Do You See? Spiritiaully Speaking

Jan. 13, 2011 - PRLog -- In mid-November I enjoyed reading in the Book of John. And I just got done reading John Chapter 9 on November 16th, 2010 and really was awakened by the lessens that we can learn from the story of Jesus healing the man that was born blind. In this story we see the love of God through Jesus’ compassion towards healing this blind man. We see the sovereignty of God in verse 3 where Jesus says that the man was born blind, neither because of he or his parent’s sin, but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.

And to be able to help us understand better how God works we can see someone can be born blind for the purpose of God’s power and that God may be displayed through him. God was displayed through him when he was healed and in this particular situation, unlike some of the other situations, it appears as though this particular man was physically healed before he trusted Christ. In verse 35 Jesus asked the man if he believed in the Son of Man.

In verse 35 Jesus asked the man, “do you believe in the Son of Man?” And then in verse 36 the man asked, well “who is the Son of Man? So that I might believe in Him?” And then in verse 37 Jesus said, “you have both seen Him and He is the One Who is talking with you.” So here in verse 37 Jesus Christ very clearly takes credit and claims to be the Son of Man. So this man did not know who Jesus was, before his sight was restored, apparently.

Another interesting lesson throughout this book is that we see the Pharisees pride in more detail. Once they figure out the truth of the miracle of Jesus healing the blind man they concluded that Jesus was a sinner. Are you kidding me? How did they come to that conclusion? Well, we do it all the time in our life too!

After their conclusion was disputed by the man that had been healed and received sight they responded by changing subjects, going back and focusing on Moses which was totally off topic and they also responded by kicking the healed man out of the Synagogue. And that was generally their practice, was to just kick people out of the Synagogue if they believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.

Then in verse 39, Jesus again clarifies for us that for judgment He came into the world that those who do not see may see and that those who see may become blind. So we get, maybe, a glimpse as to what the Jewish people had in store for the next couple of centuries and thousands of years, as far as spirituality goes when Jesus said He came that “those who see may become blind.”

The thing that I want to write about, and this keeps coming up in my life, is the part in verses 40 and 41 where the Pharisees after hearing what Jesus said in verse 39, asked “Are we blind to?” And Jesus says to them in verse 41, “If you are blind you would have no sin, but since you say ‘we see’ your sin remains.” And this continues to be what I see as the biggest stumbling block to people becoming an authentic believer of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ says in Matthew Chapter 7 that “the road is narrow” but people can’t grasp it. People want to hang on to religion and think that they “see”, especially here in the south people have such pride in what they do.  They think as they get into their later years that they bake cakes for their friends and take cakes to their friends and send thank you letters and throw parties for their friends and go to church that they’re going to go to heaven. That will not get you to heaven. There is no deed in the world that will get us to heaven. And one of the things that keeps me up at night is from talking with close friends and family members and people at church that continually have an inability to apologize for their wrong doings. They have an inability to accept personal responsibility for the things that they do in their life.

The one thing about Christianity is that in order to step into eternity with God you and I must be able to admit the fact that we are evil. We have to admit the fact that we are sinners. We have to admit the fact that we can’t do it on our own. But most of the time, according to God himself, people fail because of pride. So as we go back to the definition of what sin is, the question that we can ask ourselves is: “Have I admitted that I am blind to God?”  Do we see ourselves as blind? Or do we think that we “see”? Do we take personal responsibility for the mistakes and the sins/transgressions that we commit so often? Do we commonly find ourselves apologizing to people, as we all should, when we make mistakes, are wrong, or sin against someone else? It’s their responsibility to forgive  us and show grace, but what should we do?

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