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§25 The Investigation (John 9:13–34)

When their informal interview with the man who had been blind proved inconclusive, his neighbors brought him to the Pharisees (v. 13). The narrator takes the opportunity to add the significant footnote that the miracle happened on a Sabbath. In connection with this, he refers again to the actual procedure Jesus had used (v. 14), for it was this procedure, not the healing itself, that violated the Sabbath law (i.e., the Mishnah, Shabbath 7.2). Just as in the case of the Bethesda healing in chapter 5, the conflict centers on the twin issues of Sabbath breaking and the identity of Jesus (cf. 5:16–18). How is Jesus’ unlawful behavior to be reconciled with the notion that he is from God? The denial of Jesus’ divine origin (v. 16) comes abruptly in the narrative, for Jesus has made no explicit claims for himself in this chapter. The reaction of the Pharisees seems to presuppose to a certain extent the debates of chapters 7 and 8. The Pharisees themselves were divided over Jesus (v. 16), much like the festival crowd in 7:40–43, though the dominant group among them is clearly the group that says he is not from God. Their investigation proceeds in three stages: After their initial interview with the man born blind (vv. 13–17), the Pharisees summoned his parents (vv. 18–23), and when that exchange yielded no answers, they called the man in again for a second round of questioning (vv. 24–34).

As for the man himself, the more he is asked to repeat his story the more his understanding of Jesus grows. To the bystanders he speaks in noncommittal fashion of a man they call Jesus (v. 11); under formal interrogation he first concludes that Jesus is a prophet (v. 17; cf. 4:19); finally, after harsh cross-examination, he throws back at the Pharisees the very phrase with which the controversy began: Jesus is from God (v. 33; cf. v. 16). It is this affirmation that gets him expelled from the synagogue (v. 34).

The purpose of questioning the man’s parents (vv. 18–23) was to shake, if possible, the testimony implicit in the fact that this man, who now obviously could see, was indeed the Jerusalem beggar known to have been born blind. The identity of this one in whom God’s power could be seen at work becomes a clue to the identity of Jesus. The parents were quick to verify the facts of the case (v. 20) but unwilling to venture an explanation. They knew that the question of how (vv. 19, 21) was really a question of who (v. 21), and they would not discuss Christology. The narrator’s explanation (vv. 22–23) suggests that the parents knew (or at least suspected) more than they were telling. The real reason for their silence was not ignorance but fear. The Jewish authorities already … had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue (v. 22). If, as the narrator implies, the parents acted as they did because of this decree, they must have known that their son’s healing was the work of Jesus and had a bearing on the issue of his messiahship. Their claim not to know who cured their son (v. 21) was therefore untrue.

To make sense of the parents’ action and the accompanying comment, the decree mentioned in verse 22 must be understood against the background of earlier events recorded in this Gospel. Jesus had been wanted by the authorities ever since chapter 5. A crowd in Galilee had proclaimed him “the Prophet who is to come,” and had tried to “make him king by force” (6:14–15). At the Feast of Tabernacles, amid popular speculation over whether he was the Messiah, the guards had tried unsuccessfully to arrest him (7:25–36, 40–52). He was suspected of “deceiving the people” (7:12); those who believed in him were called a crowd that “knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them” (7:49). It comes as no surprise, therefore, when we learn that the authorities tried to rid the synagogue of anyone who claimed to follow Jesus as the Messiah. Their fear of messianic movements is summed up two chapters later at a meeting of the ruling Council: “Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation” (11:48). To confess Jesus as Messiah was politically dangerous; the religious authorities wanted to isolate those who made such a confession so as to avoid giving the Romans the impression that the synagogue was in any way a base for revolutionary activities.

The silence of the man’s parents leads to a final confrontation between him and the Pharisees (vv. 24–34). As the exchange goes on, he becomes surer and surer of his ground. First he simply repeats the refrain that I was blind but now I see without making a judgment on the Pharisees’ assertion that Jesus is a sinner (v. 25). But he balks at giving the details again: I have told you already … Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too? (v. 27). Cursing his sarcasm, the Pharisees bring out what is for the Gospel writer the real issue: They are disciples of Moses, while the man born blind is Jesus’disciple (v. 28). From the writer’s perspective, even this is a misunderstanding, for Jesus had said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (5:46). Yet the very misunderstanding serves to highlight the situation existing in the writer’s own day: There are two communities, the disciples of Moses and the disciples of Jesus, each claiming to speak for God. “Judaism” and “Christianity” are becoming distinct, and rival, entities, as the church begins to define itself over against the synagogue.

The Pharisees’ words were almost prophetic: The former blind man was transferring his allegiance from one community to the other. But in the same breath, they laid a trap for themselves by admitting that, as far as Jesus was concerned, we don’t even know where he comes from (v. 29). It was their emphatic way of denying that Jesus was from God (cf. v. 16), but to the man born blind (and to the narrator) it only betrayed their ignorance (cf. 8:14). His last words to them begin on the same note of sarcasm he had used a moment before (v. 30; cf. v. 27) but quickly take a serious turn (vv. 31–33) as he begins to pour out his true convictions. The Pharisees were right: He is Jesus’ disciple. He is not neutral about whether Jesus is a sinner (contrast v. 25). Jesus cannot be a sinner, he concludes, for God does not listen to sinners but to the godly man who does his will (v. 31). The former blind man attributes his healing to God, with Jesus in the role of intercessor asking God to act. Yet at the same time he can say without hesitation that Jesus cured his blindness (vv. 30, 32). His view of miracles coincides perfectly with that of the Gospel writer and of Jesus as portrayed in this Gospel (cf. 11:41–42). Jesus’ works are the works of God (cf. v. 4; 4:34). One cannot assign some miracles to the Father and others to the Son; all that happens redemptively is the work of the Father through the Son (cf. 5:17–29) and can be viewed legitimately from either perspective.

Although the man born blind is spokesman for the absent Jesus throughout this debate and for a theology that bears the implicit endorsement of the narrator, he is nevertheless an individual in his own right. His story is told realistically and with humor. Unlike the sick man of chapter 5, he has personality, a ready wit, and strong convictions. Unlike Nicodemus, he leaves no doubt about what he thinks of Jesus. He is surely one of the most memorable characters in all of the Gospels. His quick, ironic answers (vv. 27, 30), as well as his serious testimony on Jesus’ behalf (vv. 31–33), irritated his questioners and pierced their pretensions. In response (ignoring his cure), they simply reverted to the popular notion expressed by Jesus’ disciples at the outset of the narrative, that is, that his physical handicap from birth meant that he had been born in sin (v. 34; cf v. 2). With this, judging that he had in effect hailed Jesus as the Messiah, they threw him out of the synagogue (v. 34; cf. v. 22).

The story of the man born blind is thus framed by references to his sinful birth (vv. 2, 34). The story’s intent is neither to affirm nor deny that he was born in sin but to depict his healing as a transformation so total as to constitute a veritable rebirth. Here at last is Nicodemus’ opposite number, a Christian convert about whose experience there can be no doubt. If the dialogue with Nicodemus made clear the impossibility of entering the kingdom of God without rebirth, the story of the blind man dramatizes the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of entering the kingdom when a person is truly “born of water and the Spirit” (3:5).