The cure of the blind man of Bethsaida is not only a striking but a sweetly instructive lesson. Our blessed Lord shows, if I may so say, all possible interest in the case, both before the miracle was wrought and in the mode of cure. “He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town, and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught.” He acts as one would who was deeply concerned, heartily entering into every detail. It is the only instance recorded in Mark of a gradual character; indeed, as far as I know, it is the great standing witness of distinct stages in curing blindness. We have in John 9 an illustrious miracle where sight was given, and not all at once, to the man blind from his birth. But there is a marked peculiarity in the case before us. The fact is that there are two things needful where a person has not seen at all. One is the faculty of seeing, the other is the power of applying that faculty. Supposing a blind man had visual capacity conveyed to him, it does not follow that he could see thereon. He would not be able to measure distances or to judge with accuracy of the various objects before his eyes. In order to estimate aright any such object the habit of seeing, comparing, &c., is indispensable. Not only is this true of other creatures, but of man also. We all acquire this gradually; but, growing up as it does from our infancy, it is apt to be overlooked. So true and important, however, is the practice of seeing, that if a person who had never seen suddenly received his sight, he would not be able at first to discern whether a thing were round or square by barely looking at it; and this, though he might have been accustomed to judge of the very same things by the touch. It is a fact of much interest which seems to me to be intimated in the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida. Though the same conclusion was the deduction of human science scarce two hundred years ago, here you have it quietly assumed in the word of God these eighteen centuries.
First of all the Lord takes the man by the hand, and led him out of the town; next, He applied to His eyes that which came from His own mouth, and put His hands upon him. For here He is all through the true servant. It is not enough that the task is done, but the manner of doing it must be that which should glorify God and win the heart of him who is healed. What consideration! what condescension! what taking of trouble, so to speak! A word had been enough. But the Servant-Son of God enters into the case fully, and asks the patient (though He only, He perfectly well, knew all about it) “if he saw aught.” (Ver. 23.) Even in John 9, where the eyes were anointed with a plaster of clay, and the blind man then went and washed in the pool of Siloam, the full cure followed immediately. In the case before us there was a special reason for dividing not the miraculous remedy so much as the effect. The Lord was showing an exercise of divine power, which at first sight seems to be not so striking as those more commonly healed by a word or a touch. The man looked up and said, he beheld men; for he saw persons walking about, like trees. There is no little difference between a man and a tree, but he could not yet distinguish them (especially if, as I presume, born blind). All was vague before him. He might, and no doubt did, in his blind estate readily discern between a tree and a man by a touch. But he had not yet learned to apply his new-born vision, and the miracle purposely halved the cure. His mind could hardly confound the men who moved with trees, but his faculty of vision only showed that the two things were somewhat alike: they were as trees walking. It was all as yet confusion to him. There was naturally no aptitude in using with clearness the faculty he had just acquired.
“After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up; and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.” “He doeth all things well.” As that is a saying peculiar to Mark, so it is every where a truth illustrated in it; and it is the great point we have brought out here. It was not only that He did what He did with unfailing energy, but the manner in which He wrought was no less admirable. “He doeth all things well.” And never was this more conspicuously shown than in the second application of the Lord's hands to the half-opened eyes, by which the blind man of Bethsaida was made to see all men clearly. “And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.”
Next (ver. 27 and seq.), we have the good confession, not of the Lord before Pontius Pilate, but of Peter before the Lord, against an unbelieving generation. The Lord puts the question to His disciples. “Whom do men say that I am? And they answered, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets.” All was uncertainty, and that is all that man ever, and in spite of busy and laborious efforts, arrives at. The painful, toilsome searching of the creature into things too high for it only ends in perplexity and bitter disappointment. It leaves a man totally short of, and utterly in the dark about, that which, after all, is the only thing of prime importance. Some say one thing, some another; but who, of all the sons of men, does or can say the right thing?
“And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.” Now we have not here, as in Matthew, the Lord pronouncing, “Blessed art thou Simon-Barjona.” How comes that? Neither have we here, as there, the Lord's remarkable address to Peter: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Why is all this difference? Because Peter is represented as simply saying here, “Thou art the Christ.” Where it is added that he confessed the Lord to be “the Son of the living God,” there the special notice was also given that he was blessed, “For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” A confession so singularly rich drew out the Savior's recognition of His Father's grace to Simon Barjona. Thereon the Lord also exercises His rights, and gives him the new name of “Peter,” and adds, “Upon this rock will I build my church.” He was the Son of the living God. If He had been only the Christ, the Messiah of Israel, it would not have been a sufficient basis for the Church. His Messianic dignity (in which He is also spoken of as Son of God, Psa. 2) might have been a sufficient rock for Israel, as it was their faith and hope; but “the Son of the living God” was a revelation of His glory that went far beyond it. The moment you have the Lord known and confessed in this His highest glory, He for the first time begins to announce His building of His Church. That new edifice, which takes the place of Christ-rejecting Israel, is founded upon Him who is not only the Christ but the Son of the living God. Accordingly death and resurrection follow as that which not only determined Him to be the Son of God with power, but gives the Christian and the Church their proper character. (2 Cor. 5:15-1915And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. 16Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. 17Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 18And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; 19To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:15‑19); Eph. 1; 2) It is upon this rock the Church is builded. What could show more clearly that the Church is an absolutely new thing? The attempt to make out this sense of the Church in the Old Testament times proves that the true nature of God's present temple is unknown. The important thing is to see the points of distinction and contrast. Those who confound Jewish duties, and experience, and hopes with the revelation of our Lord when the people rejected Him, with the fully developed display of Him in the New Testament and the consequently new responsibilities and joys of the Christian, blot out, not all truth, but every feature that is essentially characteristic of the “one new man” (Eph. 2), and take away what is specially incumbent on the Christian and the Church of God. This, if true, demonstrates the importance for our souls of taking heed to Scripture. There are those who are so steeped in human tradition, and so unversed in the dispensational ways of God, that to tell them the Church was part of the mystery hidden from ages and only revealed since Pentecost, would be to their minds a revival of the monstrous and wicked error of the Mauichees. But the word of God is none the less positive and perfectly plain about it. And Christian men would do well to search the Scriptures, and spare their reproaches, lest haply they be found to fight against God.
Such, then, was the wide scope, answering to Peter's high confession, in Matthew. The Spirit of God in Mark merely records a part of that confession, and as He designedly leaves out the most peculiar portion of it (“the Son of the living God"), so we have only, and with equal design, our Lord's answer in part. His being the Son of the living God, though owned, we have seen, was not, and could not be, set forth freely and fully, until our Lord, by dying and rising again, put the seal, as it were, to this grand truth; and hence the Apostle Paul was the great witness of it. The first testimony that he renders in the synagogue after his conversion is, according to Acts 9:2020And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. (Acts 9:20), that Christ “is (not only made Lord, but) the Son of God.” Accordingly, also, he brings out the calling, and nature, and hopes of the Church of God, in a way beyond all the others.
But I would call your attention to the fact, that though here Peter only says, “Thou art the Christ,” our Lord charges them that they should tell no man this thing. This He does in all the three synoptic gospels. It is a point of instruction much to be heeded. For first He had asked them, “Whom say ye that I am?” Then, after He had heard the confession of His person from Peter, He binds them to tell none about it. How comes this? It was too late. Full proofs had been vouchsafed. The time was past for presenting Him longer as the Jewish Messiah. It had been fully told the people; and whom did they say He was? But now another thing is not before Him alone, but also set before the disciples—His friends. He is going away; He falls, therefore, back upon another glory that belongs to Him. Rejected as “David’s Son,” He is owned by faith as “the Son of the living God;” but He is also “the Son of man.” He was about to be humbled even unto death, and this could only be in His human nature; even He shall once more return to earth, as the Son of man, in His glory. (Compare ver. 31 with 38.) “He charged them that they should tell no man of him. And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Thus He drops the title of “Christ,” and insists upon His place as Son of man—as the suffering One first, and this from the heads of Israel. He should be killed, and after three days rise again. “And he spake that saying openly.” He forbids them to make known His being the Messiah: that testimony was closed now; there was no good in talking about it; the Jews had refused Him, and would definitively, as the Messiah. He had given them every possible form and degree of testimony; and the effect was that they rejected Him, more especially their religious leaders, more and more bitterly and unbelievingly. The consequence would be His death, as He shows His disciples openly. As Son of man, He was going to suffer, and, as Son of man, to be raised the third day, the real condition of His glory by and by. Accordingly we shall find, at the end of the chapter, the coming again of the Son of man in glory, with His holy angels, when despisers and all unbelievers shall be made the objects of His shame: just recompense of being ashamed of Him and His words before He thus comes.
But there is another thing of vast moment to notice before we close. We have not only a proof of what man is, in the Jews, the most favored of men; in the elders, and priests, and scribes, who only become the most active in the scorn and refusal of the Son of man; but His disciples relish not His shame. “And Peter took him and began to rebuke him. But when he had turned about, and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.” What a solemn lesson, that the Lord should find it needful at such a time, when, as Matthew shows, He pronounces Simon blessed and puts special honor on him, to rebuke him thus sternly! How worthless is the fleshly mind even in the chief of the twelve apostles! In rebuking Peter, because of his carnal dislike of the cross of Christ, He could say, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” because it was flesh's unbelief, selfishness, and presumption, and not the less because veiled under a pious form. He never said to a saint, Get thee hence, as He said to the devil when he arrogated the worship due to God. (Comp. Matt. 4:1010Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Matthew 4:10).) What was it that so roused our Lord? The very snare to which we are all so exposed—the desire of saving self; the preference of an easy path to the cross. is it not true that we naturally like to escape trial, shame, and rejection; that we shrink from the suffering which doing God's will, if in such a world as this, must ever entail; that we prefer to have a quiet, respectable path in the earth—in short, the best of both worlds? How easily one may he ensnared into this! Peter could not understand why the Messiah should go through all this path of sorrow. Had we been there, we might have said or thought yet worse. Peter's remonstrance was not without strong human affection. He heartily loved the Savior too. But, unknown to himself, there was the unjudged spirit of the world. He could not bear that their Master should be so dishonored and so suffer. There was some unbelief of human iniquity: could the elders, chief priests, and scribes be so wicked after all? Moreover, there was a want of understanding that there was no other way to deliver man—that this was the only means of glorifying God about man's sin. (John 13:3131Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. (John 13:31).) Suffer the Lord must unto death, and this under God's hand as well as man's; there could be no salvation without it. And God forbid that we should glory save in the cross, whereby the world is crucified to us and we to the world. Let all know this, the people, the crowd, as well as the disciples: so said Jesus: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”