NOTES for Joh 9:1-40

How is faith born, and how does it grow? Today we meet a man who gains sight not only physically but also spiritually—but not all at once. Difficult circumstances contribute to this. The Pharisees interrogating him force him to formulate his faith, which without them, who knows, he might never have expressed or “brought to birth.” There are several interrogations, and after each of them a new definition is born: “healer,” “prophet,” “man from God,” “Son of God”—and then a meeting face to face! We often perceive trials of faith as something painful and highly undesirable. But sometimes, as in today’s passage, the Lord leads us through these trials to the most important encounter, when at last we gain true sight.