Jesus cures a blind man (part 1)

This amazing Jesus, who can walk on water and feed 5000 hungry people in the desert, now heals a man born blind. This fulfills what the ancient holy books had said the coming Saviour would do. It is not only a wonderful act of kindness, but it also demonstrates the bold claim he makes, ‘I am the light of the world.’

We see a variety of reactions. Some thought it really was the blind man who used to sit and beg. Some said, ‘No, but it’s rather like him…’ Others simply did not know.

I am that man

But the more they asked him the more he replied, ‘Yes, I am that man.’

Of course, they could not understand it at all. ‘How were your eyes opened?’ is what they wanted to know.

And he tells them the little he knows, ‘The man called Jesus made a mixture with mud and put it on my eyes.’ He doesn’t say that he knows more than that.

When they ask, ‘Where is he?’, he replies, ‘I do not know.’

There is another meaning to all this

At the end of the previous chapter, the religious leaders refuse to admit who Jesus is and try to kill him. Here, the uneducated blind beggar understands more than all of them. They are the blind ones. He is beginning to trust the man Jesus who is ‘the light of the world’.