“Every pardon a sinner has is written in Christ’s blood.”
Thomas Watson
His neighbors and others who had seen him begging couldn’t believe their eyes. Here was the man who had been born blind or was it? John’s Gospel recounts the conversation that ensued, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”
The testimony of every believer in Jesus Christ is powerful, personal, and in some ways, lacking. The man born blind had responded to Christ’s command and in obedience gone to the pool and been cleansed. But his journey with knowing who Jesus really was, was just beginning. Read for yourself, compare verses eleven, seventeen, and thirty-eight (in chapter nine). The formerly blind man calls Jesus, “the man called Jesus,” “prophet,” and then “Lord.” What a progression and in such a short time. His knowledge of the person of Jesus grew very rapidly.
The formerly blind man also has an incomplete knowledge of the work of Jesus even as it applies to himself. He knows that Jesus “made mud” but the details of the process were unseen by him. Because he was blind, he was aware only of the mud’s application and effects. Jesus actually, “spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva.” (v.6) It is a small point but the blind man missed the action of Jesus spitting on to the ground. In a similar way, believers know of Christ’s work through its applications and effects, (ex: I am forgiven now. I am a new creature, etc.) but don’t know the great details involved in how he accomplished it. It is enough for us to know his work on the cross and the righteousness of his life and all of eternity will unfold to us the glorious details of his person and work. Have you trusted Christ? Are you leaning on him for salvation and not on your own works? Have you responded to him in faith with the result that your life is now characterized by obedience? Have a blessed week and we will see many of you on Sunday.
To Him alone be glory,
Pastor Dale
