Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.
Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind - If ye wanted light to discern My claims, and only waited to receive it,
$ Ye should have no sin - none of the guilt of shutting out the light.
But now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth - Your claim to possess light, while rejecting Me, is that which seals you up in the guilt of unbelief.
Remarks:
(1) Although the resurrection of Lazarus was beyond all doubt the greatest of our Lord's miracles, there is one particular in which the miracle of this chapter is even more marvelous. In all our Lord's miracles of healing, and even in the resurrection of the dead, He did but restore what had been already in use by the objects of His power and grace-seeing, hearing, walking, living. But here is one to whom vision is not restored, but for the first time imparted. And though we are not to suppose that the organ of sight was thou created-for such "works were finished from the creation of the world" - though the organ was doubtless there from his mother's womb, it had never been capable of action until now, that he was "of age;" and thus, by an act of marvelous power, this man for the first time beheld the light of heaven, and from that time forth saw as other men-insomuch that his neighbours would hardly believe that he was the same man whom they had known as the Blind Beggar, and, as already remarked, it needed his own testimony to put the fact beyond all question. And what is most worthy of notice, it is just in the record of these two greatest of all our Lord's miracles that the details are the fullest-so full, and embracing so many minute yet vivid particulars, that it is impossible to doubt that we have them from the very parties concerned; the beloved Evangelist himself being doubtless present wherever his Lord was in the action of this chapter, while for the rest-as already observed-he was indebted, we can hardly doubt, to the newly gained disciple himself, whose eyes the Lord had doubly opened.
(2) That all our Lord's beneficent miracles on the bodies of men were designed to illustrate analogous and higher operations on the souls of men, which it was Hie errand and is His office to perform, has been once and again observed, see the notes at Matthew 4:12-25, Remark 5, at the close of that section. But nowhere is this more grandly seen than at the beginning and end of this chapter. Before anything was done to this blind beggar-while the disciples were questioning our Lord as to the cause of the poor man's misfortune, and as soon as He had explained that the primary intention of it was to display in him the works of God which He had come to do, and must do while it was day-Jesus said, "As long as I am in the world, I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD;" and then it was that, to illustrate that office of His, He miraculously opened this man's eyes. And at the close of the chapter, recurring, in presence of enemies, to the opening of the man's eyes, He testified, "For judgment came I into this world, that they which see not might see," on the one hand; or-as He afterward expressed it from His glory in the heavens to Saul of Tarsus, when sending him as a preacher to the Gentiles - "to open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God" (Acts 26:18): "and," on the other hand, "that they which see might be made blind." Thus, then, let us learn to read in every record of Christ's miracles on the body assurances and illustrations of His power and grace in the higher sphere of the soul.
(3) While in the parents of this youth we have a lively illustration of the terrors of ghostly authority-in inspiring which the priests of the Church of Rome have diabolically improved upon the Jewish ecclesiastics-we have in the youth himself a beautiful illustration of the courage which a conscious experience of divine power and grace inspires, of the strength which the exercise of that courage in trying circumstances imparts, and of the wisdom-above their own-which, in fulfillment of express promise, the Lord has so often from that time to this communicated to His disciples when standing before rulers for His name's sake. See the notes at Matthew 10:19-20.
(4) The accession of this healed man to the ranks of genuine discipleship is one, and not the least instructive, of the many cases of Christ found without seeking, referred to on Matthew 13:44; Matthew 13:46, Remark 1 at the close of that section. Not like blind Bartimeus did this man cry after Jesus; but, "as Jesus passed by (compare Ezekiel 16:6; Ezekiel 16:8), He saw "this beggar, who had been blind from his birth" - doubtless with that special look with which He saw Zaccheus (Luke 19:5), because His eye affected His heart, and He proceeded to heal him. Not like the other blind man did He first recognize in Jesus "the Son of David;" nor does it appear whether He had even heard of Him before. Certain it is that the first motion was not in the man, or any of his relatives or neighbours, toward Jesus, but in Jesus toward Him. And thus is there a large class, of whom it is said, "I am found of them that sought Me not; I am made manifest unto them that asked not after Me."
(5) Was ever virulent determination not to believe on any evidence, and willful resistance of ocular demonstration, more signally manifested than in those rulers of the Jews, who, after vainly endeavouring to browbeat this poor unbefriended youth, scornfully expelled him from the synagogue, because he refused to lie before God, and repudiate and malign his unknown Benefactor? But this spirit has not ceased; nor is it to be doubted that, whenever occasions arise for the display of it, the hatred of the world to Christ, in His truth and people, will be found as virulent as it has ever been (John 15:19; Galatians 4:29).