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LIGHT FOR THE BLIND EYES

John 9:1–5 (contd)

IN this passage, there are two great eternal principles.

(1) Jesus does not try to follow up or to explain the connection of sin and suffering. He says that this man’s affliction came to him to give an opportunity of showing what God can do. There are two senses in which that is true.

(a) For John, the miracles are always a sign of the glory and the power of God. The writers of the other gospels had a different point of view, and regarded them as a demonstration of the compassion of Jesus. When Jesus looked on the hungry crowd he had compassion on them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd (Mark 6:34). When the leper came with his desperate request for cleansing, Jesus was moved with pity (Mark 1:41). It is often urged that in this the Fourth Gospel is quite different from the others. Surely there is no real contradiction here. It is simply two ways of looking at the same thing. At its heart is the supreme truth that the glory of God lies in his compassion, and that he never so fully reveals his glory as when he reveals his pity.

(b) But there is another sense in which the man’s suffering shows what God can do. Affliction, sorrow, pain, disappointment and loss are always opportunities for displaying God’s grace. First, it enables the sufferer to show God in action. When trouble and disaster fall upon someone who does not know God, that person may well collapse; but when they fall on someone who walks with God, they bring out the strength and the beauty, and the endurance and the nobility, which are within a person’s heart when God is there. It is told that when an old saint was dying in an agony of pain, he sent for his family, saying: ‘Come and see how a Christian can die.’ It is when life hits us a terrible blow that we can show the world how a Christian can live, and, if need be, die. Any kind of suffering is an opportunity to demonstrate the glory of God in our own lives. Second, by helping those who are in trouble or in pain, we can demonstrate to others the glory of God. The American missionary Frank Laubach has the great thought that when Christ, who is the Way, enters into us, ‘we become part of the Way. God’s highway runs straight through us.’ When we spend ourselves to help those in trouble, in distress, in pain, in sorrow, in affliction, God is using us as the highway by which he sends his help into the lives of his people. To help another person in need is to manifest the glory of God, for it is to show what God is like.

(2) Jesus goes on to say that he and all his followers must do God’s work while there is time to do it. God gave the day for work and the night for rest; the day comes to an end, and the time for work is also ended. For Jesus, it was true that he had to press on with God’s work in the day, for the night of the cross lay close ahead. But it is true for everyone. We are given only so much time. Whatever we are to do must be done within it. There is in Glasgow a sundial with the motto: ‘Tak’ tent of time ere time be tint.’ ‘Take thought of time before time is ended.’ We should never put things off until another time, for another time may never come. Christians have a duty to fill the time they have – and no one knows how much that will be – with the service of God and of others. There is no more poignant sorrow than the tragic discovery that it is too late to do something which we might have done.

But there is another opportunity we may miss. Jesus said: ‘So long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When Jesus said that, he did not mean that the time of his life and work were limited but that our opportunity of laying hold on him is limited. There comes to each one of us a chance to accept Christ as our Saviour, our Master and our Lord; and if that opportunity is not seized it may well never come back. E. D. Starbuck in The Psychology of Religion has some interesting and warning statistics about the age at which conversion normally occurs. It can occur as early as seven or eight; it increases gradually to the age of ten or eleven; it increases rapidly to the age of sixteen; it declines steeply up to the age of twenty; and after thirty it is very rare. God is always saying to us: ‘Now is the time.’ It is not that the power of Jesus grows less, or that his light grows dim; it is that if we put off the great decision we become increasingly less able to take it as the years go on. Work must be done, decisions must be taken, while it is day, before the night falls.