Opening Blind Eyes: Spiritual and Physical Restoration

What grievous affliction is blindness! It was no frivolous boon which Christ, in the days of His sojourn on earth, thought proper to confer when, in the external sense, He opened blind eyes. In the paragraph of which the text is a part, Jehovah is describing the Messiah in His spiritual character and work; and, great as the marvel of removing natural blindness was, and great as similar miracles were which Christ performed, their principal value consisted in their being symbols and pledges of those spiritual operations which He could accomplish on the souls of men.

Consider the calamity of spiritual blindness which has overtaken our race. You would greatly aggravate the evil of natural blindness by dilating on the numerous beauties of nature, for the poor blind man sees none of these things! But how much greater is the calamity by which the soul is excluded from the sight of the glory of God!

There is high criminality connected with the origin of this spiritual blindness. The incontestable and melancholy fact is that man has sinned. And as there was high criminality connected with its origin, so there is high criminality connected with its continuance. Men, struck with this blindness, often take advantage of their darkness and recede further from God.

Yet Jehovah has appointed a great ordinance for the removal of this calamity. See what light Christ has thrown on the character of God! Consider the light which He has thrown on providence around us.