Daily Devotional

 "Jesus answered, 'It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him'” John 9:3

In today’s text, Jesus was speaking about a man born blind from birth.  His statement seems so callous and heartless to us – that a man would have to suffer blindness for many years, from birth to adulthood, so that God’s work could be displayed in him; that Jesus might come and heal him.  But all things have been created for God’s glory, for His pleasure and his purpose!  In the long view, the eternal view, that man will be honored forever as the blind man of John’s gospel, chapter 9!

Still, this is such an unearthly perspective that I think it can only be perceived in the Spirit, and only accepted and rejoiced in in the Spirit.  But such a perspective is, I believe, what our hearts actually yearn for!  Let God be mysterious, unexplainable, beyond comprehension, objectionable to the world, perhaps even to our own hearts at times.

Let God forever be that great light at which we cannot stare, that great eternal expanse past finding out; that Being before whom the only reasonable response is worship; the only true reaction possible is worship.  Job said of him, “I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:5)
I cannot attain to all this!  But I can go to Him, and cry out!  I can wait on Him working in me.  What other hope is there?  Who really knows God’s thoughts or ways (Is. 55)?  None can fully discover the work of God (Eccl. 8:17).  And yet we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16)!  We are bidden to come to know Him!

In this passage the healed blind man expresses what happened to him.  “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”  John 9:25

I think we probably need more of this kind of simplicity.  Our personal encounters with Jesus are what need to testify to our own souls.  Other studies and spiritual growth will follow.  We don’t become believers merely because of doctrine or study.  It is easy to get too bound up in the intellectual pursuit of it all that we begin to believe such things are the substance.  We can lose the depth of the personal union with Christ, that which comes in glory and amazement. Over and over.

Let us be thrilled the most with Jesus’ presence, with His active love for us, in his great and repeated help we receive.  I was blind, too.  And now I see, too!  I was a slave, and now I have been set free!  I lacked hope and purpose, and now I live day to day in Him, and for Him! Sometimes this is all I know.

Jesus later went out and found the healed man.  He asked him a question.  “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”  John 9:35

Do you believe in the Son of Man?  This is the essential question, even for us as believers.  Jesus said elsewhere, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent (John 6:29).
 
Out of this simple faith all the complicated stuff will flow.  Paul urged the believers to one thing—the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ (2 Cor. 11:3).
New King James Version (NKJV)
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.