Once I Was Blind, But Now I See

In the beginning, God spoke, and all things came into being. Then God saw. His sight was judgment on what he had made. He saw that all that he made was good. Created by God from the dust of the ground as his image, man is a seeing being. When God gave man dominion over the earth, that dominion assumed his ability to see and, therefore, distinguish, making judgments between good and evil. When the man and woman saw the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and made the wrong judgment, all of their posterity was blinded. Salvation is the restoration of sight.

When Jesus is introduced in John 9, he is the only one who can see. He sees a man who was blind from birth. Just previous to this, Jesus was hidden from the Jews who picked up stones to stone him (8:59). They were blind to his presence, though he walked in their midst. Jesus’ disciples are blind to the reason for the blind man’s blindness, and the Pharisees in the story are blind to who Jesus is. Jesus is the Seeing One. He is the new, seeing Adam who has come as king to recreate a seeing humanity in himself, a humanity able to fulfill the mission of dominion God gave to man.

Recalling the image of the original creation of man in Genesis 2:7, Jesus spits into the dust of the earth, making clay to anoint the eyes of the blind man. He told the crowds earlier at the Feast of Tabernacles that he is the source of living water (Jn 7:37), which John tells us is the Spirit (Jn 7:39). As God formed man from the dust of the ground and gave him his breath-Spirit to make him a living soul, so Jesus is recreating this man from the dust of the earth and the Spirit so that he can move from darkness to life, from death to life. He sends him to the Pool of Siloam, which is the Pool of “Sent,” to emerge from the water as the original creation came from water. By water and Spirit this man is born again or born from above so that he can now see the kingdom of God (Jn 3:3, 5).

With his ability to see restored, he is the image of Jesus, the Seeing One. Like Jesus, the blind man’s neighbors, who should know him, are unsure of his identity (Jn 9:8-9). Like Jesus, he answers that he is “I am” (Jn 9:9). He is not the I AM, but he is his image. He has been baptized into the name of the I AM and therefore shares his name. As Jesus sees, so he sees. As Jesus is sent (Jn 9:4), so he is sent. With his sight restored, he is prepared to fulfill his purpose as man.

We are saved unto good works, as Paul says in Ephesians 2:10. We are saved, not merely to secure our eternal future but to be co-laborers together with God in his new- creation project (1 Cor 3:9). We are a new creation to work with God for the renewal of creation. That project starts with our own hearts and bodies but extends to the world around us, encompassing everything God puts in our hands. We are to work to see everything rightly ordered under the lordship of Jesus. To do this, we must be able to see, making proper judgments between sin and righteousness and good and evil. Thanks to the saving grace of God in Jesus, once we were blind, but now we can see

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