Audio Transcript

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John, we read a remarkable story of a man born blind who was made to see by the miraculous healing power of Christ. It was the kind of miracle, like so many of them, that could not be kept a secret. Word spread far and wide of what Jesus had done to this young man. But the power players of the day rejected the news. And so we read that

the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age [that is, he’s at least 13 years old]. He will speak for himself.” (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.)

So there’s a power move here, an intimidation factor at play. John continues,

Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He [the healed man] answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (John 9:18–25)

“Was blind, but now I see” — a famous line, worked into John Newton’s famous hymn “Amazing Grace.” John 9 is a key chapter in explaining God’s plan for physical disability. But it’s also a key chapter for understanding how we as Christians, changed by the grace of God, can testify of Christ before the world’s most powerful and educated people. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

Here we see the full-blown courage of a beggar — a mere beggar standing up to the most religious, most educated people of the land. And we see here full-blown blasphemy in response to that kind of courage.

Testifying Power

Verse 24: “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” In other words, “Join us in blasphemy, or we’ll excommunicate you out of the synagogue.” That’s not like being excommunicated out of Bethlehem, because do you know what happens if we do discipline on an unrepentant person? They go join another church. In spite of any letter we might send, there are churches of all kinds, and people just move on.

That can’t happen here. When you get kicked out of a synagogue, you get kicked out of Judaism. This is life. This is like being in a Muslim-dominated context. You can’t be there as a Christian. It won’t work. This is huge. Don’t just hear, “We’ll kick you out.” Getting rid of you from the synagogue means you’re out of the community. This is huge, what this man was standing up against.

“A personal testimony trumps arguments when they’re bad arguments — and they’re all bad when they’re against Jesus.”

Verse 25 is his most famous sentence. People all over the world know this sentence, even if they don’t know the Bible: “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” I hope you feel something here. You don’t think of yourself as a theologian and you don’t think of yourself as a scientist, but you’ve got people coming against your faith with every manner of argument — historically, scientifically, experientially. They’re coming against you if you try to be a bold, regular witness.

And I want you to feel the power of this: a personal testimony trumps arguments when they’re bad arguments — and they’re all bad arguments when they’re against Jesus. Don’t be intimidated. This man was way less educated than everybody in all these rooms, and he’d been blind all of his life. And he just simply said with all boldness, “Look, you may know some things I don’t know, but I can see.”

Doctrines of Courage

One of the reasons I teach and preach on the doctrines of grace is because there are so many Christians who don’t know how they got saved, so that they don’t know they have a stunning testimony that they sheer believe. Your belief is a miracle; you didn’t choose it.

Of course, if you have a theology that says, “I did it,” then you’ve got no testimony to the power of God in your life. But at age 6 or 16 or 36, when you saw Jesus as needed and beautiful and sufficient, and you confessed, “I’m a sinner, I need you, I receive you,” a miracle happened. A miracle happened. That’s why these theological things matter.

You can stand up in front of the Senate and say, “I don’t know much about what you guys deal with here. I just know one thing: I was blind once, and now I see the glory of Christ as self-evidencing and compelling, and I will die for him. I’ll stake my life on the truth of what I’ve seen in Jesus.” That’s what you can say. That’s very powerful. It is here. It will come to a point where they can’t handle him anymore. That’s what he said. I hope you’re willing to say it. I hope you have enough understanding to say it, and if you don’t, I hope you study about how you got saved, so that you will know that if you’re saved, you can say it.

Blind Hearts

His courage becomes scorn. Verse 27: “Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Whoa, what are you doing, man? You’re going to get yourself killed. They’re very hostile, of course. Verses 28–29: “They reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’”

Now the controversy has revealed another deceit: They’re not disciples of Moses. They think they are. They’re not, because Jesus said in John 5:46, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.” “You don’t know Moses, and you don’t know God. You talk about Moses. You read Moses. You talk about God. You read God’s word. And you don’t know God, because if you knew God and you knew Moses, you’d know me.”

Again, the controversy is revealing what’s really going on in the Jewish leaders’ hearts. Now we are seeing who’s really blind here. They take the first five books of their Bible, and they read them, and they don’t see anything. They’re blind. We’re watching a man whose sight is becoming clearer and clearer and clearer, and whose courage is becoming stronger and stronger, and we’re watching these Pharisees reveal more and more blindness. You don’t want to be a part of that.

Jesus in Pursuit

Jesus and the beggar have a conversation in verses 35–38, after the Jewish leaders cast the beggar out. What makes this conversation so amazingly significant is that Jesus sought him out and found him. Verse 34: “‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.” Now, that’s really serious. To whom will he turn when he’s just been cast out of the community? To whom will he turn?

He doesn’t have to turn anywhere. Jesus turns to him. We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Jesus found him. Jesus seeks him. It is no accident that the next chapter is about the Good Shepherd who gathers his sheep. It’s no accident. John knows what he’s doing. He found him. “That’s one of mine. Nobody else wants him right now. I want him.” That’s what I’m praying he’ll do to you in the next five minutes of this sermon. He is after you. He is going to find you. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re there.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. (John 9:35–38)

“Do you confess Christ openly and defend him with your simple testimony, ‘I was blind, and now I see’?”

Then the beggar is gone out of this story. He never says another word. We never see him again. The last thing he does is worship Jesus. I pray that’s the last thing I do. Jesus does the works of God. Jesus is the glory of God. Jesus is to be worshiped. That’s the point of the story. The beggar is blind. He calls Jesus a man. Then he calls Jesus a prophet. Then he defends him at huge risk to his life. And then he worships him after he is found by Jesus.

‘Finally, I Saw’

Jesus came into the world to seek worshipers. That’s why he’s here. Do you confess him openly and defend him with your simple testimony? No big apologetic reasoning. Some of you are called to that, but most of you aren’t. You’re just called to be witnesses. If you see a car hit a person, you can be a witness. You don’t need any education at all.

“I saw” — 95 percent of Christians are saved that way. No big argument — just, “I saw. Finally, I saw. I was reading the Gospels, and I couldn’t resist this man anymore. He was real. He’s real. He’s true. He’s exactly what I need. He’s what the world needs. He’s real. This is not made up. I saw.”

I simply ask, Do you confess him openly and defend him with your simple testimony, “I was blind, and now I see”?

“I am afraid of your love,” Bishop Ignatius wrote to the early church in Rome, “lest it should do me an injury” (Epistle to the Romans 1.2). It is hard to imagine more ironic words.

Ignatius, a disciple of the apostle John, was nearing seventy years of age when he sent the letter ahead of him on August 24 (somewhere between AD 107 and 110). He told them he remained “afraid” of the believers’ love — meaning he was afraid that they would keep him from martyrdom, that they would “do him an injury” by keeping him from being torn apart by lions.

Ignatius sent a total of seven letters to seven churches en route to the Colosseum. This letter to the church in Rome gave his thoughts on martyrdom and extended a special plea for their non-interference in his. Instead of asking for whatever influence the Roman believers may have had to release him, he bids them stand down.

In his own words,

For neither shall I ever hereafter have such an opportunity of attaining to God; nor will ye, if ye shall now be silent, ever be entitled to the honor of a better work. For if ye are silent concerning me, I shall become God’s; but if ye show your love to my flesh, I shall again have to run my race. Pray, then, do not seek to confer any greater favor upon me than that I be sacrificed to God. (2.2)

And again,

I write to all the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God, unless ye hinder me. I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. (4.1)

Martyr or Madman?

Michael Haykin’s assessment seems conclusive: “In the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch we possess one of the richest resources for understanding Christianity in the era immediately following that of the apostles” (31). Surveying Ignatius’s letters to the seven churches on the road to Rome, Haykin summarizes three concerns weighing heavily upon the bishop’s mind: (1) the unity of the local church, (2) her standing firm against heresy, and (3) non-interference in his calling to martyrdom (32). The first and second are unsurprising, but what are we to make of the third?

What do you think of a man saying, “May I enjoy the wild beasts that are prepared for me; and I pray that they may be found eager to rush upon me, which also I will entice to devour me speedily. . . . But if they be unwilling to assail me, I will compel them to do so” (5.2)? Who is this Daniel praying not for rescue but looking forward to the lion’s den?

“Christians had been killed in the past, but few with as much enthusiasm.”

Some scholars, Haykin notes, have called him mentally imbalanced, pathologically bent on death (32). Christians had been killed in the past, but few, if any, with such enthusiasm. What right-thinking Christian would write, “If I shall suffer, ye have loved me; but if I am rejected, ye have hated me” (8.3)? Was he a madman?

‘Sanity’ to Ignatius

Did he have an irrational proclivity for martyrdom? Can his death wish fit within the bounds of mature Christian life and experience? If you were his fellow bishop and friend — say, Polycarp (later a martyr himself) — what might you say if you desired to dissuade him?

You might call his mind to the holy Scripture — for example, Jesus’s prophecy of Peter’s own martyrdom (which happened years earlier in Rome). Jesus foretold, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).

The apostle Peter did not want to go and stretch out his hands in his own crucifixion. He did not want to be dressed by another and “carried” to his death. Granted, he wanted that end more than denying his Master again, but it stands to reason that if he could have ended differently, he would have chosen otherwise.

Or you might consider the apostle Paul and his second-to-last letter before he too was likely beheaded in Rome. “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:1–2). He exhorts that prayers be made for rulers that Christians might lead quiet and peaceful lives. Pray for your leaders, in part, that they might be saved — and thus not given to killing you “all the day long” for public entertainment (Romans 8:36).

Ignatius to ‘Sanity’

“But,” the well-taught bishop might have responded, “did not Peter write much of suffering and necessary trials as tests to our faith? Does not God place our faith in the fire (or the Colosseum) that it might be found to result in praise and glory and honor at Christ’s revelation (1 Peter 1:7; 4:12)? Or did Peter not put forward the suffering servant, Jesus Christ, as our example to follow? Or is it not a ‘gracious thing in the sight of God’ to endure suffering for righteousness’ sake — something we are ‘called to’ and blessed in (1 Peter 2:20; 3:14)? And further, did Peter not tell the church to ‘arm’ themselves with this thinking (1 Peter 4:1), and to rejoice insofar as they share in Christ’s sufferings, evidence that the Spirit of glory rests upon them (1 Peter 4:13–14)?

“And what to say of our beloved Paul? Was it not he who was hard pressed to stay, even when fruitful labor awaited him? Did he not inscribe my heart on paper when he said, ‘To live is Christ, and to die is gain,’ and that to be with Christ is ‘far better’ (Philippians 1:21, 23)? And was it not also the case that, knowing he was walking from one affliction to the next, he walked the martyr’s path — against the behest and weeping of fellow Christians who threatened to break the apostle’s heart (Acts 21:12–13)?

“‘Constrained by the Spirit,’ did he not go forward (Acts 20:22)? He testified that he did not count his life of any value nor as precious to himself, if only he could finish his race and ministry to testify to God’s grace (Acts 20:24). He assured crying saints along the violent road that he was ready not only to be imprisoned but to die for the name of Jesus (Acts 21:13). They eventually submitted and said, ‘Let the will of the Lord be done’ (Acts 21:14). Will you not imitate them, beloved Polycarp?”

This imagining is to help us get into the mind of the “madman,” as well as to warn us from drawing hasty applications. Though most will not consent so insistently and passionately to a martyr’s death, some will pass by other exits on the way to testifying to the ultimate worth of Christ.

Messiah’s Madmen

What might we, far from the lions of Ignatius’s day, learn from the martyred bishop of Antioch? I am challenged by his all-consuming love for Jesus, a love that the world — and some in the church — considers crazy.

Let fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let breakings, tearings, and separations of bones; let cutting off of members; let bruising to pieces of the whole body; and let the very torment of the devil come upon me: only let me attain to Jesus Christ. (5.3)

“If we are madmen, let it be for Christ.”

If we are madmen, let it be for Christ. Should not Paul’s words be stated over our entire lives? “If we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you” (2 Corinthians 5:13). If we are crazy, it is because of Christ. If we are in our right minds, it is for others to be won to the same madness we have. The love of Christ “controls us” (2 Corinthians 5:14).

Oh what a beautiful strangeness, what a provocative otherness, what an unidentifiable oddity is a Christian who loves Christ with his all and considers death to be truly gain. Such a one can see, even behind the teeth of lions, an endless life with him.

The strange machine along the streets of Madrid seized my attention.

Its long arms reached out and wrapped themselves around the trunk of a tree. Its motor vibrated those arms at high speeds so they could shake the tree violently. Its net sat suspended just beneath the lowest branches. As the machine buzzed and roared, a hundred ripe oranges fell from the branches to land in the net below — a hundred ripe oranges that could feed and satisfy a hundred people. That machine was carefully designed to release the fruit from the tree — to release it by shaking.

The nets filled with oranges remind me of something the apostle Paul once wrote about times of trial and tribulation, of deep sorrow and loss. He contended that Christians must be prepared to be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and even struck down — a collection of words meant to display the variety of ways in which God may call us to suffer (2 Corinthians 4:8–9).

The God who is sovereign over all things may lead us into times and contexts that are deeply painful. Yet we can be confident that our suffering is never arbitrary and never meaningless, for God always has a purpose in mind. Hence, Paul says more: we will be “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” For those in Christ, God’s purpose is never to harm us and never to ruin us.

“The God who is sovereign over all things may lead us into times and contexts that are deeply painful.”

So what is God’s purpose in our suffering? Why does God sometimes lead us away from the green pastures and still waters to call us instead to follow him into deep and dark valleys (Psalm 23)? These were questions that were much on my mind in the days, weeks, and months following the Lord’s decision to call my son to himself.

God Left Us Sonless

Nick, age 20, was at seminary and taking a break from his studies to play a game with a group of his friends when, in an instant, his heart stopped, his body fell to the ground, and his soul went to heaven. His friends tried to revive him, a passing doctor tried to revive him, responding paramedics and emergency-room doctors tried to revive him. But it was to no avail. God had called him home. And since God had summoned him to heaven, there was no doctor, no medication, and no procedure that could keep my son here on earth.

I don’t know why God determined that Nick would live so short a life, why he would leave this world with so little accomplished and so much left undone. I don’t know why God determined to leave Aileen and me sonless, Abby and Michaela brotherless, Ryn fiancéless and ultimately husbandless. I don’t know why God did it — why God exercised his sovereignty in taking away a young man who was so dearly loved, who was so committed to serving Jesus, and who had so much promise. But I don’t need to know, for, as Moses said, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

While I don’t know why God did it, I am already beginning to understand how God is using it.

Lamentation Without Resentment

On the streets of Madrid, a machine shakes the orange trees to cause them to release their fruit. It shakes them violently, shakes them so hard that it almost looks as if the branches must snap, as if the trunk must splinter, as if the entire tree must be uprooted. Yet this is the way it must be done, for the delicious fruit is connected tightly to the inedible branches. And the moment the machine has collected the fruit, I observe, it ceases its shaking, it furls up its net, it withdraws its arms, and it backs away, leaving the tree healthy and well, prepared to bear yet another harvest.

And just like that machine shook the orange tree, Nick’s death has shaken me and shaken my family and shaken my church and shaken Nick’s friends and shaken his school — shaken us to our very core. Yet this shaking, though it has been violent and exceedingly painful, has not caused us to break. We have raised our voices in lamentation, but never in rebellion. We have raised hands of worship, but never fists of rage. We have asked questions, but have never expressed resentment.

“God does not mean to harm us when he shakes us, but simply to release the fruit.”

To the contrary, as I look at those who love Nick most, I see them displaying fresh evidences of God’s grace. I see them growing in love for God, in the joy of their salvation, in the peace of the gospel, in their patience with God’s purposes, in kindness toward others, in the goodness of personal holiness, in faithfulness to all God has called them to, in gentleness with other people’s sins and foibles, and in that rare, blessed virtue of self-control. I see them bearing the precious fruit of the Spirit as never before (Galatians 5:22–23).

Shaken to Bear Fruit

Just as the fruit of the tree clings tightly to the branch, the evil within us clings tightly to the good, the vices to the virtues, the immoral to the upright. God does not mean to harm us when he shakes us, but simply to release the fruit — to do what is necessary to separate what is earthly from what is heavenly, what dishonors him from what delights his heart.

As I consider my wife, as I consider my girls, as I consider Nick’s precious fiancée, as I consider his friends and fellow church members, I see that they have been deeply shaken by his death — shaken by God’s sovereign hand. But I see as well that they have been shaken for a beautiful purpose. They have been shaken to bear fruit.