In chapter 9 of John’s gospel he records a story of Jesus healing a man who was born blind. In John’s story, Jesus made some mud out of saliva and dirt, then put the mud on the man’s eyes. Then Jesus tells the man to go wash off the mud in a pool. When the man does this, his blindness is gone!
Because this man was born blind and had begged in the temple area for years, the miracle was hard to deny as a claim that Jesus was the Messiah, but many of the people put their focus on the wrong question: the how of the miracle. Four times in the chapter someone asks how the man’s eyes were healed, as if the method of the healing was the important part. Some of “The neighbors and those who had seen him before” asked “how were your eyes opened?” [1] Then some Pharisees asked the man how he was healed. In both cases, the man formerly blind explained what Jesus had done.
Then, because Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath and because practicing medicine on the Sabbath was against traditional Jewish regulations, the Pharisees asked, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”[2] The Pharisees kept looking for an explanation. A scientific or natural explanation. Perhaps this wasn’t the same man who was born blind. So they found his parents, “and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’”[3]
The better question is who healed the man born blind, but the Pharisees didn’t want to deal with that question. They had already made up their minds that Jesus wasn’t from God. So, they focused on the how, on the method. People still do this today, as Warren Wiersbe wrote: “We want to understand the mechanics of a miracle instead of simply trusting the Savior, who alone can perform the miracle.”[4]
Modern people want scientific explanations because they think nothing exists outside of scientific understanding and when something doesn’t fit that worldview it is denied or explained away. We want to fit miracles within our pre-existing understanding of the world. And when we can’t, we resist any way we can. In the case of the Pharisees and Jesus, “they cast him out.”[5] Anything to avoid the real question: who is this person who can do things that don’t fit into our narrow view of the universe? Comparing John’s gospel to modern events, we see this is nothing new.
However, if Jesus is who He said He was – God the Son – no miracle should be unbelievable because God has absolute control over His own creation. If Jesus is God, He exists outside of our universe and so obviously can’t be explained by using scientific laws that describe this universe. But we continue to resist. When people want to avoid dealing with their God, they still stick to the “how” question to avoid the more important question of “who.”
If you’re struggling to understand the miraculous stories of the Bible, make sure you’re asking the right (“who”) questions. If you’re talking to an unbeliever having the same struggles, make sure they’re asking the right questions, because: If Jesus is who God is, every how is possible, including the greatest miracle: the salvation of anyone who would believe in Him. And, Jesus can heal anyone who is blind to this reality.
[1] John 9:8-10
[2] John 9:16
[3] John 9:19
[4] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Alive (John 1-12) (1986). P. 143
[5] John 9:34
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 