Blind Grace

He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. (Joh 9:25)

Jesus notoriously attacked blindness. Whether it was a physical impairment like the man in the verse from above, or the type that clouds the mind of someone like the Pharisees who were questioning this man, blindness was a condition which I believe he took great pleasure in eradicating.

Let me give you a little science trivia that I read recently. The colors white and black aren’t actual colors. The color white is actually the integration of all the visible colors in the spectrum. Black is simply the lack, or non-existence of the spectrum integration.

When a person is healed of blindness, they can see the integration of visible light, an action they were incapable of accomplishing before. The Pharisees suffered from a focal blindness which was singularly sin-consciousness. Churches across the globe suffer today from this same malady.

In another passage from John, Jesus and the disciples come across a man blind from birth sitting by the road and the disciples ask if the blindness was the result of some sin the parents or the blind man committed. Jesus’s response was neither applied but that it was so the glory of the Father could be displayed, a claim which confounded the disciples then just as much as it does religious people today. Sin-consciousness is blindness, a dark veil spread over the mind making it unable to see the spectrum of human integration. Even blind to grace.

Blind to grace – blind to Jesus; blind to the kingdom of God – blind to Jesus; blind to love – blind to Jesus; blind to compassion – blind to Jesus.

Doctors will tell you when a person is blind, their other senses will heighten to compensate for their lack of sight. Having lived with someone who was blind I can attest to this phenomenon. Their sense of touch is more highly acute, hear things at a level which can’t be understood, and smell things that “normal” people don’t even know exists.

Yet, Jesus never said to a group of blind people, “those who have ears to see…” simply because I think he knew that they already did. His grace gave them the ability to integrate, to become a part of the spectrum of human culture, no longer isolated, a light, set on a hill that all could see.

Some would say that grace is blind to our sin. Wrong. Grace has no reference, no integrational map for the color we paint our sins with. Sin is our own schema at trying to act as god through moral and holiness codes. We may appear before the Creator covered in mud, maggots and misery but He will see the royal hue of true blue children trying their best to act like Him rather than just accepting that they are.

Grace is blind to the singular focus of…being human. It recognizes one to be divine; it moves all from “me” to “us” within the triune panoply. It is blind to the darkness found in exclusiveness, bringing us into the vast, marvelous light of a kingdom filled with the panorama of depth, breadth, height, and width of an all-encompassing love.

We may not know how it happened, but now I know that I was blind, and now I can see. Grace did this to me. It has been done for you too. Can’t you…