Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud of the spittle, and put the mud, as ointment, on his eyes.
The Lord had just called Himself the light of the world, and He proves it by an action: clay on the eyes of a man born blind. Why use a method that leaves the man's eyes covered, and why send him to a pool whose name John stops to translate?
A word from Him had healed in other cases. So the clay was chosen, not needed — and the choice itself carries the lesson.
Our Lord was under no necessity to put clay on the man's eyes. In other cases His word of power was enough for the miracle. He had evidently a meaning to teach by His action, possibly not so much for the blind man as for ourselves.
Commentators call this mud "clay." They read it as a picture of the Son of God taking a real human body — a step no one would have expected.
He lays clay on the man's eyes; an extraordinary step at first sight. In truth, it was the shadow of Himself become man, a fitting figure of the human body which He took to do God's will in it. He was not simply Son of God, but Son of God with a body prepared by God. He became man. And the fact of the body of Christ — God's Son found in the form of a man — only makes the difficulty greater at first sight. Nobody, apart from the word of God, would look for a divine Person in such a form.
Clay on the eyes covers them. The same humanity that blinded His critics is what makes Him known to those who believe.
Clay plastered on seeing eyes would blind them, and it made blind eyes doubly blind. It was the same for the spiritually blind: the flesh of the Word was a stumbling block, and they saw only the carpenter's Son. For us who believe in Him as the Sent One the reverse is true. It is by His revelation in flesh that we have come to know Him... His flesh is darkness to the world: it is light to us.
The clay is not the end of the story. The man must still go and wash, and the pool bears the name "Sent."
The blind man washes in the pool called "Sent," and then he can see clearly. The power of the Spirit and of the word makes Christ known as the One sent by the Father, and this gives him sight. It is the history of divine teaching in the heart of man. Christ, as man, touches us. We are completely blind; we see nothing. The Spirit of God acts, with Christ there before our eyes, and we see plainly.
The Lord gave the man no reason for any of it. He could not have argued for the treatment, and no one asked him to.
People recognised no healing power in clay. And no one could have explained to him at that moment why the Lord anointed his eyes only to have the clay washed off straight afterwards. The Lord did what He pleased, and told the man to do as He directed. Then he received his sight.
The same clay gave others a reason to reject Him. The day of the healing settled the question for the religious leaders.
But this took place on the sabbath day, and their religious prejudice consumes them at once. Imagine one spitting on the sabbath day and putting clay on a blind man's eyes! This proved, they thought, that this Man could not be of God.
- Chosen, not needed — a word alone would have healed him. He chose this method to teach, and the lesson is for us as much as for the blind man.
- Clay is manhood — the earth mixed by His own hand pictures the body the Son of God took to do God's will.
- Clay blinds first — smeared eyes see less. His lowly humanity did the same to those who saw only a carpenter's son.
- Siloam clears it — the pool's name means "Sent." Sight comes when a person knows this lowly Man as the One sent by the Father.
- Faith obeys first — he could not explain the clay, only obey. He washed, and received his sight, while those who could explain everything stayed blind.
And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, which is interpreted, Sent. He went therefore and washed, and came seeing.
Jesus does not heal the blind man on the spot. He sends him off with mud on his eyes, to a pool whose name the verse stops to translate: Sent.
Mud smeared over sightless eyes does not look like a cure. Writers point out that everything in the Lord's action pointed downward — to the dust man was made from, and to the shame connected with being spat upon.
The Lord now spits on the ground, makes clay with the spittle, and puts the clay on the blind man's eyes. That might seem more likely to confirm his blindness than to remove it. The symbolic meaning points the same way. Man was made out of the ground, and spittle is so often linked with humiliation and insult. Both add such thoughts to the lowly place that being a man already meant for Him. So with Christ. The pride and self-righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees misunderstood and objected to the very grace which brought Him down so low. It seemed, in fact, only to make the blind eyes blinder. The plain fact of His humanity became for them an unanswerable argument against His claim to deity.
The verse pauses to tell us what the pool's name means. One writer links that name to a truth running through John's Gospel.
The picture is complete when the Lord tells him to wash in the pool of Siloam, which means "sent" (v. 7). This shows an outstanding truth of John's writings: the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world (1 John 4:14). In other words, in the spiritual sense the man is told to wash in John 3:16. He obeys and at once sees.
The clay was more than a test of the man's obedience. One writer reads it as a sign, and says why Christ come in flesh still leaves a man blind by itself.
This was no meaningless act on Christ's part, and no mere test of obedience on the man's. It was a sign of the truth which the chapter reveals... The grace of the Lord in the incarnation is precious. But by itself the incarnation is not enough for man's need. At first it even seems to add to the difficulty, as the clay did on the man's eyes. The Spirit must work by the word, as well as the Son being sent into the world, Jesus Christ come in flesh. Without the effective work of the Holy Spirit in a man, he cannot see... It means that the soul recognises Jesus as the sent One of God, sent to do His will and finish His work.
The man could not have explained why dust should heal eyes. He simply went. That, one writer insists, is where the whole thing turned.
The whole value of the cure lay in this, that the blind man took the Lord's word. If he had not gone, would he have been healed? No. Why? The same God who had power to cure had the right to say how it should be done, and the man obeyed the word. It was not the clay that cured his eyes — a strange thing, to cure a man's eyes by filling them with dust. The working of faith is a very simple thing; it obeys the word of God because it is His word.
Notice the order. The Lord did not give him sight and then send him to the pool. He sent him while he was still blind.
On the whole, Scripture is plain, and the principle is always the same. Obedience is the way of blessing. We are not to wait for power before we obey a command; we obey so that we may find power. The Lord did not restore the hand so that the man could then stretch it out and show it. He told him to stretch it out, so that it might be restored... So it was with the poor blind man in the days of the Lord. Having been faithful in this, he was able to teach his teachers, because he had obeyed the word.
What blinds one man gives light to another. And what happened at the pool did not stop with the man's eyes.
For us who believe in Him as the Sent One the reverse is true. It is by His revelation in flesh that we have come to know Him, as 1 John 1:1-2 shows. His flesh is darkness to the world: it is light to us. We can take the words in a spiritual sense and say that we too "washed and came back seeing." The rest of the chapter shows that the blind man had the eyes of his heart opened as well as the eyes of his head.
- Clay — mud on blind eyes only seemed to blind him more. Christ's lowly humanity became, for proud men, their argument against His deity.
- Sent — the verse translates the pool's name: the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. The man washes in that truth.
- Spirit — Christ come in flesh is not enough by itself. The Spirit must work by the word before a man can see.
- Obedience — the whole value of the cure lay in taking the Lord at His word. We do not wait for power before we obey. We obey, and find power.
- Seeing — he came back able to see. Before the chapter ends, the eyes of his heart are open too, and he can teach his teachers.