We see here that God takes the initiative in salvation. This blind man had no idea of the passing of Christ. There is no indication that he cried out for special help, for healing, for sight. And indeed even when he is healed, he does not really understand or know who Christ is, and even after his sight is given to him and he has this astonishing blessing, he still does not grasp this must be Messiah, this must be the one of whom all Jerusalem speaks. He thought he was merely a prophet, but not Messiah. We would never have desired him. We would never have had the sense to listen to the Gospel. We would never have found the humility to respond to the Gospel and say, I am the sinner who needs to be saved, who needs the salvation of Christ and new life. We were far too worldly, too far away, too hardened, too indifferent. Salvation is an initiative of God. He moves first.
All the healings of Christ have significance. They are not just miracles to prove that he was, in fact, the Son of God, the Lord of glory. Of course they have that purpose, but they are also demonstrations of how he will heal people from their spiritual ailments – in the case of blindness, from darkness of soul, alienation from God, ignorance of spiritual things. The man was born blind, and so are we, spiritually, from birth. We cannot see the truth, we cannot understand the Scripture and the way of salvation, we cannot see God, as it were; we have no personal relationship with him until we are individually saved by him and forgiven and brought to know him. We cannot even see ourselves and our degree of sinfulness and what’s the matter with us. We certainly cannot see the spiritual dangers around us. Like him we have no hope of natural recovery and we cannot heal ourselves.