Which of these three are you?

Photo by Matin Hosseini

In John’s Gospel, one of the first four books of the New Testament in the Bible, there is a story in the 9th chapter about Jesus healing a man born blind. There are three sets of characters in the story worth your pondering.

I will just talk about the story here, but you should read it as well. If you don’t have a Bible, you can find the story here.

We see that there is a group of Pharisees, which was a Jewish religious movement, who are suspicious of Jesus. And then there are the blind man’s parents, who, although they knew Jesus had healed their son, were unwilling to say so for fear of being banned from their synagogue. And then there is the blind man, who not only believes Jesus actually heals him but eventually publicly proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah. And, as his parents feared, he is indeed banned from their synagogue as a result.

These three types of people represent the three main ways we all respond to Jesus: reject him like the Pharisees, believe him but deny him publicly like the parents, or believe in him and make that known to others like the man who was healed.

Which one are you? If you are not like the man who was healed, is there anything keeping you from getting there? If so, what is it? Would you like to be like the man who was healed?