Outward pains and calamities are so many tokens and types of inward and spiritual evils, and Christ curing them by His touch gives us His own sure token of His will and power to cure all the diseases of our souls.
I. Blindness, for example we perceive at once what evil condition of the heart that represents. "Every one that doeth evil hateth the light," and shutteth his eyes against it, until at last he loses even the power of seeing. Such was the condition outwardly of the blind man, who sat and begged at the Temple gate, when Jesus passed by and made clay of the spittle, and anointed his eyes with the clay, and bade him wash in the pool of Siloam, and he went and washed and came seeing. In like manner, when heathens, blind and ignorant persons, are wandering in the darkness of this world, our blessed Redeemer applies Himself to their souls by ways which seem to the unbelieving mean and ordinary, as He made clay of the spittle, and anointed the man's eyes with the clay; and He sends them to the pool of Siloam, the laver of regeneration in baptism, and they receive inward sight, grace to see and to choose their duty.
II. So the sad helplessness, the inward palsy, of habitual and even deadly sin, is to be cured in one way, and in one way only. The man must be brought to Jesus Christ by the charitable prayers and help of kind friends, or Christ of His own mercy must come in His power where the man lies; and he not hindering the gracious work by unbelief, the Lord will say unto him, "Thy sins be forgiven thee: take up thy bed and walk." He will justify the sinner by His grace, begun in baptism or renewed in penitence, and the sinner forgiven will do the works of one in spiritual health.
III. As, then, oppressed, diseased persons in those days might know that our Lord was really come, by the healing which He bestowed on the bodies of the afflicted, so are we now to assure ourselves more and more that He is our only Saviour, our only way to happiness, by the help and comfort which He is sure to give us, if we draw nearer to Him continually in the keeping of His commandments. As faith was the condition of healing then, so is it the condition of grace now.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. viii., p. 262.
Reference: Luke 6:20-49. W. Hanna, Our Lord's Life on Earth,p. 161.