AP

John 9:22 [The once-blind man’s] parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue.

In the account of the healing of the man-born-blind in John 9, we have the playing out of an excellent, real-life, physical example of a very important spiritual truth. Humanly speaking, like this man’s physical blindness, spiritual blindness is an incurable disease; we are all BORN spiritually blind, and only God himself can remove the ‘scales’ from our eyes.

People often say (or at least imply) that if God would provide some clear, undeniable evidence of his existence, they would believe.  They are asking for something like a convincing miracle … or, perhaps, Jesus himself appearing again among us.

Sadly, we know it would make NO difference.  Why?  Because unregenerate man has ‘already decided’ what he will accept as ‘valid’ proof; he has adopted a ‘world view’ with clearly defined rules of evidence.

The Jews of Jesus’ day are a perfect example of this: it was UNDENIABLE that the man standing before them had been born blind – it was attested to by his own admission, and by his parents; it was UNDENIABLE that the stirrer from Nazareth, Jesus, had given the man his sight; and it was essential to their whole theological framework that God was the ONLY one who could bestow the gift of sight.

So what were they to do?  ‘Already they had decided’ that Jesus was NOT the Christ of God!  All the evidence in the world would never shift them from this ‘world view’.  So they only had one other option: to REMOVE from their view any threatening proof to the contrary – they would deny this now-seeing man any access to their Synagogue, otherwise, whenever they ‘saw’ him they would be challenged about the true identity of Jesus!

Jesus’ final words to them in verses 39-41 are therefore very pertinent: “‘For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.’  Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, ‘What?  Are we blind too?’  Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.’”!

Modern man does exactly the same thing as the Jewish leaders did.  Modern man’s world view has no place for letting Jesus be the absolute Lord of his life; he too will reject outright any evidence that proves Christ’s claim on him.  Our earnest efforts to point out to him how unreasonable this is must therefore be accompanied by equally earnest prayer that God will open his blind eyes.  Nothing short of this will change his mind!