Читать книгу New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John vol. 2 - William Barclay - Страница 32

REVELATION AND CONDEMNATION

John 9:35–41

Jesus heard that they had put him out, so he found him and said to him: ‘Do you believe in the Son of God?’ ‘But who is he, sir,’ he answered him, ‘that I might believe in him?’ Jesus said to him: ‘You have both seen him, and he who is talking with you is he.’ ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I believe.’ And he knelt before him. Jesus said: ‘It was for judgment that I came into this world that those who do not see might see, and that those who see might become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this. ‘Surely,’ they said, ‘we are not blind?’ Jesus said to them: ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. As it is, your claim is, “We see.” Your sin remains.’

THIS section begins with two great spiritual truths.

(1) Jesus looked for the man. As John Chrysostom, the fourth-century Bishop of Constantinople, put it: ‘The Jews cast him out of the Temple; the Lord of the Temple found him.’ If our Christian witness separates us from others, it brings us nearer to Jesus Christ. Jesus is always true to those who are true to him.

(2) To this man, there was made the great revelation that Jesus was the Son of God. Loyalty always brings revelation; it is to those who are true to him that Jesus most fully reveals himself. The penalty of loyalty may well be persecution and ostracism at the hands of others; its reward is a closer walk with Christ, and an increasing knowledge of his wonder.

John finishes this story with two of his favourite thoughts.

(1) Jesus came into this world for judgment. Whenever people are confronted with Jesus, they at once pass a judgment on themselves. If they see in Jesus nothing to desire, nothing to admire, nothing to love, then they have condemned themselves. If they see in Jesus something to wonder at, something to respond to, something to reach out to, then they are on the way to God. Those who are conscious of their own blindness, and who long to see better and to know more, are men and women whose eyes can be opened and who can be led more and more deeply into the truth. Those people who think they know it all, those who do not realize that they cannot see, are men and women who are truly blind and beyond hope and help. Only those who realize their own weakness can become strong. Only those who realize their own blindness can learn to see. Only those who realize their own sin can be forgiven.

(2) The more knowledge people have, the more they are to be condemned if they do not recognize the good when they see it. If the Pharisees had been brought up in ignorance, they could not have been condemned. Their condemnation lay in the fact that they knew so much and claimed to see so well, and yet failed to recognize God’s Son when he came. The law that responsibility is the other side of privilege is written into life.