One Thing I Know

“Was blind but now I see.”  These are not just words to Amazing Grace.  They are found in the Bible.  It’s a very funny story if you read it all the way through.  The story is found in John 9.

Jesus passes by a man who had been blind since birth and his disciples ask Him who had sinned that caused the blindness.  In Jesus’ time, sickness, deformities, poverty, and a multitude of other negative things were considered as signs of disfavor with God.  The same applied to health and wealth as signs of favor with God.  Jesus is ready to totally obliterate that kind of thinking.  He spits on the ground and forms covering over the blind man’s eyes out of the clay.  (Notice the reference to Creation, when He formed man out of the ground)  Then, Jesus tells the man to go wash in the pool of Siloam.

Now, John makes a very important point in verse 14.  “Now it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.”  This infuriated the Pharisees because the Law (or what they thought of the Law) was so important that they couldn’t see the true meaning of the Law right in front of their eyes.  Jesus worked a wonderful miracle on the Sabbath, but all the Pharisees saw was work.  Because of this, He could not possibly be from God, much less the Son of God.

So, the questioning begins.  The Pharisees find the man and ask him where Jesus went, the person who opened his eyes.  Funny thing, the guys doesn’t know.  Of course he doesn’t know, he was blind when it happened.  He was yet to meet Jesus.  But, the questioning persists, and the Pharisees get the blind man’s parents involved.    However, most people feared the “Jews” so the parents direct the Pharisees back to their son.  This is a major fiasco because a “Sabbath-breaker” could not possibly have the ability to open a blind man’s eyes.  To the Pharisees, there is no explanation for this miracle of sight.  It is rather comical for them, the ones “in favor” with God, to be asking so many questions from the once blind man.

To me, we reach the climax in verse 25.  After one last ploy of coercion to get the once blind man to call Jesus a sinner, he answers the Pharisees this way:

He answered and said, “Whether He is a sinner [or not] I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.” – John 9:25

Isn’t this the way it is with us?  The world, religious elite, our peers of all sorts, and so on, constantly are pestering us with questions regarding our precious Redeemer.  They ask us, in many different ways, just how we know that there is a God.  Our response could be much like that of the once blind man in John 9.  For me, the one thing I know is that I was headed somewhere that would have lead to destruction and now I am not.  That proves it for me.  I was once lost, but now I am found.  This is one of those things that makes sense in our own minds, but it can be rather hard to put into words.  But, we know it, don’t we?

I hope you take some time to brood over John 9 this week.  I hope you have that one thing that you know regarding how God has directed your life away from what would have been destruction.  A few chapters earlier, John writes down some of Peter’s words:

“Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  – John 6:69

Can you see?  Are you found?  Do you believe and know?