John 9:25 He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. This man, who is released from his native blindness by Christ, is one of the strongest characters which the Gospels paint for us about the person of our Lord. Follow him through the chapter, and through all its various situations and discussions, and you feel that he is the man of the most real manhood among them all — disciples, neighbours, parents, and Pharisees. Wherein does his great strength lie? What is it that makes him so real and firm a man? It is, I believe, the consciousness of a fact, a great fact, in his life's history. "One thing I know," he says, "that whereas I was blind, now I see. That is the great, wonderful event which has happened to me, which fills all my consciousness, before which everything else is little, which influences and colours everything, and the remembrance. of which rules me." In every knot of men which clusters around him, with their little wondering questions of curiosity or malice, he simply tells his one great fact. We can hardly think of him as the former beggar. He is too imperious for a beggar now. 1. See how this man first appears after his cure by Christ. The neighbours and his former acquaintance gather around him, and begin to question as to his identity: "Is not this he that sat and begged?" Some said, "Yes, this is he." Others, "He is like him." But he said, "I am he." There is the first effect of the coming of this great fact into his life, to make him honest in regard to self. It is as if he had said, "Here is a great event that has happened to me, unprecedented and marvellous. I am its subject. Such an attention has been bestowed upon me and my wants and my condition as I never heard of, as shows that I am the object of care to a Divine mind and power. A new value has been given to my nature. I have a new, stronger sense of self. Yes, I am he. I was blind, and now I see. I will not leave you to dispute my identity." That is the first great value of the consciousness of a fact in one's life history, the new honest view of self and its value. Oh, my friends, the system which teaches us to know ourselves the best is that which brings the greatest fact into our history — the gospel and its fact. And yet multitudes of us go through life, while all about us, above us, and beneath us point to us, "Is not this one for whom Christ died? Is not this one of those wonderful saved human natures?" and we practically deny ourselves, because our consciousness is so dead. 2. Go on in the chapter to the next appearance of this man who knows one thing — the critical event of life. See how concentrated it makes him! They ask him, "Where is He, your healer?" He says, "I know not. All I know is this." To know one great fact and to be full of it makes him unwilling to guess a conjecture about other things. He either knows or he knows not. He has learnt what true knowledge is. We should save much stumbling and sorrow in life if we would not so often build the air castles of conjecture and live in them as though their walls were of the solid masonry of real knowledge. The disaster is most serious in the spiritual sphere, when one does not know where to say, "I know," and where "I know not," when religion is only a broad field of conjecture. Many are anxious concerning such unessentials as the origin of evil, predestination, spiritualism, the exact nature of the future life, etc.; forgetful that, the one fact of practical religion — man's salvation and purification by Christ — being known, you may for the present safely say, "I know not," to other items which cannot be yet known in the same personal way. 3. The chapter goes on to furnish another instance of the strengthening value of this one possession of the healed man. It makes him a messenger, a continual repeater of his wonderful story, as often as he can relate it. Any man, however ignorant and humble, is listened to if he have a genuine event of life to tell. Facts never grow old. This man, the relater of a fact, represents Christianity. Christianity has gone on from age to age, from circle to circle, giving its simple, solid, eventful message — human redemption and enlightenment by Christ. 4. But, still again, as this man so full of his story tells it, the Pharisee says to him, "Give God the glory. Do not ascribe it to this Man. He is a sinner." They endeavour to hush his statement by a command, "Do not say, He (Jesus) opened mine eyes." That is to say, these men were striving to do what has been a very usual human infatuation — to legislate against events, by simple authority, as when the old Saxon king sat by the water's edge and with his kingly decree forbad the sea to come nearer or its tide to rise higher. These men did not appreciate the firmness of a fact. They did not know that commands were merely pebbles that rebounded shattered from its rocky undisturbed surface. All men fall into this error — good men legislating against an evil fact, evil men legislating against a good fact. To bid it be different is nothing at all. This is another value of the blind man's possession. He was instantly above all mere commands, all mere human assertion of power. This is the value of Christianity always — its exaltation of a man above earthly power. The world, by its persecution or force and might, says, "Deny Christ." But if you conceive of Christ and His gospel as the world's great fact, if His influence is an event in your own life, you will be able to answer, "How can I deny a fact? I should only stultify myself to do that. One thing I know, I was blind, and now I see. That will last after your command has been forgotten." There is no fear, no servility in this man, who is armed with his great conscious fact of life, beggar as he had been of old. The Pharisees cast him out. Ay, and the worse for them. They east out the only man resting on solid truth, and remained upon their fictions. 5. Once more, as this man goes out into the outer cold solitariness of excommunication, yet happy and warm in the garment of the consciousness of that wonderful miracle, Christ meets him, and says, "Now you must believe on Me, for you have seen Me." Think how it must have sounded, how the warm heart must have been doubly grateful for that word "seen." "Yes I see at last, I see, I who was blind." It is as if Christ were echoing his own thoughts, his own one piece of all-absorbing knowledge. Now, that piece of knowledge must lead to belief. Fact must lead to faith. A fact merely means a thing done, and there must be a doer, greater in his invisibility than the great thing itself in its visibility. That is the faith of Christianity; it rests on real events, on actual things done. It does not ask faith with no basis. But it furnishes the greatest event of history as a foundation, an event happening to us and yet not through our means; and any man full of that great event will say, "I will and must believe in its doer." Just as the building which has the broadest base upon the ground can rise to the highest upward point in safety, so he who is fullest of the greatest seen fact of life is fullest also of the richest, most aspiring, most practical and most spiritual faith. (Fred Brooks.) Parallel Verses KJV: He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. |
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