‘Healed eyes and hardened hearts’ (John 9:1-41)

After declaring that he was the ‘light of the world’ in chapter 8, Jesus then illustrated this by means of healing the man born blind in chapter 9. Though the man received his sight and his spiritual sight, the miracle not only confirmed Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah, but also revealed the hardened state of the hearts of the Pharisees who could only dismiss the miracle on the grounds that it had been done on a Sabbath. In doing so, they ignored the testimony of the formerly blind man which was, ‘I only know that I was blind, but now I can see’.