I can just imagine the guy who was healed asking his friends later, “What did he put on my eyes?” To see his face when his friend says, “Spit. He put his own spit on your eyes.” Seriously, spit? Jesus put spit on the blind man’s eyes to make him see? Well, that is what He did.
This is one of those times in the Scripture when I wish I could know the absolute thought process of what Jesus was doing or saying. There are many things Christ did that are confusing. I also wonder what He wrote in the dirt as the people gathered to stone the woman caught in adultery. They were ready to stone this lady. She was guilty and this was the normal way of dealing with it. Moses had written into law that a woman caught in adultery should be stoned. But as Jesus was writing in the dirt, he must have written something that had a dramatic impact on the people. Jesus’ words were powerful. “Whoever is without sin may cast the first stone.” But what did He write? Did He describe some of their sins? I don’t know. The one thing I do know is that whatever Jesus did, there was a reason. There was a lesson to be learned. What do we learn from Jesus rubbing his spit all over the eyes of a blind man?
John 9:1-11
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing. His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”“How then were your eyes opened?” they asked. He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
First, we see that Jesus chooses to heal a man born blind. I saw we are all born blind. We are not physically blind, but spiritually blind. There is so much darkness all around us that when it comes to seeing a clear picture of God, we are like blind men wandering in a dark room. The sin of people around us, the anger, the jealousy, the lasciviousness all make the little world where we live a little darker. The curse upon the earth also makes things darker. Tornados, hurricanes, or others deliver bad things to otherwise good people. Trying to justify the seemingly unfair deaths from natural disasters only darkens our vision. Disease, sickness, and our own temptations leave us stumbling in the dark trying to reconcile the idea of a “good God” who allows tragedy. We are born blind. The sin of the world, our own hearts, and the hearts of others cause us all to experience things that make it difficult to understand and comprehend the glory of God.
The disciples want to know who is to blame. Isn’t that just like our culture still today? For everything that is wrong, we want to find a villain and punish that villain. I think we do this because we think that if we punish the wrongdoer, it will keep the behavior from happening again. But if you have ever punished your three-year-old, you know it is going to happen again. Even when I chastise myself for eating too much Blue Bell, I do it again. There is a place for punishment, but ultimately punishment does not accomplish the goal God has for our life. This is why He teaches us that for those who have trusted in the Lord, there is no condemnation. The Lord does not look for the cause of the problem in order to condemn nor judge, but to heal.
I am sure this blind man had done some things that he shouldn’t have done. Perhaps, on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, blind, he stubbed his toe once or twice on the coffee table. He might have let out a curse word, profanity. What does God do with this? We know that the Bible says that we will have to answer for every careless word we say (Matthew 12:36). But when Jesus encounters this man, He doesn’t bring all of this up. He just heals the sight. The blindness was the cause for the stubbing of the toe. Correct?
There are times when we are wandering around in the spiritual darkness and we stub our toe and let out some profanity. The darkness around us might have been a harsh father, a coddling mother, a jealous sibling. These would have affected us in negative ways which might lead us to rebellion, laziness, or bitterness. The Lord knows the origin of our sin goes past generations all the way back to Adam in the Garden of Eden. This is why the Lord is so compassionate with us. The sinful nature I was born into that has created spiritual darkness is not something I chose. Nevertheless, it is the state of my birth and now out of that sinful nature, I sin. When we begin to understand the element within us that makes us prone to sin is the sinful nature we inherited but never chose. Because of the sinful state of our birth, we sin, but we never chose to be sinful. And the Lord has not come to condemn us because of the sins we commit, but to help us overcome the sinful nature we never chose creating in us a purity that rejects sin..
Think about it for a minute. There are so many things we have done as a result of our early experiences with the sin of others and the curses upon this Earth that have caused us to do things that are unBiblical. I am working with a person right now whose parent was so harsh and mean that it made the person feel as if they were not good enough for their mother’s love. Consequently, they grew up never feeling good enough to be loved. But they didn’t get to choose their mother. They had no control over their mother’s behavior and their mother’s behavior created insecurities that would make it easier for them to stay in negative relationships, to not speak up for themselves, and putting them on a pathway of destruction.
This all goes back to the Garden. God had made Adam and Eve perhaps to live forever, but when they sinned, the Lord cursed them, cursed the earth, then told them that since they came from the dirt, they shall return to the dirt. This dirt represents the origin of sin, the beginning of our darkness. It is the stuff that happened to the people that we would grow up with that would lead them to behave in ways that hid God’s true character in the darkness. But then Jesus spits in the dirt. He spits in the dirt, makes some mud and rubs it on the man’s eyes. And suddenly He can see.
I have thought so much about this spit. I was reminded of the law and order type shows that I watch on television. When they bring in a suspect, they ask them for a DNA sample by swabbing the inside of their cheeks. They are getting some spit out of their mouth. When Jesus spit on the dirt, He was taking the DNA of Almighty God and applying it to the curse of original sin.
When we learn to apply the DNA, the essence of God as we know Him from Scripture to the dirt and curse of our past, we will begin to see things more clearly. When you were a child, you may have felt forgotten, but the essence of God reminds us that He knows our name. He knows when one single hair falls out of the follicle. You were never completely forgotten. It may feel as if you have to be perfect for people to accept you as if you are not good enough on your own, but the essence of God applied to our dirt will remind us that God loves us just as we are. You may have felt your whole life that you were unlovable, but when you apply the DNA of God to your past, you will realize that He has always loved you with an everlasting love, not because of what you have done, but simply because you belong to Him. In other words-YOU ARE LOVEABLE!
When we apply the DNA of God to our past, we have a revelation that some things we thought to be true all of our lives were never really true.
No matter how powerful that spit was, it was not enough to heal the man’s eyes. To finish the healing, Jesus told him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. So many of us have applied the DNA to the dirt of our life and we have rubbed it all over our eyes, but we still can’t see. We are still blind because we haven’t been to the Pool of Siloam. This word means “Sent.” I didn’t have to look that up. It was so important for us to know this, the Holy Spirit made sure it was written down. The blind man, to finish his healing, had to be willing to be ‘Sent’ out by God to do the work of God.
Until we take on the role of servant to the Most High God, we will just be blind men walking around with mud on our eyes. We must be willing to tell others about Christ, to pray for others, to teach others. We must see ourselves as the ambassador of Christ. It is the combination of these three components that restored the man’s sight. It was the DNA of God being applied to the dirt of His past then the washing in the pool called “Sent.”
After the man was healed, some people didn’t recognize him. And he said, “I am the man.” When we allow God to spit into our dirt, wipe it on our eyes, then wash in the Pool of Sent, we will have a testimony. We will be so radically changed that people will not even recognize us. We will have to tell them. I am the man! I am the man who used to be drunk. I am the man who used to be high. I am the man who used to lose his temper. I am the woman who used to be selfish. I am the child who used to be angry with my parents. I used to be headed down the wrong road, but now I am walking with the Lord. I used to be all messed up, but now I am healed. I used to be blind, but now I see!
Have you learned to apply the person and character of God to the dirt of your past? Have you reframed the past in your mind as if God really is the God described in the Bible? Have you taken on the role of being sent? If you have, you already know the transformational power of God’s touch on you. Keep walking and He will keep blessing you to even greater things. And have you taken on the role of one sent out as an ambassador of Christ? Do you live your life to reveal Christ to those around you? If not, let yourself be sent. Don’t be afraid to represent Christ to a world who needs Him. And when these things happen, you will be transformed by the glory of God.
