Biblion Bible Commentary
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For Judgment I Came
John 9:35-41
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and finding him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” · WEB
He goes looking for the man they threw out, and the chapter ends on who is actually blind.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and finding him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of God?" John 9:35.
The first clause is the tenderness of the chapter. He hears what happened and goes looking — the verb is deliberate, finding him, which means a search. A man has just lost everything for defending someone he has never seen, and the someone comes to find him.
And it is worth noticing that this is the first time they have met since the mud. He has been questioned four times, abandoned by his parents and expelled, all without a word of support from the man who healed him. The support arrives, and it arrives afterward.
"Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?" John 9:36.
The answer is exactly in character. He does not know who the Son of God is and says so, and his response to ignorance is to ask so that he can believe. Every other person in this chapter who did not know something used it as a reason to reject.
"You have both seen him, and it is he who speaks with you" John 9:37.
The disclosure is given to a beggar in the street, as the disclosure at the well was given to a Samaritan woman John 4:26 — and you have seen him is the sentence a man blind from birth has waited his whole life to have said to him.
He said, "Lord, I believe!" and he worshiped him John 9:38.
The progression is complete: a man called Jesus John 9:11, then a prophet John 9:17, then from God John 9:33, and now this. Every step was taken under pressure and each one cost him more.
"I came into this world for judgment, that those who don't see may see; and that those who see may become blind" John 9:39.
The sentence sits oddly beside the promise that he did not come to judge the world John 3:17, and the third chapter has already explained how both are true. Judgment here is not a sentence handed down but an exposure — light arrives, and what people do with it sorts them. The chapter has just shown it happening: the same mud produced a worshiper and a committee.
The two clauses are also exact about who moves. The blind see; those who see become blind, which is a change of state rather than a starting condition. Nobody in this chapter was made blind by God. Some of them insisted they could see.
Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things, and said to him, "Are we also blind?" John 9:40.
The question is asked in indignation and expects a no. It is also, if they had known it, the most hopeful thing anyone in their party says.
"If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.' Therefore your sin remains" John 9:41.
The answer is the chapter's verdict and it turns entirely on the claim to sight. Blindness is not the sin — a man who cannot see is not culpable, which is exactly what verse three said about the beggar. What holds the guilt in place is the assertion that no help is needed.
A man who says one thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see has been given everything. Men who say we see have asked for nothing, and the account says their sin remains — the abiding verb, used of the thing they will not put down.
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