John 9:1-7 - We Are All Born Blind

You can be given a clear direction and still feel lost when there’s no visible destination. That’s the pressure point we sit in as we open John chapter 9 with Pastor Harry Behrens: Jesus leaves the temple after rejection, “passes by,” and sees a man born blind. The religious leaders who claim to see are ready to stone Him, while the man who cannot see becomes the place where mercy and power break through.

We slow down on the question the disciples ask and we still ask today when we meet sickness, disability, and hardship: who sinned? Jesus refuses to assign blame and instead gives a reframe that changes everything, “that the works of God might be displayed in him.” From there, we trace how the Gospel of John defines the work of God, why our hearts keep trying to add a contribution, and how passages like John 6:29, Ephesians 2:10, and Philippians 2:13 insist that grace is not a shared project. We do not add, we are the evidence that God is at work.

Then we watch the sign itself: mud, dust, touch, and a command to wash at Siloam, “sent.” The scene echoes Genesis creation, and the blind man walks like Abraham walked, going without knowing where he is going. The going becomes the believing. If you feel stuck demanding clarity before obedience, this message brings one searching question to the front: will you go when you are sent? Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs courage for the next step, and leave a review to help more people find The Takeaway.

Transcript

Welcome And The Call To Go

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Hello, and welcome again to the Takeaway. I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barns, and today we're going to be stepping into John chapter 9. And what we're going to see is faith like Abraham's, lived out in real time, in the life of a man born blind. Now, have you ever been given a direction without being given a destination? Maybe it was a job, a relationship, a move, or a decision, and you knew enough to take the first step, but not enough to see where the path was going to end. And the hardest part wasn't the step. It was trusting the one who told you to take it. That is exactly where the man we are about to meet finds himself. He doesn't know where he's going. He doesn't know what will happen when he gets there. He has mud on his eyes and a word in his ears, and the word said, Go, so he goes. Following Jesus has never been about understanding the destination before you leave. Faith is believing the one who sends you. Even when the road doesn't make sense, even when you can't see the outcome. That is what we are going to watch today, lived out in front of the very people Jesus had just confronted in the temple. Now, last week we stood at the threshold of holiness, what Leviticus required, what Christ provided, and how grace finds us before we ever come looking. Now, today we're going to walk through that door. And we, like the blind man, are going to be asked the same question by the same time we close. Will we go when we are sent? So with that, let's get started in John chapter 9, verse 1, where John says, As he passed by, he saw a man born blind from birth. Now, before we go any further, I want you to see exactly where Jesus is coming from and where he is going, because John never waste a phrase. And the words as he passed by are doing real work here. Now, if you remember the end of John chapter 8, Jesus had just been in the temple, and the Jews who claimed to be the children of Abraham had picked

From Temple Rejection To Mercy

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up stones to kill him. Verse 59, they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. So this is where he is coming from. He is coming from rejection. He is coming from the religious establishment that tried to kill him. And the very next thing John shows us is that he passed by and he saw a man born blind from birth. Now watch the contrast. The men in the temple who claimed to see were trying to kill him. The man outside the temple who could not see is about to receive sight from him. Those who had every advantage of religion and heritage and access, they were the ones outside. And the man with no advantage at all, no ability to find Jesus, no ability even to look at him, he is the one Jesus walks toward. That contrast is going to run through the entire chapter, and it is the picture of everything that we taught last week. The ones who think they see are blind. The one who knows he is blind is about to see. And then in verse 2, John says, And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind. Now I want to slow down here because this question is not just a passing remark from the disciples. This question is the question every human heart asks when it sees suffering. And it is the question that the entire framework of Leviticus misread produced in the disciples. The disciples are still inside the assumption that uncleanness equals personal sin. They look at a man who has been blind from birth and they assume there has to be a moral cause. Either he sinned or his parents sinned, but somebody must have done something to deserve this. The framework demands a guilty party. And we still ask the same question today. When we see sickness, when we see disease, when we see a child born with a disability, when we see hardship in someone's life, our first instinct is always to ask why. Who did something wrong? Where did this come from? What is the cause? And underneath that question is an assumption that suffering is somehow happening outside of God's plan, that it is a glitch in the system, that it has to be traced to human failure rather than received as something God is doing. We struggle with sickness and disease and disability and hardship as if they are not a part of God's purposes, as if God only works in healthy lives and easy circumstances and predictable outcomes, as if the man born blind is a problem that needs to be explained rather than a canvas on which God is about to paint. That assumption is exactly what last week's episode named. It is the Leviticus framework misread. Leviticus showed us that there is a real separation, real uncleanness, real distance between sinful people and a holy God. But the framework was never meant to teach us that suffering is always a personal punishment. The framework was meant to teach us that all of us are unclean. All of us are separated. All of us need someone to come down to us because no one of us can climb up to him. And what Jesus is about to do in this scene is take the disciples' assumption and reverse it completely. So what is Jesus actually about to say is going on with this man? Well, in verse 3, Jesus says, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. Now read that again, because this single sentence reframes everything the disciples thought they understood. Jesus does not give them a guilty party. He does not point to a sin that explains the suffering. He takes the entire question apart and replaces it with something the disciples

Why Suffering Is Not Simple Punishment

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were not even asking about. The point of this man's blindness, the point of his separation, the point of his life outside the normal community of seeing people is so that the works of God might be displayed in him. That phrase is doing enormous work. The works of God might be displayed in him. The man's body is going to become a stage on which God demonstrates who he is. The blindness, which the disciples assumed was punishment, is actually the canvas. And what is about to happen on that canvas is going to do for them what they could never have produced on their own. They are about to see God in human flesh do what only God can do. Now connect this to what we were teaching last week. We said separation in Leviticus reveals. It reveals who God is and what we are not. Isaiah saw the Lord holy, holy, holy, and immediately saw what he was. Holiness reveals, but here we are about to see something else that separation can do. Separation can also reveal the power and glory of God to make whole what was broken. The man's blindness is not just a diagnosis, it is an inventation. It is the place where God is about to show that he is not only holy and unreachable, but also able to reach down and make clean. And then we bring this all the way back to Ephesians chapter 2 because Paul says exactly what this scene is going to demonstrate. In Ephesians 2, 1 through 3, Paul says, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world. We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. Dead, not weak, not struggling, but dead. We talked about that last week also. The blind man is the visible picture of the spiritual condition every human being is in by nature. He cannot see, he cannot find Jesus on his own, he cannot earn the encounter, he cannot even ask for it because he doesn't know who is walking toward him. He is in his blindness exactly what every human being is spiritually before grace finds them. And what is about to happen to this man physically is what God does spiritually to everyone he draws to himself. Sight given where there was no sight, light given where there was only darkness, life given where there was only death. And now we tie this back to the end of John chapter 8, where Jesus had just left. In chapter 8, Jesus had said, The Father glorifies me, and I glorify the Father. The Father seeking the glory of the Son, the Son seeking the glory of the Father. That is the eternal pattern of the Trinity on display in everything Jesus does. And what we are about to watch in John chapter 9 is the Father glorifying the Son by giving him a man no one else could heal, so that the Son can glorify the Father by demonstrating that he is the one through whom all things were made. The works of God are displayed in this man, the Father glorifying the Son, the Son glorifying the Father. The pattern of John 8 was made visible in human flesh. And here is the part we have to receive carefully, because it is the part the human heart fights hardest for. When God does this work in a person, when he gives sight to the spiritually blind, life to the spiritually dead, voice to the spiritually mute. The result is not just a healed individual. It is a person whose whole life now glorifies God. By the time we get to the end of the chapter, this man is going to be standing in front of the Pharisees, declaring what Jesus has done and refusing to deny what he has seen. The works of God displayed in him produce life that glorifies God. That is the pattern. And it is the pattern Paul named in Ephesians 1:6 that we are predestined for adoption to the praise of his glorious grace. Restored sight produces praise. Restored life produces glory. The work God does in us inevitably becomes the work he does through us. So now the question becomes who is doing this work? In verse 4, Jesus says, We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. Now I want to slow down here because this is a verse where good students of Scripture will feel real tension. And I want us to land on it carefully because the way we read this verse touches what I believe is the biggest single mistake in Christianity on both the reformed side and the Arminian side, and on virtually every side in between. The natural reading of we must work the works

Works Of God Displayed In Weakness

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of him who sent me. The reading the human heart reaches for first is that Jesus is including his disciples in the work, that he is recruiting them, that he is commissioning them to do something with him. And that reading sounds humble, it sounds active, it sounds like the kind of teaching that produces missionaries, pastors, and committed Christians who give their lives to something bigger than themselves. So why would I question that? Because the text up to this point has not said it. And that matters more than what the text after this point will say. Now let me pause here because I really want this to land. I want to give you a tool here that will serve you for the rest of your life as a reader of Scripture. When you come to a difficult verse, the discipline is to let the text behind you build the foundation for the text in front of you. Not to reach forward into the text you have not gotten to yet and use that to define what you are reading right now. The reason is simple. So if you skip ahead and pull John chapter 20, for example, backward into John chapter 9, you are reading the conclusion before the case has been made. And you will inevitably read into the present what was not yet established. The text in front of us has to be defined by the text behind us, because that is how the author actually wrote it. So let's do that. Let's let what John has actually built up to this point define what Jesus means by we. In John 4.34, Jesus says, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. His work singular, the Father's work accomplished by the Son. In John 5.17, Jesus says, My Father is working until now, and I am working, the Father and the Son working in unity. The disciples are present. They are not named in the work. In John 5.19, Jesus says, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. The Son does not generate the work. The Son receives the work from the Father and does what the Father is doing. In John 5.36, Jesus says, The works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me, given by the Father, accomplished by the Son. The disciples are not in the sentence. And then watch what happens in John chapter 6, because this is the verse that should settle it. The crowd comes to Jesus and asks, What must we do to do the works of God? They want a list, they want a contribution, they want to know what they can bring. And Jesus's answer cuts the question off at the root. In John 6.29, Jesus says, This is the work of God, that you believe in him, whom he has sent. Even believing is named as God's work, not ours. The crowd asked for a job, and Jesus told them their part was to receive what God was already doing. And then in John 8.28, Jesus says, I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. Nothing of his own authority. So when we arrive at John 9 4, and Jesus says, We must work the works of him who sent me, the natural reading, the reading that fits everything Jesus has been building since chapter 4, is that this we is the divine we, Christ in union with the Father who sent him. Christ is doing what the Father is doing. The Spirit applies what the Son accomplishes. And the disciples are present, but the disciples are present as last week's episode ended on. Those who hear his voice and recognize it as the voice of the one who came down because they could not climb up. They are witnesses. They are about to see something. They will eventually be sent to tell what they saw. But what they will tell is what God did, not what they contributed. And here is where the human heart starts to fight. And I want to name that fight directly because it is the fight that has shaped most of Christian history. Both major streams of Protestant teaching, the Reformed tradition and the Arminian tradition, and everything in between, firmly affirm that salvation is by grace, that God works, that Christ accomplished, that the Spirit applies. But in pastoral application on Sunday mornings and in midweek studies and in books and conferences, both traditions slide back towards man's working. The Reformed slide says, yes, salvation is by grace. But now sanctification requires your effort. The Arminian slide says, God offers and you must cooperate, and the work is shared from beginning to end. The destination is the same in both cases. We conclude that we are co-workers with God by different roads, and we cite verses such as 2 Corinthians 6:1, working together with Him to support this idea. But even that verse, read carefully in context, describes the position of those who have already received the grace and are now walking in what was prepared, not those who are contributing to what God is doing. The reason both traditions drift is the same. It is not exegetical, it is anthropological. The human heart cannot stand the gift. It demands a contribution. It wants a brick to lay in the temple Christ already built. And so we read the text looking for permission to contribute. And we find that permission by reading future commissioning passages back into present teaching passages, or by softening the active verbs of God so they leave room for our verbs. But Scripture, when you let it speak in its own order, does not give us that permission. Paul says it as plainly as it can be said in Ephesians 2, verse 10. He says, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. We are his workmanship. We are not his collaborators. The good works are prepared when we walk in them. We do not generate them. And in Philippians 2.13, Paul says, It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Even the willing, even the desire to work is God working in you. And in 1 Corinthians 4 7, Paul asks the question that should settle every conversation about contribution. What do you have that you did not receive? Let me say that one more time, because this is the line I want you to take with you out of this episode and never let go of it. We do not add, we are the evidence that God is at work. The blind man is about to be the evidence of God's work in him. And every believer who follows after him is also evidence of God's work in them. The work is not ours, the work is his.

The Heart That Demands A Contribution

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To this blind man is going to be the works of God displayed in him, not the works of disciples performed by him. The disciples will witness, they will see, and eventually what they have seen will become what they are sent to tell. But the work itself is and will always be his. Then in verse 5, Jesus says, As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Now this is a direct callback to John chapter 8, verse 12, where Jesus stood under the great lamps of the Feast of Tabernacles in the temple courts, with the entire city lit up by the light of those festival fires, and he made the same claim. I am the light of the world. He made the claim then in the temple, surrounded by the symbols of light. He is now about to demonstrate the claim outside the temple on a man born blind. The declaration becomes visible because what does light do when it reaches someone who cannot see? It opens their eyes. The light of the world is about to do what light does. And then in verse 6, John says, Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva, then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud. Now there is a question we have to ask here because this is unusual even for Jesus. Why this way? Jesus has healed before with just a word. He has healed the centurion servant from a distance. He has healed the man at the pool of Beseda by speaking. He has cast out demons by command. So why this way with this man does he stop, spit on the ground, mix saliva with dust, and anoint his eyes? Why use a physical means at all when a word would have just done it completely? Because he is doing something deliberate. And to see what he is doing, we have to go all the way back to the beginning. When we open up to Genesis chapter 2, verse 7, we read, Then the Lord God formed a man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. That is the language of original creation. The Lord God took dust and formed a man and gave life to what was lifeless. And now read what Jesus is doing in John 9, 6. He spits on the ground, he makes mud with saliva, he takes that dust mixed with what came out of his mouth, and he anoints the eyes of a man who has no sight from the day he was born, the one through whom all things were made. And we said this back in Episode 9, John chapter 1, verse 3. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. The one through whom all things were made is forming sight where there was none, with dust from the ground, like the very first creation. This man is becoming a new creation in front of the disciples. This is not a metaphor or a symbol. It is a literal new creation event. The same hands that formed Adam from the dust of the ground are now forming sight in a man born without it. And the disciples are watching it happen with mud on the man's face and dirt on Jesus' finger. They are about to see what Jesus has been claiming since John chapter 1: that he is the word who was with God in the beginning, through whom all things were made. And here's what makes this scene so powerful. Jesus could have just spoken it, but he chose not to. He chose instead to put his hands in the dust and make mud and touch the man's face. Because what he wanted the disciples to see was not just that he could heal, but that the healing was creation work. The same kind of work the Lord God did in Genesis 2. The word who spoke light into existence is now putting that light into eyes that have never received it. And that takes us straight to verse 7. Jesus says to the man, Go, wash in the pool of Siloem, which means sent. So he went and washed and came back seeing. Now watch what John does here. Because John could have just told us that the man went and washed and came back seeing. He could have left out the parenthetical, but he doesn't. He stops the narrative and tells the reader what the name of the pool means. Siloam means sent. John is putting that translation into the text because he wants us to see it. He wants us to know that the man was not just sent to a pool. He was sent

Light Of The World Creates New Eyes

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to a pool whose name means scent. The geography is preaching. The location itself is part of the lesson. And here is what the man does. He goes with mud on his eyes, unable to see to a pool he cannot find on his own. He has no idea where Siloam is in any meaningful way, because he cannot see the streets. He cannot see the signs. So Abram went as the Lord had told him. Not the land I am pointing to right now, not the land you could see from where you stand, the land that I will show you after you have gone. So Abram went as the Lord had told him. The destination is unknown. The going is the believing. And the writer of Hebrews names what that going actually costs. In Hebrews 11 8, the writer says, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. That is the line I want you to hold on to because it describes both Abraham and the blind man at Siloem. Abraham went, not knowing where he was going. The blind man went, not knowing where he was going. And in both cases, the going itself was the faith. The belief was not a private mental conclusion that they reached before they moved. The believing was the moving. The faith was in the feet. The trust was in the going. And this is what we taught last week. Made physical. We said abiding is active. We said it is partaking, hearing his voice, walking in his word. And here in real time, with mud still drying on his eyes, the man does it. He hears the word and he goes. The going is the abiding and the believing. And then watch the contrast because John is laying it side by side with what we have just walked through in chapters 7 and 8. The Pharisees in those chapters heard the same word. And they did not go. They stayed and argued. And what did Jesus say to them in John 8 24? I told you that you would die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins. The men who claimed to see, who refused to go without verification, who would not take a single step toward a destination they could not first inspect, they die in their sins. And the man who could not see it all, who heard the word and walked toward a pool he could not find, who went not knowing where he was going, he comes back seeing. The contrast is total. The blind man hears and goes and lives. The men who claim to see, hear, and stay and die.

Sent To Siloam And Abraham’s Faith

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And that is the question this episode is putting in front of every listener today. So let me ask you, and I want you to actually let this question sit, because it is the question this entire passage has been moving toward. Will you go? The blind man heard the word with mud on his eyes and he went. He could not see where he was going, he could not verify the destination. He could not check whether the pool was real, or whether the man who anointed him was who he said he was, or whether anything would actually happen when he washed. He went because the word said to go. And every step toward that pool was an act of faith that the one who anointed him was who he said he was. Abraham did the exact same thing. He left everything he knew because the Lord had spoken. He went not knowing where he was going. And what he found at the end of his going was a covenant that has been blessing the nations for 4,000 years. He did not produce that covenant, he didn't earn it, he did not contribute to it, he went, and at the end of the going, he discovered what God had been doing all along. And the question every listener has to answer right now is whether what you have just heard about a blind man and an old shepherd is going to do the same thing in you. Because if last week you stood at the door of holiness, and this week you have watched the door open in front of a man who could not see, then the question is no longer what holiness is or what Christ provides or what grace does. The question is what you do with what you have heard. And there are really only three possibilities here. The first is that you walk away saying, that was a good word, an inspirational teaching, a nice study of an old story, and you go back to your week unchanged. That is what most listeners are going to do, and it is what the Pharisees did, and it is what people have been doing with the word of God for 4,000 years. They hear, they nod, they move on, and they die in their sins because the going never happened. And the second possibility is that you fight what you have heard, you argue with it, you go looking for reasons it does not apply to you, or you tell yourself you will think about it later, or you find a way to soften the call so that it does not actually require you to move at all. That is also what the Pharisees did. They had every reason in the world to believe in Jesus, and they spent their energy explaining why they did not have to. The word came to them and they spent themselves resisting it instead of obeying it. And then there's the third possibility that something in you has been responding to what you have just heard. And you are going to go. You are going to go even though you do not know where this will end. You're going to go because the word said to go, not because you have figured out the destination. You are going to walk towards Siloam with mud on your eyes, trusting that the one who anointed you is who he said he is. And you are going to discover, like Abraham did, like the blind man did, that the going was the believing all along. That what felt like blind obedience was actually faith taking its first steps. And that what waited at the end of the going was the face of the one who sent you. And here is what I want you to remember because this is what last week's episode landed on. And it is what this week's episode rests on. If there is anything in you right now that wants to go, that desire is itself the evidence that He has already begun the work in you. You are not generating it or producing it. You are not climbing higher than anyone else has climbed. The desire to go is the same gift the man at Siloem received when Jesus anointed his eyes. It came from outside you. It was placed in you. And the going is your praise, not your performance,

Will You Go Prayer And Next Steps

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but the living, breathing, rejoicing of the one who has been made alive. So come close. Not because you have made yourself holy, not because you have figured out where this is going to end, not because you can see the path. Come close because the one who is entirely other has anointed your eyes, has spoken the word, has named the pool, and the going is the only response that matches the gift. The going is the believing. And we are sent. Let's pray. Father, you have shown us today the man at the pool, and you have shown us Abraham, and you have shown us what it looks like when your word reaches a person and that person moves. Thank you for the light that anointed our eyes. Thank you that you sent us before we knew where we were going. Thank you that the going is itself a gift of grace. Evidence that you have already begun the work in us. Evidence that you came for us first. Forgive us for the times we have heard your word and stayed, for the times we have demanded a destination before we would take a step. For the times we have called what was your work our contribution. Give us the courage to go. Give us the trust to move when we cannot see. And let us discover, like Abraham did, like the blind man did, that what waits at the end of obedience is the face of the one who sent us. In Jesus' name. Amen. Now I want to thank you again for joining us today. And I hope this message has really helped you take a step closer in knowing just how much God loves you and wants you to know Him and see Him. If anything in today's message resonated with you, or if you have any questions at all or comments, please visit us at thetaway.faith. There you can send us an email or you can click on the text us link in the episode description. Either way, we would truly love to hear from you. Now, next time we're going to step further into John chapter 9, where the man who has been given sight is brought before the Pharisees, and we watch what happens when a person who has truly seen the light is forced to give an account in front of those who claim to see and don't. The darkness of the human heart and its desire to explain away what God has plainly done. This is a message you are not going to want to miss. God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.