Sayings of Jesus: “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”

In John chapter 9, from where this quotation comes (it’s not strictly a “saying of Jesus” but it certainly leads to some!), we find the story of a man born blind whom Jesus heals. It’s the longest and most extensively developed healing story in any of the Gospels. That requires some clarification: the actual healing takes up only a handful of verses, whereas the full story and its aftermath occupy 41 verses—the whole chapter.

Obviously we can’t reproduce the whole chapter here, nor offer a commentary on it, though there are many fascinating things to say, theologically. It would make a very cool sermon!

Here is the context for our headline statement. As [Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.’

In the preceding final verse of chapter 8 (remember there were no chapter breaks in the original), we see that Jesus has just left the temple area. The blind man may well have been positioned nearby, seeking alms, since worshippers coming and going were more likely to think charitably (see, e.g., Acts 3:2).        

The disciples’ question reflects a common assumption of the day—a 'cause-and-effect’ relationship between someone’s sin and adverse consequences in life. Their question is not so much whether there is a connection (they presume that) but whose fault it is. As David Runcorn says, ‘someone, somewhere, must have sinned’!  

Where did this assumption come from? There is no single Old Testament text driving their assumption. However, several passages in the Pentateuch (first five books) could easily have contributed to it. Exodus 20:5–6 (and Deut 5:9–10) speak of God “punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Similarly, Exodus 34:6–7 (and Numbers 14:18): God “does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” In relation to consequences flowing as punishment for one’s own sin, Deuteronomy 28 contains a whole catalogue. Particularly striking is “The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind … you will grope about like a blind person in the dark” (vv.28–29). Other biblical precedents for a child suffering for a parent’s sins can be seen in 2 Samuel 12 (the death of David’s child by Bathsheba) and 1 Kings 14 (Jeroboam’s child dying).

And yet—things are not so clear-cut.

As we often see (much as we may prefer not to see it as evangelicals who want to assume that the Bible as God’s Word always speaks with one clear, consistent voice throughout), in the very same part of the OT it says: “Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16). Similarly, Ezekiel 18:20: “The child will not share the guilt of the parent.” Jeremiah 31:29–30 makes the same point, by way of metaphor.

Perhaps the most sustained OT account emphatically refuting this theological assumption—that bad things happen to people because of their sin, angering God and causing him to bring judgement in this life—is the book of Job. In fact, Job’s “friends” in the story are effectively the disciples of John 9. The story of Job is offered to us less as an historical account of an actual person (though, if he were, it would be set at or before the time of Abraham) than as parable-like wisdom literature, adjudicating on this very point in the John 9 story.   

Returning to our story, Jesus rejects both alternatives the disciples offer: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus. Not meaning that neither he nor his parents had ever sinned in life, but that neither the man’s sins nor his parents’ sins caused this blindness.

That is the most important theological takeaway for us in the dialogue. There is no direct causal link here—nothing for which to blame oneself or someone else, in terms of fault attributable to things people have done or not done.

This is so important. We’ve perhaps all experienced friends or family who have been wracked with guilt and regret for that same reason: perhaps through believing (or worse, being accused) that it was their sin, or their lack of faith, that caused a loved one to die or not receive healing.            

Jesus’ next statement is arguably more problematic, though: “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” It would be easy to read this as God “making it happen” (causing the man to be born blind and have to live with blindness from birth to adulthood—we don’t know how old he was) simply so that Jesus could rock up on this particular day and do a miracle to enhance his messianic credentials. Really? Is that how God works? I guess some would say so—who are we, to question his ways, after all?  

It’s easy to stop reading and start questioning at this point. But if we read on (context is always everything!), a slightly different take may be available to us.

Jesus says, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” It’s easy to read these sentences as stand-alone and otherwise unrelated truths. Easy especially to detach the last one (“I am the light of the world”).

But what if we read what Jesus says here within the story—within what’s happening in the story? What if “this happened …” means “us encountering this man, here, today, as we left the temple grounds, happened …”? God did not cause the blindness, but he did enable the encounter.    

What if Jesus is saying (in effect), “Your ‘theology’ is misreading what the God of Israel is like—he doesn’t do that to people. He’s not a capricious pagan deity. I’m afraid that in this world, bad things do happen, even to good people. When we come across these consequences of living in a troubled world, we must not shrug our shoulders, give the man some alms, and move on; we must ‘do the works of him who sent me’—we must bring healing. ‘I am the light of the world’ and so must my followers be also. This man has been living in darkness—we must take this opportunity to do ‘the Father’s works’ and bring light into his world.”   

You may think this is unduly creative. However, the phrase “this happened” isn’t actually in the Greek. Nor did the earliest manuscripts contain our sentence punctuation, so it’s entirely possible to punctuate it—and hence to read its meaning—as follows: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. But so that the works of God might be displayed in him, as long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.”   

I’ve commented before on folk-theology-sourced Christian catchphrases such as “God will never give you more than you can handle” and how, at first blush, this sounds like a positive: good on God, for limiting the bad stuff that he sends us in life. But of course, it’s nothing like that, if we think about it for a nanosecond. The higher our personal tolerance for bad stuff, the higher the threshold before God’s limiting the bad stuff cuts in. More problematically, what’s it saying about the nature and character of God (what he’s like) and how he engages in this world? It’s a Trojan Horse for a Calvinist doctrine—that God controls everything that happens in the universe to the most minute degree, including being the cause of all of the bad things that come into our lives; he is the one who sends them.

I see here some equivalence to the debate underlying our story in John chapter 9. Many of our debates about doctrine are actually debates about what God is like. Many of them revolve around which Scriptures we primarily look to as our points of reference for what God is like (and so too, what our doctrines should be). This, I think, is one of those debates.

There’s so much more that’s interesting in the story that we could bring out, but that will have to wait for another day.

One last thought to throw in. Some Pharisees meet the healed man and rather than being overjoyed about the healing, they get grumpy about the fact it happened on the Sabbath. Not so much, perhaps, that the healing took place (was it or wasn’t it “working” by definition?) but the manner in which Jesus did it. Somewhat theatrically—we don’t know why, but perhaps deliberately provocatively, bearing in mind the Pharisees’ reaction—he spits on the ground, makes a mud patty, and puts it on the man’s eyes. “Yuk,” you quite rightly say.

Two points to close:

One, I suggest we do not make this paradigmatic (as a “how to”) for charismatic healing ministry (though I wouldn’t be surprised to see some making it into that—they’re always on the lookout for a winning formula).

Two, what triggered the Pharisees’ upset was perhaps the method Jesus used. Kneading dough was among the 39 classes of work later codified as forbidden on the Sabbath in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2; mixing the mud could therefore be construed as analogous to kneading.

Their anger is a classic example of legalistic religious types missing the theological wood for the trees. A man who had been blind from birth can suddenly see . . . and they're arguing about the mud! No wonder Jesus had to say, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” And still less did God make it for his own benefit—to get his own way on a piece of minutiae, to make a point.