Recently I was reading in John chapter 9 about the man that Jesus healed who was blind from birth. Several things hit me as I read. The disciples echoed in their question to Christ a common philosophy of that culture. “Rabbi, who sinned: this man, or his parents?” It was a common thought practice in that day to think that anyone who had an infirmity or was born with a defect was cursed by God because of sin committed either by the parents or the person who was dealing with the infirmity.
Christ flat out refutes this thought process when He says that “neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” Without going down a theological rabbit trail I want to state that this does not mean that God made this man blind. Very briefly stated, God put in place and sustains laws that direct all of creation; from the laws of physics that control the flow of the universe, its galaxies and solar systems down to the processes that make our bodies work, including the process of procreation. But because of sin all of creation was cursed including the processes of procreation things don’t always go perfectly because of that fallen state. Hence, we have birth defects, disease, illnesses, wars, conflicts, hatred, etc.
One of the key points of Christ’s ministry on earth was to call us back to the original priority of life; the original purpose and point of creation. We were created for community—community with our Creator and community with each other. Because we are fallen creatures that live in a fallen world we have been twisted by our own sin nature into something we were not originally designed to be and Christ was and is calling us to the only means in which we can be untwisted and set back to our original state.
Back to the blind man, I believe that the reason Christ spat onto the ground and made clay to anoint the eyes of the man who had been born blind was to symbolize this movement back to the original purpose of creation. In Genesis three words are used for the creative acts described in chapters 1 and 2: bara, asah, and yatsar. Yatsar is the one that interests me in this case, because it is the kind of word that would have been used of a clay pot or vase being made, so much so in fact that it was almost synonymous with a potter forming a clay vessel. The other words used to describe creation in the first two chapters of Genesis are words that each show a more intimate undertaking. “In the beginning God created (bara) the heavens and the earth.” This is the act of ex nihilio, which is Latin for creating something out of nothing; not taking a lump of clay, and making a dish, but actually causing the clay to exist without the use of previously existing material. Asah, for the sake of discussion, is used to explain making something out of existing material, but not on the intricate and intimate level that is understood in the use of the word yatsar. Yatsar, gives the idea that a Master Craftsman is putting the effort and skill that only He can put into the creating or forming of His master creation—His (as some would call it) signature piece. That is what we are being told in Genesis 2:7 when it says, “And the LORD God formed (yatsar) man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being” (NKJV). He intimately and personally formed man and made mankind His image bearer. This is what I think Christ was symbolizing with the clay with which He healed the man’s eyes, much the same way that a potter would fix a pot if it cracked while on the wheel. He could have just as easily said “be healed”; in fact He had on other occasions. I think Christ was giving the people around Him an opportunity to be reminded of the story of creation and to bring their minds back to the original purpose of creation: an intimate relationship with their Creator. This brings up an interesting contrast in the passage.
Christ causes the blind to see, and this blind man is cast out of the synagogue by “the Jews”, which is John’s term for the Pharisees; who, by the way, claim to be the only ones who can properly see scripture and interpret it. Jesus gives sight to those that do not have it and those that claim to have it can’t see, because they refuse to, they don’t even see that it is the promised Messiah right in front of them.
The same thing is happening today. As Americans, even our poorest are rich compared to the poor in other countries. I am not condoning or belittling the problems of homelessness and destitution in America; we are just as blind to our social and spiritual problems in America and to the social and spiritual problems of the world as those Pharisees were blind to the Messianic prophecies being fulfilled in front of their eyes. We send billions of dollars in aid and money to earthquake victims because it is a sudden disaster, and the aid we send is a good thing that is needed, but there are other needs being left out because they aren’t new and in America we throw away or tune out anything that is old or “is so last year”.
JESUSpolitik is an organization that I’m excited about. JESUSpolitik is an international nonprofit that helps indigenous missionaries in India and Mozambique to reach their own people. JESUSpolitik connects these missionaries to other human rights and social service organizations as well as missions groups who have a heart for the same people.
JESUSpolitik cares about people’s hearts, not just about raising funds and awareness. JESUSpolitik offers creative ways that anyone can get involved using their talents and resources to directly help needy people being reached by JESUSpolitik projects. You can check out some of the ways people have gotten involved on JESUSpolitik.com’s “Activism Stories” page.
“We believe that no matter what your interests, talents, or resources are – you can do something to help people. Even if you don’t think you’ve been given very much to work with, you can do something to help people. We’ll show you how,” says Melissa Davis of JESUSpolitik.
JESUSpolitik has 2 projects overseas – the Love Maputo Project and the Hope For India Project.
In Maputo, Mozambique “more than half of the population is estimated to be under the age of eighteen” (Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children: Republic of Mozambique (http://www.gvnet.com/streetchildren/Mozambique.htm). The streets are crowded with children in Maputo. Many of these children are homeless. This leaves them vulnerable to sexual molestation, bonded labor, prostitution, drug trafficking, starvation, AIDS and other horrors.
JESUSpolitik’s Love Maputo Project is reaching out to these children. The Love Maputo Project is the collaboration of 2 organizations– Masana and The Kunhymela House. Project workers are reaching approximately 350 children a year. Workers bring children off the streets, provide education, and teach income-earning skills so they don’t have to turn to prostitution, drug running or theft to survive. Project workers feed and clothe the children, offer medical care, and introduce them to Jesus Christ. Children are reunited with family or placed in a safe home so they get appropriate care.
Another project of JESUSpolitik is The Hope for India Project. Project workers conduct medical camps, providing needy people with check-ups, medicine, counseling, HIV/AIDS education and prayer. An orphanage is operated for children whose parents died of HIV/AIDS, as well as for physically handicapped children. Widows are also being helped by this project, with home visits, food, clothing, blankets, medicines and hygiene products. The Gospel is shared as well. Workers have established 7 congregations in Andhra Pradesh state. 90% of the Hope for India Project’s evangelistic work is done throughout Hindu and tribal peoples.
Christ came to earth to rescue us from our own sin nature and pay the debt that we could never repay. His parting command to us was to go out and make disciples. The word translated into “make” means that while we are going we should be in the continual process of making disciples and it was not a vocational call—it was a call to ministry. We are all called to be ministers of Christ. Christ is the title name for Messiah and the word Christian really means little messiahs, so as Christians we should be in the continual process of being Christ to everyone we come across in our day-to-day life and we are called to not be blind to any of it; not what is in our own back yard, and not what is going on over on the other side of the world. Christ fed the five thousand and then He taught them the original meaning and purpose of the Law. He took care of their physical needs so they could have their spiritual needs taken care of. Take I John 3:16-19 for instance; if we have in abundance and don’t give to those in need we can’t have the love of God in us. Also look at James 2:14-20. Essentially it is saying that if you can give and don’t, you’re just as big of a hypocrite as those Pharisees who kicked that man who was blind in John 9 out of the synagogue because they didn’t want to admit that Jesus was the Messiah that they had been waiting for. Are you a Christian in name or are you a Christian in action? To quote James “You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (NKJV).
On JESUSpolitik.com’s “Do Something” page, you’ll find categories of talents and interests with applicable ways of how you can use them to help. You can change a person’s future from bad to good. Read activism stories of people that are getting involved. Get inspired by testimonies of how the Lord utilizes our faithfulness to glorify Him with what we’ve been given.
Christ flat out refutes this thought process when He says that “neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” Without going down a theological rabbit trail I want to state that this does not mean that God made this man blind. Very briefly stated, God put in place and sustains laws that direct all of creation; from the laws of physics that control the flow of the universe, its galaxies and solar systems down to the processes that make our bodies work, including the process of procreation. But because of sin all of creation was cursed including the processes of procreation things don’t always go perfectly because of that fallen state. Hence, we have birth defects, disease, illnesses, wars, conflicts, hatred, etc.
One of the key points of Christ’s ministry on earth was to call us back to the original priority of life; the original purpose and point of creation. We were created for community—community with our Creator and community with each other. Because we are fallen creatures that live in a fallen world we have been twisted by our own sin nature into something we were not originally designed to be and Christ was and is calling us to the only means in which we can be untwisted and set back to our original state.
Back to the blind man, I believe that the reason Christ spat onto the ground and made clay to anoint the eyes of the man who had been born blind was to symbolize this movement back to the original purpose of creation. In Genesis three words are used for the creative acts described in chapters 1 and 2: bara, asah, and yatsar. Yatsar is the one that interests me in this case, because it is the kind of word that would have been used of a clay pot or vase being made, so much so in fact that it was almost synonymous with a potter forming a clay vessel. The other words used to describe creation in the first two chapters of Genesis are words that each show a more intimate undertaking. “In the beginning God created (bara) the heavens and the earth.” This is the act of ex nihilio, which is Latin for creating something out of nothing; not taking a lump of clay, and making a dish, but actually causing the clay to exist without the use of previously existing material. Asah, for the sake of discussion, is used to explain making something out of existing material, but not on the intricate and intimate level that is understood in the use of the word yatsar. Yatsar, gives the idea that a Master Craftsman is putting the effort and skill that only He can put into the creating or forming of His master creation—His (as some would call it) signature piece. That is what we are being told in Genesis 2:7 when it says, “And the LORD God formed (yatsar) man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being” (NKJV). He intimately and personally formed man and made mankind His image bearer. This is what I think Christ was symbolizing with the clay with which He healed the man’s eyes, much the same way that a potter would fix a pot if it cracked while on the wheel. He could have just as easily said “be healed”; in fact He had on other occasions. I think Christ was giving the people around Him an opportunity to be reminded of the story of creation and to bring their minds back to the original purpose of creation: an intimate relationship with their Creator. This brings up an interesting contrast in the passage.
Christ causes the blind to see, and this blind man is cast out of the synagogue by “the Jews”, which is John’s term for the Pharisees; who, by the way, claim to be the only ones who can properly see scripture and interpret it. Jesus gives sight to those that do not have it and those that claim to have it can’t see, because they refuse to, they don’t even see that it is the promised Messiah right in front of them.
The same thing is happening today. As Americans, even our poorest are rich compared to the poor in other countries. I am not condoning or belittling the problems of homelessness and destitution in America; we are just as blind to our social and spiritual problems in America and to the social and spiritual problems of the world as those Pharisees were blind to the Messianic prophecies being fulfilled in front of their eyes. We send billions of dollars in aid and money to earthquake victims because it is a sudden disaster, and the aid we send is a good thing that is needed, but there are other needs being left out because they aren’t new and in America we throw away or tune out anything that is old or “is so last year”.
JESUSpolitik is an organization that I’m excited about. JESUSpolitik is an international nonprofit that helps indigenous missionaries in India and Mozambique to reach their own people. JESUSpolitik connects these missionaries to other human rights and social service organizations as well as missions groups who have a heart for the same people.
JESUSpolitik cares about people’s hearts, not just about raising funds and awareness. JESUSpolitik offers creative ways that anyone can get involved using their talents and resources to directly help needy people being reached by JESUSpolitik projects. You can check out some of the ways people have gotten involved on JESUSpolitik.com’s “Activism Stories” page.
“We believe that no matter what your interests, talents, or resources are – you can do something to help people. Even if you don’t think you’ve been given very much to work with, you can do something to help people. We’ll show you how,” says Melissa Davis of JESUSpolitik.
JESUSpolitik has 2 projects overseas – the Love Maputo Project and the Hope For India Project.
In Maputo, Mozambique “more than half of the population is estimated to be under the age of eighteen” (Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children: Republic of Mozambique (http://www.gvnet.com/streetchildren/Mozambique.htm). The streets are crowded with children in Maputo. Many of these children are homeless. This leaves them vulnerable to sexual molestation, bonded labor, prostitution, drug trafficking, starvation, AIDS and other horrors.
JESUSpolitik’s Love Maputo Project is reaching out to these children. The Love Maputo Project is the collaboration of 2 organizations– Masana and The Kunhymela House. Project workers are reaching approximately 350 children a year. Workers bring children off the streets, provide education, and teach income-earning skills so they don’t have to turn to prostitution, drug running or theft to survive. Project workers feed and clothe the children, offer medical care, and introduce them to Jesus Christ. Children are reunited with family or placed in a safe home so they get appropriate care.
Another project of JESUSpolitik is The Hope for India Project. Project workers conduct medical camps, providing needy people with check-ups, medicine, counseling, HIV/AIDS education and prayer. An orphanage is operated for children whose parents died of HIV/AIDS, as well as for physically handicapped children. Widows are also being helped by this project, with home visits, food, clothing, blankets, medicines and hygiene products. The Gospel is shared as well. Workers have established 7 congregations in Andhra Pradesh state. 90% of the Hope for India Project’s evangelistic work is done throughout Hindu and tribal peoples.
Christ came to earth to rescue us from our own sin nature and pay the debt that we could never repay. His parting command to us was to go out and make disciples. The word translated into “make” means that while we are going we should be in the continual process of making disciples and it was not a vocational call—it was a call to ministry. We are all called to be ministers of Christ. Christ is the title name for Messiah and the word Christian really means little messiahs, so as Christians we should be in the continual process of being Christ to everyone we come across in our day-to-day life and we are called to not be blind to any of it; not what is in our own back yard, and not what is going on over on the other side of the world. Christ fed the five thousand and then He taught them the original meaning and purpose of the Law. He took care of their physical needs so they could have their spiritual needs taken care of. Take I John 3:16-19 for instance; if we have in abundance and don’t give to those in need we can’t have the love of God in us. Also look at James 2:14-20. Essentially it is saying that if you can give and don’t, you’re just as big of a hypocrite as those Pharisees who kicked that man who was blind in John 9 out of the synagogue because they didn’t want to admit that Jesus was the Messiah that they had been waiting for. Are you a Christian in name or are you a Christian in action? To quote James “You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (NKJV).
On JESUSpolitik.com’s “Do Something” page, you’ll find categories of talents and interests with applicable ways of how you can use them to help. You can change a person’s future from bad to good. Read activism stories of people that are getting involved. Get inspired by testimonies of how the Lord utilizes our faithfulness to glorify Him with what we’ve been given.
