“Symptoms of Spiritual Blindness”
John 9:1-41
3/2/08
So, today is confirmation Sunday, a day when we can
rejoice in the fact that two young women in our congregation, who have
been instructed in the Christian faith into which they have been
baptized, now publicly confess this faith and join with us at the altar
for the first time to receive the body and blood of Christ for the
forgiveness of their sins. Wednesday night they had the
opportunity after the service to show what they had learned from their
study of the catechism over the last couple of years. Before this
I had told them that I wasn’t as concerned about whether they
were able to recite the catechism to me word for word as I was about
whether they really understood what they were saying. “A
parrot can learn how to recite the catechism,” I told them.
“But I want you to be able to tell me in your own words what
things like Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Confession and
Absolution are all about. I want to know if you really understand
what the Bible teaches about these things and not simply whether you
have the ability to memorize or not.”
Now, don’t get me wrong... Memorizing
the catechism is important. If someone asks you about Baptism,
for example, or denies that God is the maker of heaven and earth,
you’ll always have a ready answer to give them, if you’ve
got the catechism memorized. The catechism is a light that will
shine in the darkness that has overtaken the colleges and universities
of this world, which deny the existence of God and teach evolution as a
fact. But the truth is, people can memorize the catechism and
still be blind to what it teaches.
And that’s what brings us to today’s
Gospel text in which we see Jesus healing a man born blind. Here
we see not only that Jesus comes to restore sight to those who are
physically blind, but also to restore sight to the spiritually blind,
to those who may actually know a lot of Scripture and yet still be
ignorant of what it’s all about. The Pharisees suffered
from this kind of blindness. They were very knowledgeable of
Scripture. Like many Christians today, they could recite whole
passages to you from memory. And yet they were blind as to what
and to whom the Scriptures pointed. It was this blindness that
kept the Pharisees from believing in Jesus and confessing Him as their
Messiah. And I suggest to you that the same danger exists for us
today of falling victim to this kind of blindness, if we don’t
keep our eyes on Jesus.
Using this text, then, I’d like to point out
four symptoms of spiritual blindness. The first symptom is when
we begin to view Christianity as being more about ourselves than about
Christ. Many Christians today see Christianity in this way, that
it’s more about them and their obedience than it is about Christ
and His obedience for us. The Pharisees viewed religion in this
way. We see this in this text by the fact that they were more
concerned about keeping the law of the Sabbath than they were about
rejoicing in the work of the Lord of the Sabbath. The Pharisees
were so concerned about their obedience that they were blind to their
Messiah, the One who had come to fulfill God’s Law for
them. In their blindness they boasted in themselves and their own
righteousness rather than in Christ their Savior. The Apostle
Paul says that this was his experience, too, as a Pharisee, when he
writes that when it came to the righteousness of the Law he was
blameless. All the outward signs were there in Paul’s life
that he was enlightened by the Word of God, because he looked so
righteous on the outside. But having trusted in his own obedience
and godly living he was actually blind, failing to see that he was a
sinner and a transgressor of the Law, failing to see that Jesus alone
was his righteousness.
Christians today need to be on the alert for this
kind of thinking, too. Even the disciples here had fallen victim
to it. By asking the Lord, “Who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he should be born blind?” they revealed their
belief that Christianity is all about obedience. If you follow
the commandments, things will go well for you. If you disobey,
you’ll be punished. If you steal, you’ll get
cancer. If you live a godly life, God will be pleased with
you. If you backslide, you won’t get into heaven. You
see how all these opinions blind us to the truth of God’s Word
and what Jesus has done for us with His obedience and His sacrificial
death on the cross for our sins. It makes Christianity all about
ourselves and our works rather than Jesus and His finished work for us.
A second symptom of spiritual blindness is when we
let our reason trump the Word of God. What I’m referring to
here is Jesus’ use of strange means to heal this man of his
blindness. Now, our sinful reason asks why Jesus chose to use mud
made out of His spittle and the dirty water of a local bathing pool to
restore this man’s sight. Why didn’t He just touch
the man’s eyes or simply say, “Be healed”? Why
didn’t Jesus do it another way? When we ask questions like
this we are putting our reason and the way we think Jesus ought to be
doing things above Scripture. When Christians do this they
inevitably have trouble with things like Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper. “It’s just water; it’s just bread and
wine!” To suggest that Jesus uses such plain, ordinary,
earthy things to deliver the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation
to us is just foolishness to them. But the cross itself is
foolishness to those who are blind. They cannot see that through
this weak, dirty, bloody, and vulgar looking instrument Jesus was
working our salvation, atoning for our sins with His blood. To
let our reason trump the Word of God, then, will lead to spiritual
blindness; it will keep us from seeing Jesus at work through the means
He has chosen to use to deliver His salvation to us. And this
spiritual blindness will lead to death. Instead of letting our
reason dictate what Jesus can or cannot do, we must let Jesus be Jesus
and let His Word trump our reason. When we don’t
understand, we must simply say, “Lord, your Word is truth!
I don’t know how this can be true, but I know that it’s
true, because it’s your Word.” How can mud, spit, and
water do such great things? Mud, spit, and water can’t do
such great things by themselves, but when they have the words and
promises of Jesus attached to them, they can do whatever He wants them
to do.
A third symptom of spiritual blindness is when a
Christian is afraid to confess Christ. In this account we see
that the blind man’s parents were afraid to confess Jesus for
fear that they would be kicked out of the synagogue. Some
Christians believe that faith in Jesus and confession of Him are two
different things, as if you could believe in Him but not confess
Him. Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul, however, say
differently. Jesus says, “Everyone who confesses me before
men, I also will confess before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever
denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in
heaven.” And Paul writes, “If you confess with your
mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him
from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes
and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is
saved.” Faith in Jesus and the confession of Him go
together; you can’t separate the two. Faith confesses
Jesus. And there’s no in-between; you either confess Him or
you deny Him. When asked what they believed about Jesus, the
parents of the blind man said nothing; they denied Christ by their
silence. When their son was asked what he believed about Jesus,
however, he confessed Him, telling the Pharisees exactly what Jesus had
done for him, regardless of whether or not he would be expelled from
the synagogue. Christians today must be ready to confess Jesus
and the truth of His Word, regardless of the consequences. We are
no longer blind to the truth. Thanks to Jesus who has given us
sight by His Word we are light, and we shine that light in the darkness
of the world by our confession of Him.
Finally, a fourth symptom of spiritual blindness is
when we start treating Jesus as if He were anything but our Lord and
our God. Many Christians today treat Jesus as if He were just
another Moses, someone who gives you even more commandments to follow,
as if you could have obeyed the first 10 to begin with. John,
however, writes, “The Law was given through Moses; grace and
truth came through Jesus Christ.” But while some treat
Jesus as if He were a law-giver and judge, others treat Him as if He
were their buddy, their pal. Such a view of Jesus denies Him the
respect and adoration that He deserves. Upon seeing Jesus alive
again in the flesh after His resurrection, Thomas didn’t pat
Jesus on the back and say, “Good to see ya again,
Jesus!” He confessed, “My Lord and my
God!” And when John saw Him in the book of Revelation
standing before him clothed with a long robe, with a golden sash around
His chest, with hair white as snow, with eyes like a flame of fire,
with feet like burnished bronze, with a voice like the roar of many
waters and a face like the sun shining in its full strength, John fell
at His feet as though dead. And the formerly blind man here
worships Jesus as the Son of Man. Jesus may be a friend of
sinners, but He’s not our buddy or our pal; He’s our Lord
and our God. He is God of God and Light of Light, true God
begotten of the Father from all eternity, and also true Man, born of
the Virgin Mary, who has redeemed us lost and condemned creatures,
purchased and won us from all sins, from death, and from the power of
the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood
and His innocent suffering and death.
All of us at one point or another in our lives
experience these symptoms of spiritual blindness. In fact, at one
time we were just as spiritually blind as these Pharisees, who failed
to recognize their Messiah, though He was revealed to be such before
their very eyes. But Jesus had mercy upon you just as He had
mercy on this man who was born blind. He may not have healed you
of any physical blindness, but through the proclamation of the Gospel
and the silly looking means of His Sacraments He has given you the
spiritual sight to see Him as your Lord and your God, crucified for
your salvation. Continue to keep your eyes on Him and listen to
His Word, that you might not return to your blindness and perish.
See Him working in the waters of your Baptism as He washes your
ailments away. Behold Him now at the altar as you come forward to
receive His body and blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness
of your sins. And on the Last Day you will see Him as He is, face
to face, and live and reign with Him for all eternity. This is
most certainly true! Amen.