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“The Light of Life”
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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.”
The Jews generally believed that sin is punished in this life.
Satan, the author of sin and its results, had led people to look on
disease and death as proceeding from God. If some great affliction
had fallen on anyone, that person had the burden of being considered
a great sinner. This viewpoint prepared the way for the Jews to reject
Jesus. They looked on the One who “has borne our griefs and carried
our sorrows” as Someone “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted,”
and they hid their faces from Him.
Isaiah 53:4
.
Christ’s disciples held the same belief about the connection
between sin and suffering that the Jews held. After anointing the
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blind man’s eyes, Jesus sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam,
and the man’s sight was restored. In doing this, Jesus answered
the disciples’ question in a practical way. The disciples were not
to discuss about who had sinned or had not sinned. They were to
understand God’s mercy in giving sight to the blind. There was no
healing virtue in the clay or in the pool where the blind man was
sent to wash. The virtue was in Christ.
A Miracle on the Sabbath
The Pharisees were astonished at the cure and were filled with
hatred more than ever, for Jesus had performed the miracle on the
Sabbath day.
The neighbors who knew the young man when he was blind
looked on him with doubt, because when his eyes were opened, his
face was changed and brightened, and he appeared like another man.
Some said, “This is he”; others said, “He is like him.” But he settled
the question by saying, “I am he.” He then told them of Jesus and
how Jesus had healed him, and they inquired, “Where is He?” He
said, “I do not know.”
A council of the Pharisees summoned the man and asked him
how he had received his sight. “He said to them, ‘He put clay on
my eyes, and I washed, and I see.’ Therefore some of the Pharisees
said, ‘This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the
Sabbath.’” The Pharisees appeared wonderfully zealous for Sabbath