John 9:6 Commentary and Bible Study

Why did he use this method? It is not absolutely exclusive to this particular blind man. You find it elsewhere in the Gospels. In Mark 7 there is the one who was deaf and who also had an impediment in his speech and a similar method was used. But why? When the Lord most often healed at a word or a touch, instantly, in one single stage. ‘When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.’ And the apostle John tells us – ‘Which is by interpretation, Sent’, and that is very significant. This is going to be a picture of salvation - the restoring of physical sight to the blind pictures the giving of spiritual sight and life to those who are spiritually dead. It is a picture of conversion and of salvation. And in the picture, there is a clear demonstration of the need for repentance. Here is the mud on the eyes, representing if you like all the guilt and all the sin that needs to be washed off, and you have to obey Christ. Of course, it stands for repentance, sincere repentance from sin. And he went to the pool of Siloam. We go to the cross of Calvary with the mud of guilt and sin, and it is washed off by repentance before Christ, and belief in his blood and his suffering and death, his atoning death for salvation. The picture could not be more simple, and at the same time more accurate and more graphic than it is.‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent).’ Everybody knew that. It was the water of Shiloah, sent from the spring of Gihon outside the city, that had been diverted some 700 years before by King Hezekiah through a tunnel into the city, to supply the city secretly with water in time of siege. And it was given that name, Shiloah or Siloam, sent, representing a great blessing of life and sustenance - sent into the city. Maybe the blind man did not understand it at first, he would understand it later. Maybe it was just too sophisticated a point for him at that time. But later, he would say, Where did he send me? He sent me to the place where grace and blessing is sent, to Calvary’s cross, the place of grace, the place where free salvation is sent to all who repent.