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John 9 "God's Work Revealed in Us"
Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing. (John 9:1-7)
According to science, there is a reason for everything.
We have gained incredible power over the world around us by diligently
studying the laws of cause and effect. We have discovered that if we
apply heat or pressure or electricity at the right place, then things
will work like we want them to. We have discovered that disease is the
result of viruses, germs, malnutrition and genetics and that if we manipulate
these causes the effects can be negated or at least slowed down. Much
of the suffering and hard work of this world has been overcome simply
by studying the laws of cause and effect. However, for every evil that
we overcome, another evil seems to rise up to take its place. Nuclear
energy only comes with the shadow of nuclear war. Genetic medicine is
accompanied with fears of genetic manipulation. Though we have conquered
disease after disease, and have learned to produce more than enough
food to feed the world, there is still far too much suffering in the
world. Now the Jews thought that the cause of all suffering was sin,
and they thought that the answer to the world’s problems was to
eliminate the cause of suffering, sin.
The disciples of Jesus saw the man born blind and asked a fundamental
question about suffering. Why? What is the cause that produced this
effect. At that time the working theory amongst the Jews was that all
suffering was the result of sin. Surely, the wages of sin is death.
God’s law was given for a purpose, as a manual for the human condition.
God in His mercy told us beforehand which things we should avoid to
escape misery. Disobedience does lead to suffering. But this man born
blind was a problem in their theory. You see, if he was born blind,
how could he be suffering for sins that he did not commit? Or was God
holding him accountable for sins that his parent’s committed?
That hardly seems fair either. Jesus sets the matter straight. "Neither
this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be
revealed in him." All sin will eventually lead to suffering and
death, but all suffering is not the result of sin. If all suffering
were caused by sin then we could just apply the rules of science and
say that since Christians sin less than other people in the world they
should suffer less as well. On one level this works out. We can look
at the lives of people in the world around us and say, "Yeah, I
am so glad that I have been set free from addiction, or hate, or pride,
or ambition" I have joy and peace and love in my life that I didn’t
have before. But on another level we still suffer. We suffer from disease,
from heartache, from relatives who don’t understand us, from jobs
that are stressful and demanding. Now some of this probably is from
our sin, we are not perfect. But some of this is for a different reason
all together. Jesus described it as God’s work being revealed
in us.
We find out later in verse 14 that Jesus made the clay and anointed
the man’s eyes on the Sabbath, thereby breaking the Jewish law.
The Jews used this as evidence that Jesus was not from God because He
broke God’s law. In Exodus 20:10 the law states clearly that the
seventh day is the Sabbath and in it you shall do no work. The reason
for this is because God Himself rested from all His work when He created
the world in seven days. Sabbath means "rest". If God took
a rest from His work, then we surely need to take a rest from ours as
well. If you ignore this principle, you will suffer. Your body is not
designed to work without rest. But let me ask you a question. When God
ended the work that He had done and rested on the seventh day in Genesis
2:2, was He finished? Did God set everything up and then fall asleep?
No! The word "rest" implies that the work resumes. In fact
we can look throughout the rest of the Bible and see many times over
the mighty works of God! He did not stop working for good on the seventh
day, He just rested. Let me ask you another question. Does God rest
every Sabbath? Of course not, if God were to rest now, our world would
fly apart at the molecular level, our breath would stop, the universe
would come crashing in (or perhaps out). On a more personal level we
and millions of other Christians around the world are asking Him to
work in our lives every Sunday and we gather to worship Him expecting
Him to work in our midst. God does not rest on the Sabbath, but we should.
Now Jesus tells us that He was doing God’s work. "I must
work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming
when no one can work." So Jesus was not breaking the Sabbath at
all, because the Sabbath was made for men, not God. God’s work
continues, His hand is not slack, He is not asleep. Instead He is always
vigilant, always ready, always there. God is constantly working in us
that His works should be revealed in us.
Sometimes He works through blessings, but sometimes He works through
suffering. In His great wisdom, He decides how to best reveal Himself.
The problem that we have is that we keep trying to work out the cause
and effect. We think that when things go wrong, we must have messed
up a step somewhere. We think that we must have broken some precept
or law and that is why we are suffering. That is the philosophy of the
Pharisees. They thought that if they just got all of their laws perfect
they would have a perfect life. But what this philosophy is saying is
that God is not working in this world anymore. We are doing His work
for Him. This really describes what religion is. Religion is when we
try to work for God. But this is not what God wants. Instead God wants
to reveal His work in us. How does He do it?
Often He does it in ways that we do not expect. Jesus spat on the ground
and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind
man with the clay. Jesus healed a number of blind men, but never this
way. Why did He do it this way, this time? Because that was the way
that God wanted Him to do it. Jesus was not doing His own thing. He
was doing God’s work. Because He was sent by God. Now John thinks
this word "sent" very important because he points out that
the name of the pool of Siloam, to which Jesus sent the blind man to
wash in, also means "Sent". If I send my son to the store,
it is so he can buy the things that I send him for. If when he gets
to the store he forgets about the list of things that I asked him to
get and buys candy and toys instead he will be in trouble. If a president
sends a message through his ambassador, the ambassador must deliver
the message of the president. He is not free to substitute his own message
instead. Likewise Jesus was sent to work the works of God who sent Him.
And like the blind man, it is as we are sent that God’s works
are revealed in us.
We mess up when we start thinking that we know what God wants to do.
We start doing God’s work for Him because we think that we understand
it. We think we understand what He wants to do so well, and end up blind
to what He is really doing. The Pharisees were blind to the miracles
of Jesus because they assumed that anyone who would break the Sabbath
could not be from God. The blind man admitted freely that He really
did not know who this Jesus was. In verse 24, the Pharisees command
the man who used to be blind, "Give God the glory! We know that
this Man is a sinner." The man replied back humbly, "Whether
He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know: that though I
was blind, now I see." The Pharisees in their arrogance and pride
understood less and less about Jesus. But the blind man in his humility
soon realized that Jesus was more than what he thought at first. Jesus
asked the blind man, "Do you believe in the Son of God?",
"Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?" "You have
both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you." "Lord,
I believe!" The blind man did not have a list of rules that Jesus
had to fit into in order to work in his life. The blind man humbly accepted
what God did, and humbly went where he was sent. Perhaps it was because
he had suffered so much before? The Pharisees who did everything right
and had not suffered were blind to what God was really doing.
If we work for God, we are going to miss out on what God is doing. God
is much more active than we think He is. God already has much better
plans for our church and for our lives than we can even imagine. If
we think that we can see His plan, that we understand the spiritual
rules of cause and effect, then we are truly blind. The only way to
see, is to follow humbly where He sends us. We can work for God, create
a grand set of rules, build an impressive organization and make a name
for ourselves, or we can pray that His work should be revealed in us.
If we pray like this we need to be ready to suffer as well as to succeed.
We will need to be ready to admit time and again our own ignorance and
shortsightedness and keep asking Jesus to show us who He is, that we
may believe in Him.
Copyright 2000 Jonathan Wilson
All Rights Reserved
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