward and unafraid. In fact, he becomes very critical with the Pharisees, and is eventually driven out of the synagogue. Even though he had not yet learned the truth about Christ, he emphatically states that he must be a prophet, come from God.

The Pharisees’ response, hurling insults at the man and accusing him of being Jesus’ disciple, reveals the heart of the dispute: they still believe they are following the Law of Moses, whom they knew was from God. They did not know if Jesus was from God, so if He disagreed with Moses, Jesus must be wrong. Their reasoning is certainly correct, but their understanding of Moses is woefully inadequate. Moses did not contradict Jesus – he prophesied of Jesus. And Jesus, as we know, was far superior to Moses. But they were blinded by their own prideful tendency to use Moses as a guide to earning self-righteousness, and completely missed the Gospel truths about Jesus that Moses had proclaimed.

The healed man did not undertake to argue about the interpretation of the law with the Pharisees, but still declared, all the more emphatically, that if Jesus was a sinner, it is certainly remarkable that God would use such a Man to give sight to the blind, given that this type of healing had never been done by all the prophets before Him! The man uses this logic to confirm his prior assessment that Jesus was no sinner, but rather a prophet from God. The Pharisees were outraged at this rebuke, and, making a snide comment about how his birth as a blind man indicated that he was a sinner from the womb, they expelled him from the synagogue (excommunication). The man is cast out. (See John 6:37).