A man called Jesus
“A Man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and I received sight” (John 9:11).
The healing of the blind man in John 9 is extraordinary. It is extraordinary because the man was born blind. The way the Lord heals the man is extraordinary. And the spiritual journey the man has which leads him to the Saviour is extraordinary. This series of events begins with seeing; Jesus saw the blind man (v. 1). We have a contrast between the God who sees everything and a man who had never seen anything. The disciples relate suffering to sin, and speculate about whose sin had caused the man’s blindness (v. 2). They were not affected by the man’s suffering, only curious about its cause. The Lord saw his blindness and how His compassion would cause God’s work of salvation to shine through the blind man’s life. The Lord describes Himself as “the light of the world”. He was only in the world for a short time, but in that time He shone into people’s hearts and lives (v. 4).
In the creation account at the beginning of Genesis, God speaks, and creation comes into being. But when He creates man, He forms him from the dust of the earth and breathes into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). There is an intimacy in the creation of man. Man is made to have fellowship with God. There was an intimacy in the healing of the blind man. The Lord anoints his eyes with clay He made from the dust of the ground. He told the man to “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam”, which meant “Sent”. The blind man had to find his own way to the pool. He did. He washed and came back seeing. The man allowed the Saviour to anoint his eyes. He only heard the voice of the Saviour, but that experience was enough to instil faith in his heart, and that faith resulted in him receiving sight. Although there was no record of a person born blind ever being healed, this man believed.
The blind man is a vivid illustration of how we are brought out of spiritual darkness into all the light of God’s love and grace through faith in the Person of Christ, a man called Jesus. Thomas, in all likelihood, witnessed this miracle. But later, he would say, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). The blind man who had met Jesus for the first time, but never saw the Saviour’s face, believed with all his heart.
The results of his faith were plain for all to see. But the people who remembered him displayed anything but faith. They questioned if he was the same man that they knew as a blind beggar. The man cuts through such nonsense with the words, “I am he.” Then they wanted to know who healed him. The simplicity of his answer is beautiful, “A Man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and I received sight.” John speaks of Jesus as the Son of God who became a man to redeem us. The man who was blind witnessed his personal experience of Jesus. What Christ has done in our lives is the most powerful witness we have, The people wanted to know where Jesus could be found, but the man could not tell them.
There was a remarkable consistency in the man’s testimony. He simply shared with people what had happened. He only witnessed to what he knew, and he was not afraid to say, “I do not know.” We shall see how he grows in confidence in his faith and witness. In doing so, he teaches us how to witness to our faith in Christ. Our witness is based upon what we know of the Saviour. We grow in that knowledge, and He responds to our faith in Him.
