Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                 Chapter Nine

                                                                                                                                              Verses 15-27

The Pharisees began their investigation of Jesus  by asking the healed man how he had received his sight. The man replied with the simple truth that he had obeyed Jesus, and he had been healed.

This man's answer provoked an argument among the Pharisees. Some of them knew that only God could perform miracles, but others held to a very strict interpretation of the Sabbath law. Those who held to a strict interpretation of the law, and who also invented their own commandments, did so because that condition gave them complete control over the people. The Pharisees were mostly interested in protecting their own authority, not God's. They instinctively realized that a God of love and compassion that Jesus preached would tend to liberate the people from their own overbearing rule.

The Pharisees then asked the healed man his opinion of who Jesus was. The man replied that he believed Jesus was a prophet.

The Pharisees did not like this answer because if Jesus were a prophet then He had to have come from God. The Pharisees then got a new idea that they hoped would prove that Jesus was not from God. They assumed that some people had hatched a plot to hide the blind man, and they had presented to them a man who was similar in stature to the blind man who had eyes and could see, and who would claim that he was the blind man whom Jesus healed. So they called his parents to testify if this man was the same man as their son because everyone knew that Jesus had healed their son. His parents answered that they knew that the healed man was their son and that he had been healed of blindness. But his parents claimed that they knew nothing about how he was healed, and they were anxious to put the focus of the investigation back onto their son. His parents wanted no connection of themselves to Jesus because they were afraid that the Pharisees would put them out of the synagogue. They believed that the power of the Pharisees to excommunicate them was tantamount to being rejected by God.

The Pharisees then told the healed man that he should praise God and reject Jesus as being a mere sinner. These Pharisees had forgotten that when Jesus had charged them to name one sin that He had committed, the Holy Spirit had caused them to be silent. John 8:46. These Pharisees were desperate to show the people that Jesus had to be a sinner because the love and compassion that Jesus demonstrated to individuals made them feel that they were important to God, and the Pharisees knew that that idea would lessen the power of the Pharisees over the people.

The healed man answered the Pharisees that he did not know whether Jesus was a sinner or not, but he did know that Jesus had healed him. This man was becoming less afraid of the Pharisees.

The Pharisees did not like the fact that this man would not submit to their judgment that Jesus was a sinner. He still clung to his gratitude that Jesus had healed him. So the Pharisees resorted to another tactic that investigators often use to try to prove whatever case that they are trying to make. They instructed the man to give them a detailed description of how Jesus had healed him hoping they could find some inconsistency in the man's testimony that would provide evidence that Jesus had done something wrong.

The healed man became bolder in his answer to them. He told them that he had already given them a detailed description of how Jesus had healed him, but they had not listened to him. He asked them why they wanted to hear his description again. Did they want to become Jesus' disciples? He was evidently being a little sarcastic.