John 9:6-12 - How and who?

9:6

This isn’t the only instance of Jesus using spit in healing blindness (Mark 7:33; 8:22-25). We may recoil at this, but if you had been blind all your life and then were healed you would not be overly concerned about the methodology used. The significance of Jesus making mud is that this counted as work and this was the Sabbath. So, horror of horrors, Jesus had done “work” on the Sabbath. Note that this was purely man’s invention of the law, not God’s. We need to be very careful about building our own edifices on top of God’s ways.

9:7-9

Jesus told the man to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. This pool was part of the water system developed by Hezekiah. The man did as he was told and when he had finished was able to see. His whole demeanour and life was now completely different and people noticed. When God does a real work in our lives it has an outward effect and people will see the difference. In fact some were so surprised by the change that they thought they must be mistaken and that it wasn’t actually the same man they were used to seeing beg. When we see someone in a different context to that in which we are used to seeing them we can easily be unsure about whether or not we do actually recognise them.

9:10-12

The man had insisted that it was really him. So the next natural question was “how then can you see”? When people see a God produced change in us they will wonder why and how, we need to be ready to give an explanation.

At this stage the man had not seen Jesus, so just knew Him by name, for he had not been enabled to see until after he had washed in the Pool of Siloam. This also meant that he couldn’t tell them where Jesus was.