A MAN BORN BLIND 

When someone is born blind, they have no reference to the statement, “What a beautiful summer’s blue sky!” They can’t fathom the words, “What a dark and moonless night.” They have no sense of sight. What appears normative for sighted folk has no ground for thought in them.

So it is with those who are spiritually blind, as we all have been since birth. The DNA of Adam was passed onto the whole human race; the result of “the fall”. At the core of who you are as a human being, you were born spiritually dead, spiritually blind, and deaf. There is no one more ineffective than a dead person. They cannot change their condition. Even a person, moments before physically alive, if their heart stops, they need immediate help from the outside to try and restart their heart by whatever means there are at hand.

That is why the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ seems foolish to the world. Unaware that they are lost, why, they reason, do they need to be found? Blinded to the fact that their “living” is only mere existence, why, they reason, do they need a new life. Not aware that they are bound in the life-numbing chains of sin and under the control of Satan himself, why, they reason, do they need a Savior, a Rescuer?

In John’s Gospel, chapter nine, we find a man born blind whose life was destined to be an icon for us to see ourselves, our helplessness and God’s amazing grace offered to all who will believe and receive Life from Jesus Christ. There was no way for his blindness from birth to be reversed so he might see unless something miraculous took place. In the same way, there was no way that we could have ever reversed the effects of sin in our lives whose promise was only death and separation from all that is good.

God was not waiting, scowling, with arms akimbo, waiting for us to finally see our need and get our “act” together before He responded to us. He did what only He could do to satisfy eternal justice and mercy. God fully became a man while remaining fully God. Jesus Christ, God the Eternal Son, was that singular, unique man worth an infinite number of human beings. The Creator being worth more than an infinite number of His creations was the only One who could find the lost, heal the blind, pay the just price for all the sin, horror and injustice mankind would ever give conceive and give birth to.

Jesus Christ has made the only way for us to be restored to humanity as it was meant to be experienced. He alone has died for you, has died as you, dying a death you deserved so that, by taking your place in the death-of-deaths, you might be born again into a new Life that you didn’t deserve, didn’t earn and one that could never be taken from you. That is eternal life to be begun by the Holy Spirit living Jesus’ life in you. When Jesus becomes your life, you will see and hear as only God can make you see and hear. As a friend of mine wrote in a song from 1970, “Feel the depth and taste the color; it’s the first time you can see all the beauty and the wonder of what life was meant to be. But, with your new sense of perception, you’ll also see the pain, and the devil’s dark deception, how he’s kept the world in chains.”

Like the man born blind, “Children of darkness can be children of light. Step into the Fortress, He’ll make everything right.” Only God can give sight to those still walking without spiritual eyes. The desperate sadness is that the “light” most of the world walks in is actually darkness. That makes the darkness that falls on them even more profoundly dark.

I plead with you, turn from the habit of living apart from God, chained as a slave to sin, and turn to Jesus Christ asking to receive His forgiveness, new eyes, new ears, a new heart and a new spirit. He is ready to give you His own Life and Spirit as you surrender your present blindness and in surrender, submit to His Light.