Led by the Light

In the Bible, God typically chooses leaders who, while always flawed and sometimes sinful, nevertheless are fundamentally obedient and loyal to God. An exception to this rule was the first king chosen to lead Israel, Saul, who proved to be unwilling to listen to God’s spokesman, the prophet Samuel. Now God chooses another  king, the youngest son of Jesse, who will turn out to be a man after  God’s own heart (Acts 13:22). God looks past David’s youth and  sees a child who, with divine help, will be capable of following  God “wholeheartedly.” And so immediately the newly chosen king receives God’s Spirit, equipping him to rule God’s people. 

The New Testament letters make it clear that receiving new life in Christ entails personal transformation right now, not just forgiveness of past sins and future beatitude. To be reborn in Christ is to be rescued from the darkness of the world and to live in the light of the Lord. This light allows Christians to assess reality from  the divine perspective, exposing “the fruitless works of darkness.” It  also allows for transformation, producing in the individual “every  kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.” It is in this sense that  Christians have already woken up from the death of darkness and now walk in the life of Christ’s light. 

At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus says he came so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind. The blind man received healing because he knew he could not see (i.e., was a sinner), and knowing it left him open to spiritual healing. The physically sighted leaders, who do see, paradoxically do not see their sinfulness. Their “sight” is illusory; they are just as  “spiritually blind” as the blind man, but they don’t know it. Jesus forces a choice on them: will they recognize that they do not see, or will their hardheartedness lead them to reject the light of the world  (John 1:9) and thus become truly blind.