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Is sin inherited? Can God permit evil to bring about greater goods?
The following narrative is continued from the chapters before (remember, the chapter numbers were not there in the text when it was written). The celebration going on is the Feast of Tabernacles. Here's where it gets interesting: Siloam is a resovoir where water collected from the spring of Gihon, named after one of the four rivers flowing out of Eden. On the final day of the celebration, water was drawn from Siloam, brought back to the temple, and poured on the altar.
A photo from Siloam in Jerusalem.
The narrative in John 9 begins with a man who was born with blindness (this would be congenital blindness, probably because of genetic mutation, prenatal infections, or development issues). All of Jesus' disciples are wondering why this is the case. From their knowledge of the Torah, the disciples surely would have remembered at least two statements about children inheriting sin from their ancestors--they seem to contradict each other on first glance. Deuteronomy 24 suggests that one is only guilty for the sin they themselves directly choose, whereas Exodus 20 suggests that an ancestors guilt can extend through their lineage.
...For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation... (Exodus 20:5)
Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for one’s own crime shall a person be put to death. (Deuteronomy 24:16)
Jesus sides with the Deuteronomy passage, saying that He is "the light of the world" and spitting to make clay. After rubbing the clay on the blind man's eyes, Jesus tells him to run to Siloam to wash up. Once others saw the blind man seeing, they were flabbergasted. "How could this be?" And, acknowledging that this was a Sabbath healing, they went to the Pharisees to sort it out.
The Pharisees were shocked that Jesus "did not keep the Sabbath." But a division arose when the others questioned how Jesus could work miracles apart from the power of God. The Pharisees needed to get to the bottom of this, and so they found the man's parents who declared that, yes, the man was blind from birth.
The Pharisees then retort with a heavy line: "We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout... He listens."
The man gets kicked out and Jesus finds Him, asking if he believes that He is the Lord. He does. This is remarkable faith.
The Pharisees ask Jesus whether or not they, too, are blind (this now seems to be in a metaphorical sense). Jesus responds with an if/then: IF you were blind, THEN you would have no sin. But, He says, if they are NOT blind, then the sin remains. It seems as if Christ is describing that God will grant grace to the humble, but grace will be rejected by people who "see"--who are prideful and think that they do not need it.
Is the clay a reference to the second creation story where God makes man out of clay? (Some even say that this man had no sight to begin with, so Jesus' healing was more of a creation from nothing).
Since new Adam is one of the images for Jesus, how might the man born blind resemble Jesus?
What do present-day men and women have in common with the man born blind?
In what ways are all three—Adam, the man born blind, and Jesus—alike?
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