16th Mar 2011

John 9:1-12 – Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind

• “when logic goes wrong and pre-birth sin”
• The first verse opens up a huge discussion.
• Jesus’ disciples believed that the fact that the man was born blind meant there must be sin somewhere in his life.
• Specifically they were asking for commentary on the Pharisees view of this. The Pharisees believed that a man born blind from birth was inflicted because of one of two reasons;

1.    Either their parents sin.

2.    Or more bizarrely; because the person had sinned before birth.

• As strange as these theories were, they were based on logic. But their logic was based on a false premise left over from the times of the Old Testament.
• Judaism has gone through phases; modern Judaism is different in many ways from that of Jesus’ time which is very different again from that of the Old Testament.
• In the OT – everything was black and white – they believed in compensatory ethics – if you sinned something bad would happen to you, if you did good something good would happen to you. So when they saw sin they automatically believed someone must have sinned. If a man was born blind therefore; he must have sinned in the womb or his parents must have.
• During the Second Temple Period however the ‘New Sensitivity in Judaism’ was asking some very serious questions about this thinking and when Jesus came He began to answer those questions.
• Jesus’ thinking turned everything upside down. He replaced logic with understanding.
• And His ideas were revolutionary – I don’t have time to write about them now.
• I write about this in depth in my new book ‘The Cloud and the Line’
• But three things this passage teaches me;
1. Fundamentals are important. If we get them wrong they screw up our logic. It is worth investing time in understanding the roots of our faith.
2. My misunderstanding can lead me to mis-judge people harshly. Imagine the stigma the man and his parents had carried since His birth!
3. Jesus was as interested in raising up the blind man’s self esteem as He was in healing him. The explanation seemed to be His primary concern.
• Praying today that my understanding of the fundamentals will lead me to be as concerned about people’s self esteem as my desire to do something remarkable.