The people addressed here are those who refused to leave
Jerusalem and go to Babylon, those who held on to what was familiar and
remained in the land under the leadership of Zedekiah after he cut his deal
with Nebuchadnezzar. Exile was God’s
plan and He announced it to be His way through Jeremiah. Those who remained were disobedient because
they preferred the familiar to a life of faith when it no longer made sense to
them. The Lord here announces that the
devastation of Jerusalem will be complete, there will be nowhere left to hide
or stay and these will be scattered, no longer a people, a worse fate than
being in exile. The nations that harbor
them will themselves come under judgment and be overrun. The only safe place will be together in
Babylon which itself will come under judgment.
There will be times in our lives perhaps when things don’t make sense,
when God will call us to go or stay and we will be confused and anxious, the
only thing to do is be obedient and have faith.
In this passage of the healing of the blind man we tend to
focus on the ironies and paradoxes of sight.
The man was born blind, never having seen and yet he sees what the
Jewish leaders cannot see, ultimately Jesus says they are blind even though
they have the physical sense of sight.
They lack real sight, spiritual sight.
The other problem in the passage is what people know. The leaders say they know this man is a
sinner. The parents stick to what they
know, this is their son, and he was born blind.
The man himself doesn’t know if the man who healed him is a sinner but
he does know that “though I was blind, now I see.” The leaders know that God had spoken to Moses
and they don’t know where He comes from (why does that matter?). The man gets the thing right when he says, We
know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God
and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been
heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not
from God, he could do nothing.” Their
final retort is a statement of the fact they “know”, “You were born in utter
sin.” That fact is where we came into
this man’s story, on a fact that wasn’t a fact at all. They’re still trying to make sense of the
world based on faulty information.
Paul picks up on this theme of knowing as the problem with
his fellow countrymen, the Jews, coming to faith, “I bear them witness that
they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” He goes on to say they are ignorant of the
righteousness of God which is the most damning indictment possible since they
alone have the law which defines sin, which can be seen as the opposite of
righteousness and therefore reveals righteousness. To steal an illustration from GK Chesterton,
that is like deciding that white is not a color but the absence of color. To define righteousness as the absence of sin
is to get righteousness wrong, it has a character apart from the absence of
sin, a character all its own. Their way
of defining righteousness caused them to miss real righteousness in Jesus. This, Paul calls the righteousness of faith
as opposed to the righteousness of the law.
Ultimately, the righteousness of faith is what we must have. We can stay behind and keep Jerusalem in the
short term or we can pick up our cross and follow Jesus and have the eternal
one.
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