Week 42 John 9
The disciples saw a man who was born blind and they asked Jesus whose sin made this man blind: a) his own sin or b) his parents’ sin?
It was a theoretical question – the man being born blind and all. But what wasn’t debatable was that someone must have done wrong. Otherwise the guy wouldn’t be blind. People suffered because degradation got paid-forward.
I spent the first eight months of this year reading the OT and I can understand why the disciples asked the question. There’s quite a bit of OT content that pretty definitely spells out the idea that the way I live my life has consequences. But it looks like by Jesus’ time the basic principle had been developed & expanded into a hard-and-fast rule that suffering people suffer because they’re bad people.
It seems like a handy diagnostic tool:
Is a guy crippled?
Does he have MS?
Leprosy?
Well…he’s gotta be a bad guy.
So the Lord had to bring the disciples up to speed. This man was a) not blind because he sinned and b) not blind because his folks sinned but c) was blind so that the power of God could be seen in him.
A correct OT idea had been reworked & reformulated over time to the point of nonsensicality.
Like with the Sermon on the Mount the Lord had to scrape off a layer of barnacles to get to the real OT.
Note: quote from John 9:3 (NLT)