Jesus Heals Man Born Blind by Unusual Method

Passage: John 9:1-12. Should we use his unusual method for healing people today?

Jesus first has to dispense with the disciples’ standard belief at the time that men born blind had some sort of sin.

The translations are mine, but if you would like to see many other translations, please go to biblegateway.com. I include the Greek text to bring out the nuances, but readers may ignore the left column, if they wish.

Let’s begin.

Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind (John 9:1-12)

¹ Καὶ παράγων εἶδεν ἄνθρωπον τυφλὸν ἐκ γενετῆς. ² καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτὸν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοντες· ῥαββί, τίς ἥμαρτεν, οὗτος ἢ οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἵνα τυφλὸς γεννηθῇ; ³ ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς· οὔτε οὗτος ἥμαρτεν οὔτε οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἵνα φανερωθῇ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ. ⁴ ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντός με ἕως ἡμέρα ἐστίν· ἔρχεται νὺξ ὅτε οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐργάζεσθαι. ⁵ ὅταν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ὦ, φῶς εἰμι τοῦ κόσμου. ⁶ Ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἔπτυσεν χαμαὶ καὶ ἐποίησεν πηλὸν ἐκ τοῦ πτύσματος καὶ ἐπέχρισεν αὐτοῦ τὸν πηλὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ⁷ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ὕπαγε νίψαι εἰς τὴν κολυμβήθραν τοῦ Σιλωάμ( ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται ἀπεσταλμένος). ἀπῆλθεν οὖν καὶ ἐνίψατο καὶ ἦλθεν βλέπων. ⁸ Οἱ οὖν γείτονες καὶ οἱ θεωροῦντες αὐτὸν τὸ πρότερον ὅτι προσαίτης ἦν ἔλεγον· οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ καθήμενος καὶ προσαιτῶν; ⁹ ἄλλοι ἔλεγον ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν, ἄλλοι ἔλεγον· οὐχί, ἀλλ’ ὅμοιος αὐτῷ ἐστιν. ἐκεῖνος ἔλεγεν ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι. ¹⁰ ἔλεγον οὖν αὐτῷ· πῶς [οὖν] ἠνεῴχθησάν σου οἱ ὀφθαλμοί; ¹¹ ἀπεκρίθη ἐκεῖνος· ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὁ λεγόμενος Ἰησοῦς πηλὸν ἐποίησεν καὶ ἐπέχρισέν μου τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ εἶπέν μοι ὅτι ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν Σιλωὰμ καὶ νίψαι· ἀπελθὼν οὖν καὶ νιψάμενος ἀνέβλεψα. ¹² καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ· ποῦ ἐστιν ἐκεῖνος; λέγει· οὐκ οἶδα.

¹ Then as he was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth. ² His disciples asked him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³ Jesus replied: “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God may be displayed in him. ⁴ We must work the works of the one who sent me while it is day; the night comes when no one can work. ⁵ While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶ After saying these things, he spit on the ground and made mud out of his saliva and smeared the mud on his eyes ⁷ and said to him, “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is interpreted as Sent). So he left and washed and came, seeing. ⁸ Then his neighbors and those who had seen him before that he was a beggar were saying, “Isn’t he the one who used to sit and beg?” ⁹ Others were saying, “That’s the one.” Others were saying, “No, but he is like him.” But he kept saying, “I’m the one.” ¹⁰ So they were saying to him, “How then were your eyes opened?” ¹¹ He answered, “A man called Jesus made mud and smeared my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.” So after I left and washed, I recovered my sight.” ¹² Next, they said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I don’t know.”

Comments:

The disciples are trapped in cultural thinking. Many believed that illness, particularly blindness, was caused by sin, whether by the victim or the parents. Apparently the disciples believed that the man was born or conceived in sin.

Mounce quotes the Babylonian Talmud: “There is no death without sin, and there is no suffering without iniquity (b. Shabb. 55a). Apparently this was the popular general principle.

Application for Ministry

We can learn how to minister from Jesus’s ministry and apply his practices to our own ministry practices. In this section I number the points for clarity and order.

1.. John 5:14 implies that the lame man did something wrong in the past. However, here, Jesus raises their sights and demands that they look forward, not backwards to the past. It does not matter what the blind man’s past was like or what his parents may have done or not done. No, God did not cause the blindness many years ago, just to heal the man many years later. Instead, God was going to get glory out of this bad situation, redeem it, and work a miracle by healing the man.

2.. Don’t focus on your past and play the blame game. “If only I had not sinned, then I would not be blind or ill!” If you need to repent of a sin, then God will clarify it to you. You don’t have to allow your overactive conscience or your small, defective theology that equates sickness with sin in all situations to cancel out your faith. Get rid of your cheap theology. Focus on Jesus and his healing power, instead.

3.. He also impresses on them the urgency to work while it is during the day. Night will come when no one can do the works of God. It is not clear when this night will come, perhaps before judgment when God brings down the curtain on This Age. It is difficult to believe that Satan will be permitted to hinder the works or God even in communist and Islamic countries, for the gospel has a way of slipping in through the cracks. Even during God’s wrath in the book of the Revelation, the message goes out and penetrates. More immediately, he is referring to his time on the earth. The world sits in darkness, but we can still work in it.

4.. Now for the bit about saliva and mud. “People of the ancient world regarded saliva as possessing curative powers. In the Hellenistic world, it was frequently used in magical rites and for that very reason came to be forbidden in the Jewish community” (Mounce comment on v. 6). So with that background, Jesus enters the thought world of their day and works a miracle by unusual means (see Mark 7:33 and 8:23). Once again, John reflects the historical context.

5.. Carson, after a long discussion of various ancient societies and their taboos, including Lev. 15:8, which discusses saliva, sees Jesus as claiming religious authority. “The situation is not entirely unlike the healing of the man with leprosy: by touching him Jesus does not contract the leper’s uncleanness, but heals the leper of his disease (Mt. 8:1-4)” (comment on v. 6, p. 364).

6.. An interesting connection, made by church fathers, sees the mud or clay as referring to Gen. 2:7, where God made humans out of the dust of the ground (Carson, comment on v. 6). The Greek word in the Septuagint (pronounced sep-TOO-ah-gent and a third-to-second century B.C. translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek) is the same as “mud” or “clay” here. Klink seems to like the idea, because in the Fourth Gospel Jesus was involved in creation. And sure enough the placement of the Greek pronoun “his” (as in “his” mud) instead of “his” (the blind man’s) eyes leans in that direction (comment on v. 6). Admittedly, when I first saw the Greek pronoun’s placement, I immediately wanted to translate it as “his mud.” But I went with what grammarian Novakovic suggested (“his eyes”). So combining Carson’s idea about Jesus’s authority and Klink’s (and the church father’s) idea about an echo of creation in Gen. 2:7, the mud could be symbolic. Yes, he really did make and apply it, but he wanted to symbolize something higher with the real mud. Borchert mentions it (comment on vv. 6-7):

What Jesus did next was rather shocking. The story as stated simply bristles with symbolic allusions, which are subject to varied scholarly opinions with respect to their meanings. It may suffice here to suggest a few possible allusions.

Two spittle miracles are recorded in Mark (the healing of the deaf man who also had a speech problem in 7:32–35 and the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida in 8:22–25), but there are no spittle miracles in Matthew or Luke. In both cases from Mark, as in this case from John, spittle seems to be a kind of vehicle Jesus used to perform the miracle. Like his touch (cf. Mark 5:31; 5:41), Jesus’ spittle seems to be an aspect of his person that carried his power. In the present case the mixing of Jesus’ spittle (ptysma) with dirt is somewhat reminiscent of God’s breath mixing with dirt of the earth in the miracle of human creation (Gen 2:7). (Borchert, comment on vv. 6-7)

7.. In any case, I would not sell “healing clay” or “healing mud” from my saliva over TV (!). In other words, I would not use this specific strategy to heal someone. The Bible was written for us (and for all generations), but not to us. This unusual method was intended to relate to their culture; don’t insist on duplicating it, as some healing evangelists do today in selling prayer cloths or little bottles of oil.

8.. It is important to note that Jesus took the man aside, just as he did in Mark 7:31-37 and 8:22-26, where he also used saliva. In all three cases, Jesus was merely fitting into the thought world of the individual men. The fact that he took the three men aside in all cases indicates that this was not a universal practice.

9.. Much more typical and standard is seen in Jas. 5:14-15:

¹⁴Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. … (Jas. 5:14-15, NIV)

Using oil to heal is all right in a church setting, but neither should anyone sell it over the radio or TV.

10.. The main point is that the muddied blind man was obedient. Naaman the leprous general was told to wash in the Jordan River.

⁹So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. ¹⁰Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.” … ¹³Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” ¹⁴So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. (2 Kings 5:9-12, 13-14, NIV)

Both Naaman and the former blind man obeyed the unusual instructions and got healed. Come to think of it, I have heard of a healing evangelist who was instructed by the Lord to touch his tongue with his finger and then touch a mute woman’s tongue, in a meeting over in eastern Europe. He hesitated, and so did she. But he obeyed, and she allowed it, and she was healed. She could talk.

Let’s not look down our noses at such things. God may wish to do things in an unusual way. Don’t slam the door shut, but don’t market it in your fund raising, and don’t see it as a formula that should be done every time.

11.. As I write in all the healing posts:

Let it be noted that Jesus never went in for “decree and declare.” (Name one time he used such verbiage during his prayer for the sick. Nor did the disciples use those formulaic words in Acts).

Instead, God the Father through his Son who was anointed by the Spirit performed miracles of healing. Jesus clarified that he does only what he sees his Father doing (John 5:19). He lives because of the Father (John 6:57). He speaks only what the Father taught him (John 8:28). He does what he sees the Father do (John 10:37). What Jesus says is just what the Father told him to say (John 12:49-50, 57). Perhaps the most important verse about miracles: “Many good works I have shown you from My Father” (John 10:32). (In John’s Gospel, “good works” = miracles, at a minimum.)

And so the Father through his Son who was anointed by the Spirit, performed all miracles during his Son’s ministry (Acts 10:38). The Son obeyed and followed his Father and also did the healings by the Spirit. The Trinity was working together.

12..We too should develop life in the Spirit (Gal. 5), so we can hear from the Father through the Spirit, in Jesus’s name and authority granted to us. We will never heal as Jesus did, because he is the Anointed One without limits (John 3:34). But after the cross and the Son’s ascension, the Spirit can distribute the gifts of healings (plural) as he determines (1 Cor. 12:11), not as we “name and claim” or “decree and declare.” Let the Spirit work, and you listen and obey, and then rebuke a disease (not the person) or pray for healing.

4. Gifts of the Spirit: Gifts of Healings

Kenneth Copeland Gets a Pacemaker

Is ‘Decreeing’ Biblical for Christians?

What Is Biblical Confession?

For fuller commentary, please click on the chapter:

John 9

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