John 9 has Jesus walking down the street and “Jesus saw a man blind from birth”. His disciples saw the man too and “asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind”? There was an attempt to define a cause and effect to the man’s blindness. Someone had to do some serious sinning to cause this, right? Not so according to Jesus. “He said, You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here”. All bad things don’t result from sin.
Jesus told them to “Look instead for what God can do”. Some things God allows so He can be glorified by them. In this case, God’s plan was for a man blind from birth to be healed by the Savior. Jesus comes to him and “rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam. The man went and washed–and saw”. Jesus didn’t speak healing here, He required the man to do something and participate in it. That makes it more memorable and gave the man some details to talk with the Pharisees about, who were really mad because the healing happened on the Sabbath.
So the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being bad because “Obviously, this man can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the Sabbath”. Others differed and said evil would not do good like this, so “There was a split in their ranks”. The Pharisees grab the formerly blind man and drag him in for questioning. They grill him over and over about how his sight was restored, and each time He told them that it was Jesus who had healed him. They even called in his parents to see if this was in fact the man who had been blind from birth. They were afraid, and said it was their son who had been blind, but they didn’t know how he came to see.
The man says it plainly for the third or fourth time. “I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see”. Jesus has changed his life forever, just like He will change your life and mine. We will have the same experience when we believe. “Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and went and found him. He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man”? Jesus wanted to be sure He knew how to connect His healing to God’s love and salvation. The man said “Master, I believe and worshiped him”. Jesus will change us if we only believe!
Arlin Sorensen's Thoughts on Scripture 