Why Jesus Used Mud to Cure the Blind Man (John 9:1-7)
by Pamela Ayn Austen
1. Now as Jesus was passing by, He saw a man blind from birth, 2. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3. Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him. 4. While it is daytime, we must do the works of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6. When Jesus had said this, He spat on the ground, made some mud, and applied it to the man’s eyes. 7. Then He told him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing.
Joaquin Phoenix, who was given the role of Jesus in a movie about Mary Magdalene, said that he would not keep to the script and make mud with his own spit to heal the blind. He said, "Who would [expletive] do something like that?"
Why did Jesus use his own spit and dust to restore the man's sight? I believe it is because man is made from the dust of the ground coupled with what comes from the mouth of God. The blind man was born with something missing from his eyes, so Jesus, being God, took water from his own mouth, (water = God’s grace and forgiveness), and he mixed it with dust from the ground, which is man’s primal substance, and he created, right there, what the man was lacking in his eyes. It wasn’t only the giving of a physical need within the eyeballs, or the giving of light to the man’s eyes, but Jesus also, through the water of God, gave the eyes of his soul light, illuminating a sinner’s darkness: not just for this man, but for all of those who were watching and who believed in Jesus.
It was a singular act of creation, hearkening back to when Jesus made Adam from the dust, not long after saying “let there by light” in the Genesis account of creation. By taking from the cleansing water of his mouth, and mixing it with dust, Jesus was also showing himself to be fully God with a human body, and not simply a man whom the Father listens to and empowers. Jesus had it within himself to heal and create and save by his own flesh and blood.
Jesus is the Creator God who came in bodily form to die for our sins.
John 1:1-3 says about Jesus, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made."
There have been many people born blind who lived their whole lives believing in Jesus, but they were not cured. However, Jesus, during his ministry, displayed physical things to the people so that he might awaken their thinking to spiritual things. He said, “The spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” (John 6:63) He knew it was more important for them to see things spiritually, for it’s spiritual blindness that is the true eternal calamity. Jesus being the Light of the world had greater spiritual connotations, but he worked miracles in the natural world so as to encourage faith within people, because “without faith, it is impossible to please God.” (Heb. 11:6)
Jesus, after mixing the water of God and the dust from the earth, then required one more thing. He required the man to have faith. So he told him a particular place he wanted him to go wash his eyes, and the name of the pool means “Sent.” God sent the man, and if the man believed and obeyed, then light from God would be given to him. But had the man started wiping his eyes and saying like Joaquin Phoenix, “Yuck! Who the heck does such a thing?!” he would have stayed blind; and he would have become a cautionary tale instead of a beacon of light for others to see and believe.
By believing and obeying, this man became a testimony and “display” to the power of Jesus Christ as God; and thereafter, and down through history within the Gospels, this man’s faith and healing bears witness to the fact that Jesus gives light, forgiveness, and life by way of his grace and our faith. Jesus is God, and from his body when they speared him, at his death, poured forth the water of God’s grace and the blood of his life: given to fulfill the whole curse of the Law and secure our eternal salvation.