How do you even describe sight to a lifelong blind man? The experiences of light and color and depth perception are practically impossible to explain to someone who has never experienced them. So just imagine what the first moment of open eyes was like for the man who was born blind! A whole world opened up for him that he never imagined to be possible. Among the thousands of thoughts running rampant in his mind in that moment, one of them had to be, “Who in the world is the guy who just gave me sight?”
Moments before, when he had still never known anything other than blindness and helplessness, Jesus’ disciples saw him and assumed his malady had to be a result of sin. Such is a dangerous view of punishment to have, and so Jesus quickly corrected them. Yes, sin and suffering are connected, but we don’t believe in karma. As Jesus says elsewhere, it rains on the just and the unjust alike. The world is thoroughly cursed by sin and death, and that curse is not from God. The blind man, and many others of us with him, suffer lifelong ailments because corruption still reigns in our world.
But God is good all the time, even during this time of sin and death! We know and trust that one glorious day in the future, God will make all things new and defeat evil once and for all, to the great praise of his glorious name; but in the meantime, sometimes God gives us a taste of that great glory, and shows his victory over sin on a micro level. He had planned long before to use the blind man’s weakness to display his great strength to his people. Suddenly the blind man saw. Israel’s attention was definitely captured.
Jesus had just told a skeptical crowd that he was the light of the world, and now that light was being broadcasted in dramatic fashion. The power of God to enlighten his people was at work. Some would see what they had never before seen, others would remain blind to it. But to those with eyes to see, Jesus showed that when he promised to be the conqueror of the world’s darkness, those promises would not return void, and the glory of God would be illuminated for all the world to see.
