The pertinacity of the Pharisees finds in the man a quiet courage, which stands out in contrast with the fears of his parents and even urges the claims of Him who had wrought so good and great a deed on His adversaries in a way they could not resist. They ply the man with the question, How? he answers with the question, Why?
“They said, therefore, to him [again], What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes? He answered them, I told you already, and ye did not hear: why do ye wish to hear again? Do ye also wish to become his disciples? They railed at him, and said, Thou art his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God hath spoken to Moses, but this man we know not whence he is.” (Vers. 26-29.)
He who was once blind, but now saw, discerned the true state of the case, as those did not who had never experienced His gracious power. He felt satisfied that their opposition was invincible. The apostle of grace none the less, but the more, warns the despisers of their self-willed unbelief and danger of perishing. The same spirit of faith expresses itself in him who just now was but a blind beggar, even as from those that had not should be taken away what they seemed to have. Christ is a rock of strength to the one, and of offense to the other. They thus expose themselves to the sharp rebuke of their folly by the man they affected to despise. Zealous for the servant whom they set up as master, they confessed their ignorance of Him who is Lord of all.
“The man answered and said to them, Why in this is the wonderful thing, that ye know not whence he is, and he hath opened mine eyes! We know that God heareth not sinners, but if any one be God-fearing, and do his will, him he heareth. Since time [began] was it not heard that any one opened a born blind man's eyes. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. They answered and said to him, In sins thou west born wholly, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.” (Vers. 30-34.)
The man's answer was as solid as to the point. He discards the attack on himself personally, and treats it as a question between the religious leaders, who avowedly could not tell where He was who had wrought a work wholly unexampled as a display of God's power. It was hard, if not impossible, to believe that such a one could be evil, as they had imputed. “We know that God heareth not sinners; but if any one be God-fearing, and do his will, him he heareth.” For what can be surer, as a general principle, than that “them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.” Indeed this was plain as between Jesus (to take the lowest ground) and the Pharisees, whose moral incapacity astonishes the man. What, then, remained for his adversaries? Nothing but contemptuous rage, and the extreme blow of the ecclesiastical arm. “They cast him out,” but not before they unwittingly testified to the force of his words: “In sins wast thou born wholly, and dost thou teach us?"
But they cast him out into the arms and bosom of the Lord. For, as we are next told, “Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and, having found him, he said, Believest thou on the Son of God [or man]? He answered and said, And who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him? Jesus said to him, Thou hast both seen him, and he that speaketh with thee is he. And he said, I believe, Lord; and he did him homage.” (Vers. 35-37.) Such is the final step of God's grace in working with the blind man. He is thrust outside Judaism for the truth's sake, consequent on the work wrought on his person; he there is found by Christ, and led to know and believe in Him, far beyond any thought, however true, he had previously conceived. It was faith in his own testimony and person.
It is really the history of a soul that goes onward, under the guidance of God, who makes the grace, of the Lord and His glory shine the more fully after one is outside the world's religion, whether cast or going out. And such is the character of Christianity, as the believing had at length to learn from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and from its final chapter. So patient was the Spirit of grace with those of the ancient people of God, dull to learn the new thing which God has introduced through and in our Lord Jesus. But, late as it may be, the breach with earthly religion must come. Let us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach; and this so much the more because we have boldness to enter into the holies by the blood of Jesus, the new and living way which He has dedicated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh. But the work was not yet done which opened this way, nor the Spirit shed to give souls the consciousness of righteous title. We have one, therefore, not yet going forth thus, but cast out by hatred, far more against the name of Jesus than against the man—yea, we may say against the man solely for Jesus' sake, who had heard of, and felt for, and found the sheep thus worried of men.
But a perplexing difference of reading follows, which claims more than a bare critical notice. “Dost thou believe on the Son of man?” say the Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the Cambridge (of Beza) manuscripts, supported by the Sahidic, Roman edition of the Aethiopic, &c., more than a dozen uncials, all the cursives, and the rest of the ancient versions, &c., give us τοῦ; θεοῦ:, “of God.” But Tischendorf, in his eighth, or last, edition, adopts τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Nor can it be denied that, as the rule, the Lord habitually and graciously loved to present to Himself in relation to man; as, again, it is plain that this chapter in particular sets Him forth, not as the light, Word, and God, like the preceding one, but as the Incarnate One who was sent to manifest the works of God, the rejected Messiah about to suffer but to be exalted over all. On the other hand, that the Son of God is the great distinctive testimony of our gospel, none can overlook; and we can well understand how the light of this glorious truth (bursting on the soul gradually led on, spite of, and, in a certain sense, through the blind hostility of the Pharisees) draws him out in homage to the Lord. It was, at any rate, the Son of God in grace, a man on earth, who had been seen by, and was talking with, one who had experienced His light-giving power.
“And Jesus said, For judgment I came into this world, that they that see not may see, and they that see may become blind. And some of the Pharisees that were with him heard these things, and said to him, Are we blind also? Jesus said to them, If ye were blind, ye would not have sin; but now ye say, We sin, your sin remaineth.” (Vers. 39-41.)
The Lord thereon shows how His coming acted, and was meant to act, on souls. It had a higher purpose and more permanent result than any energy, however mighty and benign, that dealt with the body. He was the life to those, however dark, who received Him: those who rejected Him sealed their own ruin everlastingly, whatever their estimate of themselves, or in the mind of others. The Jew, especially the Pharisee, might be ever so confident that he himself was a guide of the blind, a light of those in darkness; but the coming of the only True Light brought to evident nothingness all such haughty pretensions as surely as it gave eyes to such as owned their blindness. No flesh, therefore, shall glory: he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord who was come, a man, but God on earth, for this reversal of fallen man's thoughts, and display of His own grace. Pharisaic pride refuses to bow to Jesus, imputing blindness as they thought; but if it speaks, it is obliged to hear its most withering sentence from the Judge of all mankind. For blindness there is all grace and power in Christ; but what can be the portion of those who, stone-blind, say they see? Their sin remains, as well as blindness, which of itself is no sin, though its consequence.