“As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 “While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” 6 When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes, 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.”
Before we even get started today with chapter 9, there is something I want you to make note of out of chapter 8. We’re not going to take the time to go back and read it, but since what I am going to be talking about today is willful unbelief and its consequences, I just want to show you what has just transpired.
Jesus has just left another of His ‘in your face’ confrontations with the Pharisees. They have called Him a liar. He said no, but they were the liars. They called themselves children of Abraham but He said no, but their father was the devil. They said he was a demon-possessed Samaritan, which was probably about the most insulting thing a Jew could say to another Jew, and He had said no, but although you dishonor Me I give honor to My Father. They said he was too young to speak with authority about Abraham and He said actually, before Abraham was born “I AM” – and in using that term of Himself they understood Him to be claiming to be the very God who called Moses from the burning bush and commissioned him to confront the Pharaoh and lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt.
We know they took it as a claim to Deity because they looked for stones with which to bash Jesus’ skull in for speaking blasphemy.
So Jesus has once more hidden Himself from them because it is not His time yet to die. But I wanted you to see that on the heels of telling them He is God, Jesus goes directly to a man who was born blind and gives him seeing eyes, demonstrating the truth of His words. Yet, as we will go on now to examine, there is none so blind as he who will not see.
THE QUESTION
The opening words of chapter 9 are ‘As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth’. But please do not take that to mean that Jesus just happened to see this blind man for the first time and decided coolly and almost callously to heal him in order to teach the Pharisees a lesson.
No, as you have heard me state in the past, and I stand by this conviction, Jesus did not do or say anything out of a knee-jerk reaction to present circumstances. I believe that every work He did, every miracle, every road trip, every action of His in the Jerusalem Temple, every confrontation with the Jews and every meeting with people like this blind man, was all a part of the package labeled, ‘the works of Him who sent Me’.
There is evidence of what I’m saying here in the early verses of this chapter. The disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” In His reply, Jesus says that the man was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Now stop and think about that for a moment. What does that tell us?
The disciples asked, ‘why was this man born blind’ and the reply from Jesus is ‘so that the works of God might be displayed in him’
Jesus didn’t say that the man was born blind because of some disease contracted in the womb, He didn’t say the man was born blind because of a genetic defect. Jesus said nothing to indicate that the man’s plight was a terrible and tragic quirk of fate.
The answer Jesus gave them said that the man’s life of blindness was God-ordained so that He, God, might be glorified in this man!
Now I am well aware that many people would have trouble accepting this. Maybe even most people. God? How could a loving God actually destine someone for a life of absolute blindness, relegating them to a life of rejection and dismissal by society, begging in the streets, and all the hardship that would come to someone, especially in that time in history who has no eyes?
Well, the answer is, that is not the right question to ask. The right question to ask would be, how could a just and righteous and holy God let any of us live at all? How could He be gracious enough to let any of us see? How could He be the One who gives to all, life and breath and all things, and not violate His own divine law that calls for wrath against sin?
The truth is, Jesus came into the world to give sight to the blind and take away sight from the seeing. Huh? Yeah. He said so down in verse 39. We’ll look at that, but first let’s establish some groundwork.
Throughout the Scriptures physical blindness is used as a metaphor to refer to spiritual blindness. And the fact is that there are many in this world who are physically blind, either from birth or as a result of an accident or a childhood illness or the degeneration that eventually comes with age. But while there are many who are physically blind, all are spiritually blind.
No one is born into this world with spiritual sight. In the spiritual sense, every last one of us is as this man in John 9; blind from birth.
Once more I’ll jump ahead to verse 39 to illustrate what we’re going to be witnessing in this account. Jesus breaks the blind people of this world into two groups; and when I say ‘the blind people’ remember that I just said ‘all’ are born blind. So Jesus is basically saying, there are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who do not see, who when God demonstrates to them that they cannot see want to see, and on the other hand are those who also do not see but think they see, so when God demonstrates to them that they cannot see they insist that they can see and they reject Him and they remain blind.
That’s what I’m going to say to you today. That’s the point. Now let’s go to the Gospel record and see this borne out in what transpired that day in Jerusalem.
THE HEALING
Jesus calls Himself the “Light of the world”, then demonstrates that He is just that.
First let’s address the question from the disciples just briefly. The common belief in ancient times, and I suppose in some cultures and in some people even today, was that if someone suffered great tragedy or long-term hardship it was punishment for sin, either in their own life or the life of those from whom they descended.
It’s not that there is no room whatsoever for this to be true. You may remember that in John 5 when Jesus heals the invalid at the pool of Bethesda He later tells the man to cease sinning so that something worse won’t befall him.
So there is some indication in the wording there that the man’s 38 years on his back might have been a direct result of sin in his life.
But in the case of this man in John 9 Jesus says very simply that his blindness is not a result of sin. And how could it be? First, it would seem pretty harsh if God were to sentence a person to life-long blindness from birth because of something his parents did before he was even born; and it’s just absurd to think that the fetus could somehow have sinned in the womb.
Jesus doesn’t go on to explain any of that; He just says, ‘neither’. The man was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him, and by the way, today is the big day. We don’t know how old the guy was but he was at least an adult, right? His own parents said “He is of age, ask him”.
He didn’t need his parents to speak for him, and that’s a good thing since they apparently didn’t have a backbone between them and as mother and father didn’t have enough love for their son to stand by him in his time of need.
Anyway, he’s an adult, so for all his childhood and teen years, at the very least, he has begged in the streets of Jerusalem, probably spending much of that time outside the Temple.
And let me take a minor side trail right here and suggest that maybe he has had much time to sit on the sidelines and listen to the teachings and the discussions of the Rabbis and the priests of the Temple. I say that because later in this chapter he demonstrates some pretty impressive knowledge of the Scriptures and the history of God working among His people.
Getting back…
Jesus spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle mixed with dirt and applied it to the man’s eyes. Isn’t that interesting? Could Jesus have said, ‘See’ and opened the man’s sight with a word? Of course He could. Could He have just gently touched the man’s face instead of smearing spit and dirt all over it and healed the man with just His touch? Of course He could.
Well, I’m sure people have come up with all kinds of fanciful reasons why Jesus did it this way. Hey, didn’t He make the first man out of the dust of the ground? Was this an act of creation? Did the man have only empty sockets and Jesus created eyeballs?
The text doesn’t say that so I don’t think we can extrapolate that out of it. I think Jesus put on this very demonstrable act for those watching to give them a hook, if you will, to hang their memory on.
So later when they told others they could say, “I remember it well. That blind beggar who has hung around the Temple begging for years and years was there, and this Jesus spit in the dirt and made mud and smeared it on the man’s eyes and told him to go wash it off. So we kind of hung around to find out what would happen, and the guy went to the pool of Siloam and washed his face and – I kid you not - he came back all excited and jumping up and down and he could see every thing!”
That’s my take on it, and I might add that it was one more overt act committed on the Sabbath that the self-righteous Pharisees would gleefully jump all over; and Jesus wouldn’t want to disappoint the Pharisees, now would He?
You know, I just can’t help wondering – and I think of these things; I can’t help myself – if the disciples, when Jesus said, “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day” were thinking to themselves, “But it is the Sabbath…oh, here we go again…”
Well, let’s move on from here. Jesus did something that to us is amazing. We call it a miracle and some won’t even believe that it actually happened, but it was God, doing what God does. The true believer in Christ should always be amazed at his Lord but we shouldn’t ever really be surprised that He can and does do God-things.
VARIOUS REACTIONS
As always there are various reactions to this healing. The ‘neighbors’, says John. I don’t think that means people who lived next door to the man; I think it means those in close proximity to him and perhaps even other beggars who were near him on a daily basis as they all sat and asked for alms from the people going to and from worship at the Temple. In any case, they were people who knew him well and knew him to be utterly without sight.
So the neighbors and those who previously saw him as a beggar were so amazed that they were arguing with one another about whether he was the same guy.
That’s understandable, isn’t it? Think about it. If the only context in which you’ve ever seen someone was as a beggar with closed eyelids, maybe a little subdued, a little quiet, non-obtrusive, keeping pretty much to himself, then one day you saw him with eyes wide open, taking everything in, smiling from ear to ear, maybe just for a minute at least, you’d be asking yourself; ‘is this the same guy, or someone who looks like him?’
But as they are all still confused and debating amongst themselves – and notice that apparently no one thought to just ask him – he keeps saying, ‘I am the one’. I am the one! So he gives his first testimony.
“The man who is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’, so I went away and washed, and I received sight.”
“Where is He?” “I don’t know!’ Do you see the humor in this?
Waddya mean, where is He? I was BLIND, remember? I went and washed and now I see. How would I know where He went?
I gotta tell you, I like this guy. I’ve always loved this account and I laugh every time I read it. My picture of this man, which is probably entirely inaccurate , is of a little guy with a feisty disposition. Not big and imposing and intimidating because of his size, but the kind of little feller that some people might think they can push around, but when they do they find themselves in a real scrap. You know what I mean?
Then John writes, ‘They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind”. Here once more we have opportunity for some speculation. Why would they do this?
I heard a preacher once say that because Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and knowing the Pharisees wouldn’t approve, they took the man there out of a sense of duty to the law. He took longer to say it, but that was the gist.
I think it is much more likely that since the Pharisees saw themselves and presented themselves as the ones who had all the answers, these people felt they should take the man to them and get a ruling on who this Jesus was, who could put mud on a man’s eyes and give him the ability to see for the first time in his life.
All of Israel was looking for and longing for the coming of the Messiah. Since the Pharisees knew everything it stands to reason they would know everything about the Messiah, and if Jesus is the Messiah they should be alerted that Messiah has come on the scene, shouldn’t they?
So the Pharisees, having heard the man’s testimony for themselves, rejoiced and worshiped God because the Messiah had finally come.
NO THEY DIDN’T!
They said, ‘This man is not from God because He does not keep the Sabbath’.
Then another group of them said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’
Don’t you just love the compassion? So they turn back to the beggar. “Ok, you say He healed your eyes; what then do you say about Him?” What’s your take?
I find this very interesting. They couldn’t have cared less if they practiced, what this dirty little beggar thinks or knows or thinks he knows. Why did they even ask? I think they asked because their willful disbelief was being challenged, and they were beginning to get worked up, and Jesus wasn’t around so they were setting this man up to be the one to catch their indignant wrath.
Watch the digression taking place. First they get confused about whether Jesus should have been healing on the Sabbath. What makes Him a sinner? Working on the Sabbath? Then how could He heal? Now they’re getting frustrated.
So they ask the man who he thinks Jesus is, and he says ‘A prophet’. In response they call the man a liar. They accuse him of lying about ever being blind!
Then in verse 28, having now heard the story about 4 times, they are getting so angry they revile him. It means they cursed at him and called him names that John didn’t want to print and we don’t want to know.
Finally, verse 34, they throw him out of the Temple.
Now the Greek word that is used there literally means they ‘unsynagogued’ him. It is a total excommunication. It was a serious thing to have happen. That’s why the man’s parents got all wishy-washy and refused to openly stand behind their son. If you got unsynagogued you were out! You were out of the Temple for worship, you were out of acceptance in society because you were deemed unclean for all Jewish worship, you were ostracized and probably couldn’t even find a job or get hired for work.
So there is the awful downward spiral of willful unbelief. As I said, Jesus wasn’t there so they took it out on the man He had blessed; the man who declared faith in Him. They called him a liar, then they harassed him and made him tell his story several times, then they called him loathsome names, then they threw him out and under color of authority cut him out of the nation of his birth.
WILLFUL UNBELIEF
Let’s talk some about this deliberate and willful unbelief. What does that term mean?
Well, remember that in the beginning I said all are spiritually blind from birth.
There is no spiritual sight in anyone until God gives them spiritual life and sight. Everyone born into this world is born spiritually dead and unable to see any spiritual truth whatsoever.
Therefore, when someone is willfully unbelieving, they are doubly blind. They are born blind, then on top of that they refuse to see.
That is why they could hear this man’s testimony over and over again, and never in any of those cases stop to consider the validity of his claim.
Their own law, which they worshiped, said that a testimony supported by two or more witnesses must be accepted. Yet after hearing his own testimony, the testimony of his neighbors and others who brought him in, and having his own parents confirm that he was indeed blind from birth, they violated the very law they held so dear by not only refusing to accept the testimony of witnesses but by doing the man the harshest wrong a nation’s leaders could bring to bear short of killing him.
Listen. There is never enough evidence to satisfy willful unbelief. When people hear the truth of God’s Word and deliberately and without further consideration reject what they’ve heard, there is nothing God can do for them.
Not long ago I had opportunity to submit a written sermon to someone, at his own request and unsolicited by me, in which I carefully charted out the numerous claims of Christ concerning who He is and what He came to do.
The sermon contained a careful accounting of the Gospel so that anyone seeing it would have at least read the basic doctrine of God’s plan and provision for salvation. This person’s response after reading it was polite, and carefully worded because he obviously had no desire to be offensive in what he said, but he finished with ‘I’m not buying it’.
And that’s not an unusual declaration to hear, is it? People, at least in our culture, use it often to convey the fact that something they have heard is not believable to them, or to imply they think they’re being lied to, or as in this case, to say that they simply refuse to give even mental ascent to what has been put before them.
My response to this man was equally polite and I held my peace at the time so as not to put up stumbling blocks for future opportunities I might have to talk with him. But secretly I wanted to say to him, “The truth of God’s Word is not put out there for you to buy or not buy. I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m telling you truth that would lead to eternal life if you were not willfully and stubbornly unbelieving. But it isn’t like some commodity on the shelf in the market place for you to stare at for a moment and decide whether it is valid or viable or useless. It is truth, and you are one of two kinds of blind people; the kind who know they don’t see and are willing to be made whole, or the kind who think they know everything and therefore there’s nothing God can do for them.”
THE OUTCOME
Well, we looked at various reactions; let’s look at various outcomes in this account.
Let’s talk about the man’s parents for a moment just to get them out of the way. They are the nominal believers. They are believers in name only. They are the people in the church who have fit Jesus into a neat little pocket in their life and routine because of the respectable air it gives them. But they’ll go to their graves as grey and as dull and boring as they have been their entire lives because they won’t ever do or say anything by way of taking a stand for Christ that might get them moved out of their comfort zone or criticized for their convictions. And they’re not all in the pew; some of them are in the pulpit. I won’t take that thought farther today; but I am reminded of Jesus saying to His disciples (Matt 16:24-27),
“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS.”
And I am reminded of the words of Jim Elliot, who eventually died a violent death in the service of his Lord in the jungles of Ecuador, when he said “He is no fool who would give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”.
And I feel pity for the poor, lackluster Christians whose lives are dull and convictions so tepid that they’ve never made anyone angry, never hurt anyone’s feelings, never confronted evil, either in or out of the church… who would say, ‘he is of age, let him speak for himself’ and sneak out the back so they could return to Temple the following Sabbath and carry out their empty rituals unmolested and unremembered.
Let’s leave them and talk about the outcome for the willfully blind and unbelieving religious people.
We find them at the end of this account, apparently witnessing – but probably not recognizing – the spiritual awakening of the very man they had reviled and unsynagogued.
Let’s read verses 35 – 41
“Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” 38 And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. 39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”
40 Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”
Verse 40 says ‘Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things’. So here is the picture we get. They have thrown the man out, Jesus has heard that he has been thrown out so He goes looking for the man. When He finds the man He says these things to him and apparently some of the Pharisees have been either following the man around, or they were out trying to find Jesus and happened to be there for this encounter. In any case, here is what they witness:
Jesus asks the man, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man’. Every Jew knows what that means. The Pharisees knew, and the man knew. It was from Daniel, they all know it means the Anointed One sent from God. No need for debate there.
They hear the man ask who the Son of Man is – now listen to his stated motivation in asking – ‘that I may believe in Him’.
This guy was just a ball of faith looking for a basket. Just tell me who He is and I’m there! Why? Because he had never seen before, and someone named Jesus put mud on his eyes and told him to wash and now he can see. Do you think by now he’s figured it out? Remember, he was of the group that knew he didn’t see. He didn’t think he had all the knowledge. I don’t know who He is, but He’s a prophet.
And he healed my eyes, so He must be the Son of Man; He must be the One with the power to give sight to the blind, ‘cause here I stand, all… seeing and everything!
“You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you” “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him.
Are the Pharisees witnessing all of this? Apparently so. Apparently they’re standing by hearing the whole thing.
“For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind”. And this statement extracts this question from the on-looking Pharisees: “We are not blind too, are we?”
So you think at this point they really wanted to know? NO! It was more of a challenge. You talkin’ to us? You talkin’ about us? You sayin’ we’re blind?
So Jesus tells them like it is. “If you were blind, you would have no sin, but since you say, ‘We see’, your sin remains.”
What does Jesus mean that they say, ‘We see’? He means that their attitude is ‘we’ve made up our minds, don’t bother us with the facts’. That’s not an uncommon attitude to see expressed in our world today, is it?
Listen. Unbelief can never be changed by the evidence. It can only be changed by divine miracle. That is why I have said in two recent sermons and will say again here, people don’t start believing because they understand. They can only begin to understand once they have believed.
But willful unbelief is doubly blind. They were born blind and now they are deliberately blind. They have adopted some religious system of rules and doctrines that fit for them and they won’t have their apple cart upset.
We see examples of this recorded right here in the New Testament.
In Acts 7 Stephen has been giving his defense of the Gospel to the High Priest, and when he exposes them as betrayers and murders of the Righteous One, meaning Jesus Christ, they begin gnashing their teeth. That’s how angry they are. Not enlightened; angry. Then verse 57 says, “But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears, and they rushed upon him with one impulse.”
They covered their ears! That’s how desperate they were to shut out the truth of who they were and who Jesus is.
God can’t do anything for these people. Do you want to know what the final outcome is for them? Listen to John 12:37-40
“But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. 38 This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: “LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT? AND TO WHOM HAS THE ARM OF THE LORD BEEN REVEALED?” 39 For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, 40 “HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM.”
Did you hear verse 39? They could not believe. This was in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, which says “He”, meaning God, “has blinded their eyes and He hardened their heart”. Why did He do that?
Because God doesn’t reward deliberate, willful unbelief and He won’t violate their will to force them to believe.
In the words of C.S. Lewis,
“The damned are successful rebels to the end, enslaved within the horrible freedom they have demanded. The doors of hell are locked on the inside” THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, C.S. Lewis, 1940
Well we have to close this out soon so let’s look at the outcome for the formerly blind man.
Back up to what really amounts to the climax of the confrontation between the Pharisees and the beggar. And isn’t that thought alone almost comical in its implications? The Pharisees and Scribes have been hounding Jesus around for more than two years at this point; probably more like three, and every time they think they have the jump on Him Jesus blows them out of the water with His simple, straightforward responses that go straight to the problem of their wickedness and their vile hearts.
Now, they don’t have Jesus, but they have this defenseless beggar who has no money, no political clout, no formal education, and even he is getting the best of them. He has kept his cool through this entire encounter, repeating his story several times, declaring this Jesus to be a prophet, while they have grown increasingly hot under the collar and getting more and more pathetic in their desperation to get him to renounce his claim.
Finally they really step in it. Look at verses 28 – 29
“They reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.”
Now there is quite a bit that could be said about the Pharisees and their faulty religious system, but for now let’s just observe how they have set themselves up for exposure in this last phrase, ‘we do not know where He is from’. First of all, Jesus has told them where He is from, so they’re lying.
But here is the man’s reply to them and this is why I like him so much.
He preaches to the Pharisees!
“Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. 31 “We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him. 32 “Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 “If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.”
This is why I said earlier that I think this man spent a lot of time listening to the Rabbis teaching in and around the Temple. He knew what they should have known; that there was no record of anyone ever giving sight to someone born blind.
Something else they should have thought of, if they weren’t stopping their ears and shutting their own eyes, is that only God can give sight to one born blind, and God doesn’t hear sinners, and therefore this Jesus must be God or at least from God, or He wouldn’t be able to do these things He is doing.
Even one side of the previously debating Pharisees had said that much, remember verse 16?
So what do we have before us? A man who spent his life in darkness, begging outside the Temple grounds in Jerusalem. Suddenly he is healed, and he immediately exercises faith. He doesn’t ask for evidence, he is the evidence. He doesn’t ask for signs, he is the sign. He believes Jesus is from God. He defends Jesus to the point of being excommunicated (unsynagogued), but when Jesus finds him later and introduces Himself the man immediately worships.
He was given physical sight, then Jesus finished the job by giving him spiritual sight. Because Jesus came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.
Now I want to draw one more point out of this and I’m done.
Everything that transpired in this account was by Divine initiative. Jesus had His confrontation with the Pharisees in chapter 8 wherein He told them their father was the devil but that He was God. Then leaving them thoroughly riled, Jesus went to the man born blind and healed him. He didn’t ask permission, He didn’t even ask if he wanted to be healed. The man was there for the divine purpose of demonstrating the works of God in him; remember? Divine initiative.
Jesus healed the man and apparently just kept on walking. Later, does it say the man looked for Jesus? No. Jesus found him. Jesus asked him if he believed in the Son of Man. Jesus introduced Himself and received the man’s worship.
It always comes back to this doesn’t it? We did not seek God. He sought us. Jesus said ‘You did not choose me but I chose you’. ‘The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost’.
If you are not His today, if you have never come to Him in the obedience of saving faith, I would only warn you to not be doubly blind. He has sight to give you if you know you do not see; if you think you’ve got it all sorted he can’t help you.
But if you know you do not see, He can open the eyes of your spiritual understanding. He can give you spiritual life and sight in the twinkling of an eye.
Just know this. The initiative is His. Therefore it is by His grace you are saved because He does the choosing and the healing and the calling and the justifying. But He also does the blinding in those who say they already see. Two kinds of people. Both blind from birth, but one being given sight – the other insisting on an eternity of darkness. Of which group are you?
