The Living
The Living
James Hudson Taylor was weary and ill and had gone to visit friends in Brighton, England, where he hoped to find rest and spiritual enrichment. It was Sunday, June 25, 1865, and he had accompanied his friends to the morning worship service; but Taylor was “unable to bear the sight of rejoicing multitudes in the house of God.” 2 He left the meeting and walked down to the seashore, his heart greatly burdened. How could so many believers be so joyful and yet do so very little to share that joy with the lost, especially the lost in China? On that Sunday morning, Hudson Taylor resolved that, with the Lord’s help, he would begin a mission to reach the lost of inland China. Two days later, he went to the London and County Bank and with a ten-pound note opened an account in the name of the China Inland Mission.
That piece of Christian history reminds me of what Jesus did, as recorded at the end of John 8. It was the last day of the weeklong Festival of Booths and the people were celebrating in the temple. At the same time, their religious leaders were rejecting their own Messiah, who was standing among them; in fact, they were on the verge of stoning Him! Undisturbed, Jesus calmly departed from the temple area and obeyed Isaiah 42:7 by bringing light to a blind beggar: “To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.”
Jesus is not visibly walking our city streets today, but His people are here to represent Him and spread the light. Millions of people profess to be followers of the Lord, so there ought to be plenty of light in this world; yet things seem to be getting darker. Jesus promises that if we follow Him, we will walk in the light, not in the darkness, and that His light will give us life. Even more, we will be lights in this dark world and help others find the true Light. “You are the light of the world,” said Jesus. “A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:14–16). Paul put it like this: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light” (Eph. 5:8).
The festive crowd in the temple did not impress Jesus, nor did the angry religious leaders who wanted to kill Him disturb Him. He simply moved away from the crowd and went to help an individual who was desperately in need. He left people who were spiritually blind to go heal a man who was physically blind. Our Lord turned away from the religious leaders who rejected Him and ministered to a poor man who obeyed Him and ended up worshipping Him! In the temple, Jesus exposed darkness and was rejected, but to the beggar, He brought light and was worshipped. More than once the record tells us that Jesus turned from the crowd in order to minister to individuals, a practice that would bother believers today who measure ministry only by numbers.
How we look at other people determines how much we can help them. To our Lord’s disciples, the blind beggar was a theological problem to discuss and not a needy person to help. Perhaps they had been discussing whether the beggar was even worthy of help; for if his parents were the guilty ones, then the man couldn’t be blamed for his blindness. But Jesus totally rejected their viewpoint and focused on the man and his needs. The next time you sing “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee,” remember that the author, Bernard of Clairvaux, said, “Justice seeks out the merits of the case, but pity only regards the need.” The disciples wanted justice; Jesus opted for mercy.
Suppose that back in 1945 Jesus had asked me if I deserved to be saved. Of course I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve it then, and I haven’t deserved it since! I trusted Him, and in His mercy He didn’t give me what I did deserve: judgment. And in His grace He gave me what I didn’t deserve: salvation! “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13–14). Christ is our Light and we trust Him; He is our Leader and we follow Him; He is our Life and we grow in Him and reveal Him to this dark world.
The religious leaders and most of the common people in Jesus’s day were blind to who He was and to the very Scriptures they claimed to obey. Jesus told them, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39–40). When we trust Jesus and follow Him, He enables us to see things as they really are. The Jews bragged about their temple, but Jesus knew that the day would come when the Romans would destroy Herod’s temple. The Jews also boasted of their great ancestor Abraham, but Jesus said that the first birth was not sufficient, and that people needed to be born again (John 3). The Jews and their Samaritan neighbors debated over whether Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim was God’s appointed place for worship, and Jesus told them to forget geography and worship God “in the Spirit and in truth” (4:24). The priests poured out water at the Festival of Booths without realizing that the water represented the promised Holy Spirit (7:37–39).
David put it beautifully when he wrote, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light” (Ps. 36:9). We cannot receive light from history, science, or any other discipline unless God’s light shines on it first. God’s Word is light (119:105, 130) and God’s Spirit is light (Rev. 4:5), and if we yield to the Spirit and live in the Word, God will teach us. Apart from the Spirit’s ministry, the Bible is a closed book. Furthermore, when we follow Jesus and walk in the light, we see this world and its dangerous illusions as they really are and we will not be deceived. “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth” (1 John 2:20).
Jesus told the Jews, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), but they didn’t understand what He was saying. Because they had rejected the light, they thought He was talking about political freedom from slavery when He was actually referring to spiritual freedom from sin.
The way Jesus healed the blind beggar helps us better understand how we, the “children of the light” (1 Thess. 5:5), may share God’s love and be used by Him to open the eyes of those who are spiritually blind. First, Jesus put mud in the blind man’s eyes, which must have seemed cruel to those who were watching; but Jesus knew what He was doing. He could heal blind eyes merely by touching them (Matt. 9:27–31) or by putting His spittle on them (Mark 8:22–26), but the irritation from the mud encouraged this man to obey our Lord’s words: “Go … wash in the Pool of Siloam” (John 9:7). As we witness to the lost, we must not fail to deal with sin, because there can be no conversion without conviction and contrition. The apostle John explains to his Gentile readers that “Siloam” means “Sent” (v. 7), and he sees this as a reference to the Messiah, who was sent by the Father (see also 3:17, 34; 5:36; 7:29; 8:18, 42; 9:4). The beggar was healed by Jesus, not by the water from the Pool of Siloam.
Knowing it would anger the Pharisees, Jesus had deliberately healed the man on the Sabbath day, and this ignited a controversy. In their attempt to gather evidence against Jesus, the religious leaders interrogated the beggar and his parents, and four times they asked how he had been healed (John 9:10, 15, 19, 26). The parents were evasive because they didn’t want to be excommunicated from the synagogue; but the healed man did not change his testimony. In fact, his witness became so personal and powerful that the angry Pharisees insulted him and expelled him from the synagogue. This was a costly experience for a Jew, for it would cut him off from official worship and social fellowship. But better that he could see and build his own life than that he remain a blind beggar for the rest of his life. And Jesus always cares for His sheep. He found the man in the temple and there opened his spiritual eyes (Eph. 1:18) and brought him into the flock of the Lord (John 9:35–38).
It’s beautiful to see how this man grew in his knowledge of who Jesus was. “The man they call Jesus” (John 9:11) was his first statement about Jesus, but then he said, “He is a prophet” (v. 17). The Pharisees called Jesus a sinner, for after all He had dishonored the Sabbath; but the beggar called Him a man of God (v. 33). When Jesus met him in the temple, the beggar discovered that this “sinner” was actually the Son of Man, a title of the Messiah (vv. 35–38; see also Dan. 7:13–14), and he worshipped Him. We will one day meet this healed man in heaven and hear from his own lips what the Savior did for him.
Did you notice how Jesus moved from the universal (“the light of the world”) to the individual (“whoever follows me,” John 8:12)? That’s because He brings His light to the world through the good works of His own disciples. James Hudson Taylor and his associates were lights shining in China, just as you and I must be lights shining wherever God has put us. The phrase “good works” includes many things, from visiting the lonely and feeding the hungry to teaching the ignorant, assisting the needy, and encouraging the discouraged. It always includes sharing the good news of Jesus and seeking to love others as Jesus loves us.
In our modern world, we are so accustomed to electric lights of all kinds that we forget the spiritual darkness that enshrouds our globe and blinds the minds and hearts of lost people. But the greatest tragedy is that people think they are “enlightened” when the light that is in them is actually darkness. Jesus said, “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness” (Luke 11:34–35; see also John 9:39–41). Our outlook helps to determine our character and conduct; and character and conduct determine the outcome of life. To obey Jesus and follow the Light of the World means to become a living light and avoid the delusions that lead to the detours toward darkness. It means to become the kind of people who can point others to the Savior so that they too might experience “the light of life.”