(Continued from Part 1, of course)

With the first half of His sentence in reply, Jesus completely voids the erroneous teaching that birth defects are the direct cause of the parents’ sin or the in utero behavior of the child himself, i.e., that bad things only happen to bad people: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus begins. Now, while the first half of His sentence was enough to stun His disciples, the latter half must have blown their minds: “but that the works of God should be revealed in him”. Hold on there! Not only was this man’s blindness not caused by sin, but he’s been blind from birth by divine design?

I don’t think that we can establish a doctrine that every tragedy that strikes our lives is purposely authored by the Almighty, but seemingly bad things working out to God’s glory and our benefit is not a foreign concept to the Scriptures or to the experience of believers. Consider Joseph, the son of Jacob/Israel. Looking back on his journey that began with his brothers throwing him into a pit, onto slavery, through prison, and eventually to the Egyptian government, he told his brothers, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.” (Gen. 50:20). Again, I’m no Hebrew scholar, but this passage seems to indicate NOT that God was able to rescue things after the fact, but that God supervised the whole journey to accomplish His purposes. Consider the ministry of Joni Eareckson Tada. Read and ponder Acts 2:23.

Hey, look! We’ve made it though 3 verses. These are Bible bites, after all. Next time we’ll take on John 9:4-7.