The Cure for Blindness
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When I was 13, we moved to Suffolk and into the house that my father had designed and built. It’s the same house where Annette and I live with Miss Lynn today.
For more than a year before we moved into that house, my father and I had spent nearly every free minute working there. He’d pick me up after school, and we’d head out to the house to do whatever work we could do before it got too late, and then we’d head back to the apartment we had leased in Churchland for the construction period.
We spent weekends working on the house, and I think we even skipped vacations that year so we could get the place built and ready to move in.
Finally it had got to the point where we could live in the house. The upstairs was complete, but the basement was still unfinished.
What I recall about the basement during that period was that it was a dark and scary place. I hated having to go down the narrow spiral staircase we had back then to get something out of storage, because I was never sure what I would encounter.
Even at 13 years of age, I just knew there was something waiting for me in the dark corners.
But the bigger danger was that I would simply trip over something I couldn’t see and hit the concrete floor.
It was a great day when we finally got lights strung up and were able to begin putting the basement into order.
Light makes all the difference in the world.
Today we’re going to talk about the Light of the world and the difference He makes to those who were stumbling about in the darkness.
Turn with me, please, to John, Chapter 1.
Now, if you were with us on Wednesday, you’ll recognize some of what we’re talking about today, and if you plan to be here this Wednesday — and you should! — you’ll get a preview today of some of what we’ll talk about then.
I love this passage of Scripture, and I consider these first five verses of the gospel of John to be part of the most beautiful and concise description of Jesus Christ and His ministry on earth in all of the Bible.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Now it is no mere coincidence that the Book of John begins with the same words as the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning.”
John’s purpose for his gospel was to help people believe that Jesus is the Christ of Old Testament Scripture and that He is the Son of God so that those who believe would have eternal life through Him.
In order to recognize Jesus as the Son of God, one of the three persons of the eternal Trinity, we have to understand that He was there at the very beginning of everything — and if He was there at the beginning, then He had to have been there before the beginning.
So we see John here beginning to lay the groundwork for a Trinitarian theology that will be developed later in his Gospel.
We know from verse 14 of this chapter that the Word of whom John writes about in today’s passage is Jesus.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
So, going back to verses 1 and 2, we have this:
In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus WAS God. Jesus was in the beginning with God.
Jesus Christ existed in a sacrificially loving relationship with His Father before the beginning of time. In fact, the Holy Spirit existed with them, as well.
No one person of the Trinity is less God than either of the others. See that? The Word WAS God. Each of the three persons of the Trinity is distinct from the others, but each of them is of the same God-nature.
Now today’s message isn’t explicitly a lesson on Trinitarian doctrine, but when we come across pointers to that doctrine in Scripture, I think it is important that we stop and take notice.
So we have — from this passage, at least — God and the Word existing outside of time. And then God said what?
Let there be Light.
Notice that it was God’s Word that brought forth light into the darkness. That lines up perfectly with what John says next.
3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
God created the universe and everything we know of it — including time itself — through His Son, Jesus Christ. And nothing that was created was created apart from Him.
Now I want you to see what was going on when this great creative act took place.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
The Father chose from before creation those whom He would save, and Jesus offered Himself on a cross to save them. The Holy Spirit draws them to Jesus and then sanctifies believers, making them into the image of Christ so that the Father will be glorified.
Notice that I did not start with . Many scholars believe that verse functions simply as a title or a heading for what follows. So, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” simply tells us what the following passage of Scripture is going to tell us about.
So we start the Book of Genesis with an earth already existing. God created it, of course, but we are not told about that particular act of creation.
What we’re told is that the earth was a dark place, and that it was “formless and void.” The Hebrew there describes a condition of chaos and darkness.
I think a solid case can be made for the idea that it was this way because it was the place where Satan and the other fallen angels had been sent when they rebelled against God in Heaven.
So, then, what we have in the rest of this creation account in the Book of Genesis is God bringing order to a place where Satan had ruled.
And what was the first step to bringing order out of chaos?
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
God brought light into darkness.
Here’s the thing: Without light, there can be no life. Plants cannot grow, and without plants, there can be no higher animal life, including humans.
So God brought light, and the light was life to this dead world.
That tracks right along with what John says here in his gospel.
4
4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
Jesus is the Word who was with God — and, indeed, He WAS God from the beginning. But Jesus was also the light and in the light was life.
If you take a look later through that first chapter of Genesis, you will see that God created the vegetation on earth on the third day, but He did not create the Sun and the Moon until the fourth day.
I do not think it is over-spiritualizing this passage to conclude that it was the light of Christ that sustained the vegetation prior to the creation of the Sun.
So the light came into the world and brought life. But even before it brought life, it pushed back the darkness.
Take a look at verse 5 from .
5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
That word that’s translated “comprehend” there can also mean “overcome.” In other words, the darkness was not able to overpower the light.
Think about it. Back when I was 13, going down into that dark basement, my best friend was a flashlight. With the flashlight, there was no dark space that was able to overcome the light.
It was the same when the light of Jesus came into the dark world.
But there’s also a sense in which the darkness does not comprehend the light of Christ, and that’s what I want to talk about next.
You see, John was not ONLY talking about creation in these five verses. He was also talking about the ministry of Jesus when He was on earth as a man.
He came as the light of the world, but those who insisted on continuing to walk in their spiritual darkness — in their spiritual blindness — did not understand or comprehend Him.
The Apostle Paul wrote about this in his second letter to the church in Corinth.
4 Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.
That’s what was going on with the Pharisees and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Satan had blinded them to the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Now, the physical problem of blindness in Scripture often points to a spiritual blindness. Please understand that we’re talking about Scripture here and not our current times. I’m not suggesting that being physically blind today means you are also spiritually blind.
But in Scripture, the Holy Spirit often used physical blindness as a metaphor for the deeper and eternally deadly problem of not recognizing one’s need for God.
Think of Samson. We’ll have a message about him sometime soon, I hope, but the short version here is that he had been set apart by God for His service. Instead, Samson chose to pursue his own lusts, and you’ll recall that he finally gave Delilah the secret to his strength. After she had cut his hair, he became weak, and he was captured by the Philistines.
What you might not remember is that they then gouged out his eyes before chaining him to the pillars of the temple where they were carousing.
His physical malady now matched his spiritual problem.
You might also recall what happened to Saul when he was on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians.
A bright light came and blinded him, and Jesus spoke from Heaven, asking him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
Saul had been spiritually blind, and now his physical condition matched his spiritual one.
The Old Testament prophets wrote extensively about how God would one day open the eyes of the blind. Jesus did this in the physical sense, but each of those physical healings was intended to make the point that the people of Israel were blind to their need for the grace of God.
Jesus was the Light shining in the darkness of Israel, and in Him was life, but many of those who were walking around blind in the darkness did not comprehend what He offered them.
Jesus Christ is the One who opens our eyes to Truth, the one who gives sight to the spiritually blind, the one who gives life to those who are dead in their sins.
This passage we have been looking at in the Gospel of John certainly talks about what was happening at the time of creation. The light brought life back then.
But “life” in the Book of John has a much deeper meaning than simply an organic sense.
Life in the Book of John refers to life in the Kingdom of God. It refers to the true fullness of a life lived for Jesus Christ. It refers to the spiritual condition of living as one who images God.
So when we learn in that we were made in the image of God -- to represent Him forever -- the implication of Adam’s rejection (and that of Israel and that of each of us) becomes clear: By rejecting God, we have rejected His life and have chosen instead to take on death, the character of Satan.
Without the Light, we were banished into the darkness of the world, and we became subjects of the kingdom of death, rather than the Kingdom of Life.
Having chosen to identify ourselves with Satan, instead of the God who has life within Him, Adam and Eve — and, by extension, each of us — were thrown out of the Garden, banished from enjoying the benefits of being in the Kingdom of God, among which is eternal life.
The only way for us to be restored to this relationship is for the rule and authority of death to be removed and for God to put life back into us.
As God’s perfect revelation of Himself, Jesus — who is the very enfleshment of the God who is Spirit — came with that life within Himself, and He came with the power and authority to give it to whom He wished. He is the ONLY source of that life; we cannot get it in our own strength.
I talked about taking that flashlight into the dark basement and how much better I felt by having the light with me. You see, light reveals things.
There is a story about a tightfisted farmer back in the days before electricity. He had a hired hand whom he was chiding for using the lantern whenever he’d leave the farm at night to go and see his girlfriend.
“Back when I was a-courtin’,” he said to the hired hand, “I never took a light with me.”
“That’s right,” the other man said. “And look what you wound up with.”
The hired hand needed his light, and WE need the light of Christ. But Scripture tells us that we don’t really want it. And why not?
20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
For those who are walking in the darkness of sin, the light of Christ is actually loathsome, because His light exposes them for who they are. And the truth is that none of us really wants to see who we really are.
It is only because I now carry the image of Jesus Christ that I can look at myself in the light. Without His image, I would see only my own darkness. Without the life that His light brings, I would be staring into the darkness of death.
If you are walking through this life without Jesus, you are walking in the darkness of your sins. If you have not followed Jesus in faith that His sacrifice on the cross was the only thing that could pay the price for your sins, then you still owe that debt.
If you are going through your life thinking that your goodness is good enough to earn you a place in Heaven, then you are just like Saul on that road to Damascus. You are spiritually blind, and you are dead in your trespasses.
But Jesus came to give you life, and He proved He could do it when He rose from the dead on the third day after His crucifixion.
Now, I want to show you one more thing about today’s passage before I close.
Take a look back at verses 3 and 4, and remember that John had two perspectives in mind as he wrote this passage, one perspective looking at creation and one looking at the work of Jesus Christ in His incarnation as a man.
John 3
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; 2 this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? 11 “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. 12 “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. 14 “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” 22 After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He was spending time with them and baptizing. 23 John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and people were coming and were being baptized— 24 for John had not yet been thrown into prison. 25 Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him.” 27 John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. 28 “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’ 29 “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. 30 “He must increase, but I must decrease. 31 “He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. 32 “What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. 33 “He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. 34 “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. 35 “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. 36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” 1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4 And He had to pass through Samaria. 5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” 11 She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? 12 “You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” 16 He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” 19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” 27 At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” 28 So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” 30 They went out of the city, and were coming to Him. 31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. 35 “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. 36 “Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 “For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 “I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.” 39 From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of His word; 42 and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.” 43 After the two days He went forth from there into Galilee. 44 For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45 So when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all the things that He did in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves also went to the feast. 46 Therefore He came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and was imploring Him to come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.” 49 The royal official said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off. 51 As he was now going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living. 52 So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, “Your son lives”; and he himself believed and his whole household. 54 This is again a second sign that Jesus performed when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.
3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
Here’s a little English lesson from the former newspaper editor:
There are three prepositional phrases regarding Jesus here. Do you see them?
All things came into being THROUGH Him.
APART FROM Him, nothing came into being that has come into being.
And IN Him was life.
We have salvation THROUGH our faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way we we can be saved from the consequences of our sins.
APART FROM Jesus, we are utterly lost. Apart from Jesus, we are blind men and women blundering our way toward death and Hell.
But IN Jesus Christ, there is life. IN Jesus Christ, we have no reason to loathe the light, because if we are IN Jesus Christ, His light will show us that we are being made into His very image.
If we are IN Jesus Christ, we are being made into people who shine His very light into this dark world.
There is a cure for blindness, at least for spiritual blindness. And that cure is the light of Jesus Christ.
Leave the darkness of your own self-righteousness and come into the light of His true and perfect righteousness. His light makes all the difference in the world.
In the light of Jesus Christ, you will find life.