‘Ephphatha’ – it is an Aramaic word from Hebrew: ‘Be opened.’ We are unable to pray; our spiritual eyes and ears are shut, not functioning. Be opened entirely, permanently, not by degrees. Some teach that conversion is lifelong – Roman Catholic teaches this – you won’t know till the end. Wrong: this man knew straightaway that he was healed. We come to Christ and asked for life and receive it and are changed immediately. The mind is fully open; we yield to his rule and know we are forgiven.
In the case of the soul, it is not just that we cannot hear, we cannot understand what God says to us; we do not want to hear. We understand enough to know that we do not want this message, and we run from it. To heal us, Christ has to open our understanding, and he has to make us willing to hear what he says. He has to make us desire him more than anything else. We must receive what is naturally a very unwelcome message to us – that we are alienated from God, under condemnation, with no prospect of any improvement. We can do nothing to save ourselves, and in our helpless state our only hope is to come to him for life. Christ must go to Calvary and pay the price for our sin. He did not sigh because Calvary was ahead of him, though it cost him more than we can understand. No, he faced that joyfully, knowing the great gain that would come out of it. What he sighed about was the human condition before he saves us from our sins.