Commentary - John 9:1-12

Bird's-eye view

In this remarkable account, the Lord Jesus moves from teaching about His identity as the Light of the World to demonstrating it in the most tangible way possible. He heals a man who was not just blind, but blind from birth, a condition considered hopelessly incurable. This miracle is not performed in a vacuum; it is a calculated sign, a living parable designed to accomplish several things at once. First, it corrects a flawed theology of suffering that reduces every affliction to a simple equation of sin and punishment. Second, it reveals Jesus' divine power and His mission as the one "Sent" from the Father. Third, it serves as a catalyst, forcing a division between those who have eyes to see the work of God and those who are willfully, spiritually blind. The entire episode is a masterful display of God's sovereignty, where a man's lifelong darkness becomes the canvas upon which Christ paints a masterpiece of divine glory.

The story unfolds with a simple, direct narrative. We see the disciples' question, Jesus' profound answer, the earthy and unusual method of healing, the man's obedient response, and the subsequent confusion and debate among his neighbors. The man's testimony is a model of simplicity and power: he doesn't have a complex theological system to defend, he just knows that he was blind and now he sees, and a man named Jesus is responsible. This sets the stage for the confrontation with the Pharisees that will dominate the rest of the chapter, where the theme of sight and blindness will be explored with devastating irony.

Outline

Context In John

This chapter follows directly on the heels of the dramatic confrontations in chapters 7 and 8, which took place during the Feast of Tabernacles. During that feast, Jesus made two monumental claims about Himself. He declared Himself to be the source of living water (John 7:37-38) and the Light of the World (John 8:12). The healing of the man born blind in chapter 9 is therefore not a random act of kindness but a deliberate and powerful "sign" that serves as the enacted proof of His claim to be the Light of the World. He doesn't just talk about light; He creates it. This event further escalates the conflict with the Jewish authorities, who had just attempted to stone Him (John 8:59). His authority is demonstrated, and their spiritual blindness is simultaneously exposed, a theme John will develop throughout the rest of the chapter.

Key Issues

The Glory of Mud

One of the central errors of fallen man is to assume that he is in a position to judge the ways of God. We see this tendency in the disciples' question that kicks off this chapter. They see a man afflicted from birth, and their minds immediately run down the well-worn tracks of retributive justice. Someone must have done something wrong for this to happen. This is the logic of Job's friends, and it is a logic that the Bible repeatedly refutes. While it is true that we live in a fallen world where sin brings about suffering, it is a profound theological error to draw a straight line from every specific instance of suffering back to a specific, corresponding sin. Jesus demolishes this entire framework with His answer. The purpose of this man's blindness was not fundamentally punitive, but doxological. It was for the glory of God. This man was born blind so that, decades later, on this particular day, the Son of God could reveal His glory by healing him. God is the master storyteller, and He is weaving all the tragedies and sorrows of this world into a story that will ultimately redound to His praise.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1-2 As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”

Jesus sees the man. This is not a casual glance; it is the sovereign gaze of the Creator upon His creature. The disciples also see the man, but they see him as a theological problem to be solved. Their question reveals the common thinking of the day, which was a kind of karmic ledger-keeping. They present Jesus with a false dilemma. Option A: the man sinned. This would imply he sinned in the womb, or perhaps it reflects a belief in the preexistence of souls. Option B: his parents sinned, and he is bearing the punishment. Both options assume that this profound suffering must be a direct punishment for a specific sin.

3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this was so that the works of God might be manifested in him.

Jesus rejects their entire premise. He is not saying that this man and his parents were sinless people, which would contradict the whole of Scripture. He is saying that their sin is not the specific, causal explanation for his blindness. The ultimate reason, the teleological reason, lies not in the man's past but in God's future purpose. This man's affliction was an appointment. He was a stage, prepared from birth, upon which the glory of God was about to be put on display for all to see. This is a staggering statement about the sovereignty of God over human suffering. God had a plan for this man's darkness, and that plan was light.

4-5 We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Jesus connects this specific healing to His broader mission. He is the Sent One, and He has a limited time, the "day" of His earthly ministry, to accomplish the work the Father gave Him. The "night" refers to His coming crucifixion and departure. There is an urgency to His work. He then reiterates His great claim from the previous chapter: "I am the light of the world." He is not just a light, or a source of light. He is the light itself. And He is about to prove it by bringing physical light into this man's world, a sign of the spiritual light He brings to all who believe.

6 When He had said this, He spat on the ground, made clay of the saliva, and rubbed the clay on his eyes,

This is a wonderfully earthy and scandalous method. Jesus could have healed with a word, as He did on other occasions. But here He stoops down, spits in the dust, and makes mud. This is the act of a potter, a creator. It is a deliberate echo of Genesis 2, where God formed the first man from the dust of the ground. Jesus is performing an act of re-creation on this man's eyes. The use of spittle, considered unclean by some, and the act of making clay on the Sabbath, which would have been considered "work" by the Pharisees, shows that Jesus is not bound by their petty regulations. He is the Lord of the Sabbath, and He is demonstrating that the stuff of creation is good, and He is its Master.

7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.

The healing is not complete with the application of the mud. It requires an act of faith and obedience from the man. He has to get up, with mud caked on his eyes, and navigate his way to the pool of Siloam. This would have been a public spectacle, a walk of potential humiliation. But he obeys. And John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives us a crucial interpretive key in his parenthetical note. The name of the pool, Siloam, means "Sent." So the man is healed when he obeys the command of the ultimate "Sent One" from the Father and washes in the pool named "Sent." The geography itself preaches the gospel. The man's obedience is the channel through which the power of Christ flows. He went, he washed, and he came back seeing. The transformation is immediate and complete.

8-9 Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, “Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?” Others were saying, “This is he,” still others were saying, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the one.”

The result is not quiet acceptance but noisy confusion. The change in the man is so radical that people cannot process it. His eyes are open, his whole countenance must have been transformed. He is no longer the familiar blind beggar. The debate rages until the man himself settles it with a simple, powerful declaration: "I am the one." This is the nature of true conversion. The change God works in a person is so profound that the world is often left scratching its head, unable to reconcile the new man with the old. But the redeemed man knows who he is.

10-12 So they were saying to him, “How then were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man who is called Jesus made clay, and rubbed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’; so when I went away and washed, I received sight.” And they said to him, “Where is He?” He said, “I do not know.”

The question is a natural one: "How?" The man's answer is a model of effective testimony. He does not offer theological speculation. He does not have a five-point sermon. He simply states the facts as he experienced them. "A man named Jesus did this, He told me to do that, I did it, and this was the result." This is an unassailable witness. He is testifying to what he knows. When they ask for Jesus' whereabouts, the man doesn't know. Jesus performed the miracle and then withdrew, leaving the healed man as the evidence. The work itself was the witness, and now the man is the mouthpiece for that work.

Application

First, we must be very careful not to adopt the cruel theology of the disciples. When we see suffering, our first impulse should be compassion, not theological diagnosis. We are not in a position to know all the reasons for another's pain. Our job is to be agents of God's mercy and to look for ways that the works of God might be displayed in that situation, just as Jesus did.

Second, we must recognize that this story is our story. We were all born spiritually blind. We were not just visually impaired; we were in total darkness, "having no hope and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12). And in our blindness, Jesus saw us. He came to us and applied the humble means of grace to our lives, the preaching of the gospel, which is foolishness to the world. He commanded us to do something that made no sense to our blind reason, to repent and be washed in the waters of baptism. And when we, by grace, obeyed, we came back seeing.

Finally, our testimony ought to have the same character as this man's. The world will be confused by the change in us. They will ask, "How?" Our best answer is not to get tangled in complex arguments but to simply state the facts. "I was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see. A man called Jesus did it." That is a witness that cannot be refuted because it is rooted in the glorious, re-creative work of the Light of the World.