Prayer
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your sense of anticipation that God is about to speak to you through His Word. Then, before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer based on Psalm 62:8
LORD, I trust in You;
I offer my heart to You,
for You are my refuge.
Speak to me, I pray. Amen.
Reading
Because the blind man had been healed by Jesus on a Sabbath, the religious authorities confronted him with a barrage of questions. To his credit, the man stood firm against their bullying tactics. When they kept peppering him with questions, he eventually retorted, “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” (v.32-33)
At this, John tells us, “they threw him out”. This probably means that they excommunicated him from the local synagogue. He had formerly been an outcast because he was blind. Now he was an outcast because he had come to see and would not renounce the One who had healed him.
Then, when Jesus found the man and essentially told him that he had been healed by none other than the long-awaited “Son of Man” (Daniel 7:13-14), he immediately declared, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshipped him.
Notice that Jesus first healed his physical blindness, and now He opened his spiritual eyes too. He enabled him to see with the eyes of his heart and believe in Jesus as the Son of Man.
Jesus’ concluding statement might seem a bit puzzling. He said, ‘For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.’ What exactly did He mean?
Well, when people are faced with Jesus and, like the religious leaders, see nothing in Him deserving of admiration, faith or worship, they have passed a “judgment” that Jesus is nothing remarkable at all. They believe that they can see clearly and that there is nothing in Jesus worth seeing. But this “judgment” really just reveals their own spiritual blindness. Tragically, because they refuse to see, they ultimately close themselves off to the saving work of Jesus, because they will not receive Him. As Jesus said earlier in John’s Gospel:
“Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:18)
Conversely, when people respond to Jesus with admiration and even a tiny measure of faith, they open themselves up to His ministry of opening their blind eyes to see Him in ever-increasing glory.
Will that be us today? Will we approach this day as another opportunity to see Jesus, worship Him and trust Him? If so, He will continue to “open our blind eyes” and reveal more and more of Himself to us.
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn these declarations over and over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ:
- I will keep my eyes open for His presence.
- I will worship Him and trust Him.
- I will be open to Him revealing Himself to me more and more.
Lord Jesus, please open my eyes to see You, worship You and trust You more and more today. Amen.
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