Sometimes people say cruel things. As if living with a long term disability is not hard enough, sometimes people will say that the disability must be as a result of some unconfessed sin. If you could just dig deep enough and find it and confess it, all would be well. How cruel to say such a thing, to add an extra burden to an already painful life.
In our reading from John 9 we see how Jesus responds to such a suggestion. There is a man born blind who is sitting outside the temple to beg. He’s totally dependent on the kindness of others to survive. Day after day he sat there, and how many times did he hear cruel words? He felt the weight of people’s judgment. Whilst still within earshot, the disciples say those cruel words. The blind beggar had heard them too many times “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
How cruel! But it made the people feel better. If they could lay the blame somewhere for this man’s disability, then they could know, if they lived good lives it wouldn’t happen to them. It’s a crazy question on the mouths of Jewish men, for the man who is born blind would have had to have sinned in his mother’s womb. Granted, king David does confess to being sinful from the womb (psalm 51), but David was surely just affirming the fact that all of us are affected by the sin of Adam, we are born rebels against God. And yet despite this admission, David was not born with a disability. How crazy to suggest that it was this man who sinned, and how cruel to suggest it was the parents.
Jesus wonderfully clears things up with a gentle but clear correction. “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents” – what a relief! How kind of our saviour is to clear this up. He’s not saying that sickness is never the result of sin, but He is saying that not every sickness or disability is connected to a particular sin. There is another reason. We could say it’s because we live in a broken world and all people are affected in different ways, but that’s not where Jesus goes. Wonderfully Jesus tells us this man was born blind so that “the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3).
This is such good news, there is purpose in disability. God is not punishing this man for his sin or his parents’ sin. Rather, this man has a purpose; “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it. Whether we are disabled or able bodied, our purpose is to glorify God with our lives. That’s something we can do no matter what our circumstances. God often uses the weak things of the world to shame the wise. Joni Earekson Tada has suffered with quadriplegia for over 50 years, but she has helped point many others to the sufficiency of God’s grace. She says she wants to bring her wheelchair to heaven and then she will say to Jesus:
“Jesus, do you see that wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.”
Here is someone who has allowed the works of God to be displayed in her life through her suffering. What about the man born blind? Wonderfully Jesus had another way for the works of God to be displayed in him, he was going to open his eyes! Here Jesus gives a foretaste of how the new creation will be, when there will be total restoration for all who belong to Jesus. But even in his life on earth, this man went on to glorify God by pointing to what Jesus had done for him in opening his eyes.
Dear Christian friend, are you suffering? Will you hear Jesus wonderful words, that your suffering is not necessarily the result of your sin or your parents’ sin. You don’t need to go digging up the past, for if you have turned to Jesus, He has lifted all your sin and forgiven you as far as the east is from the west and there is no condemnation for you (Romans 8:1). Will you see rather that God has good works to do in you, whatever your situation you can glorify God, and because of Jesus’ wonderful work on the cross, you can enjoy God forever.
Light and Momentary Troubles 
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