Jesus, The Creative Genius

One of my favorite Bible stories is when Jesus healed a blind man in John 9. In it, Jesus and his disciples walked by a man who had been blind from birth. The disciples asked Jesus an important question for their day in age — “Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered with, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” 

After this interaction, Jesus made some mud with his saliva, put in on the blind man’s eyes, and told him to go wash it off in a nearby pool. The man did as Jesus had told him. When he came out of the water, he could see for the first time in his life!

It’s a wonderful story of healing, of the power of the God of the Bible, of the love and grace of Jesus, and of the fullness of life being restored. It’s also a beautiful story God’s willingness to employ his creative genius to provide a solution to an impossible problem. 

You may be wondering how a story about Jesus healing a blind man is a story about the God’s ability to solve insurmountable problems creatively. If you are, you are asking a great question. Historic and biblically based Christian teaching answers that question for us in two ways. 

First, it tells us that Jesus is God in the flesh, meaning that he is both God and man – 100% God and 100% man – in the same person. He’s unique. There was no one like him before him and there will never be anyone like him again. Therefore, when Jesus fixes a problem, God fixes it. 

Second, biblical teaching is clear that God created all that there is. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, begins with the statement, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” John introduced his version of Jesus’s life story with a similar proclamation, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” God is a creator. He is, in fact, the creator of all things. 

So, when Jesus healed the blind man, he created a solution to an impossible problem. There was no hope for the man to receive his sight outside of the miraculous and creative work of Jesus. This is what Jesus does. He graciously fixes the world’s problems in his power to recreate all things in the same way he created them at the beginning. He does it in your life, and he does it in my life. The challenge for us is to trust him enough to allow him to do it. If we do, we will see the works of God displayed in us.  

** This post originally appeared in the Wednesday, March 3 edition of The Chester News and Reporter of Chester, SC.