Intro to Chapter 25: Disproving a Miracle
With the healing of the man who had been blind from birth, Jesus brought his challenge to the temple itself. Not only was he healing, drawing the crowds to him, but he was doing it on the Sabbath. He was breaking the law, as the Pharisees saw it – even, it was rumored, claiming to be master of the law. The miracle could not have been done with divine power, they knew; God himself rested on the Sabbath. For the first time, the Pharisees set out to disprove one of his miracles.
Jesus was in the temple, calling himself the light of the world. None of those who disbelieved this claim called him a good man or a wise teacher, as so many unbelievers do today. A human being who believed such claims about himself would be diabolical or insane, at the very least a megalomaniac. A human being who made such claims without believing them would be a corrupt demagogue, manipulating the crowd for his own purposes. Clearly Jesus was one or the other, the scribes and Pharisees knew, but there was the nagging problem of the so-called miracle.
John’s gospel manages to capture the personality of the blind man. He is too delighted with his sight and with Jesus to be at all intimidated by the learned Pharisees. His encounter with Jesus had put worldly powers into perspective. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”