In John 8 Jesus heals a blind man and tells him to go the pool of Siloam and wash. The blind man was healed and received sight, for he was one who listened for God, did what God said, and allowed his perceptions to be controlled by what God asked, not what tradition demanded. He was healed because he listened to Jesus. Later he was brought to the Pharisees who questioned him about the miracle. The pharisees tossed the blind man out of the synagogue because he would not back away from what he had just experienced and agree Jesus was a sinner.
The Pharisees were the ones who were really blind because they judged what happened through their tradition. They saw what they wanted. They could not recognize a miracle because it occurred in a way that broke some of their arbitrary rules.
Jesus told us the sheep know his voice. He is the door - he is the way people get into the sheepfold. We know someone is a robber if they come in by any other way than Jesus. He said, "as the father knows me, even so I know the father". He lays down his life for the sheep. He, in the body of flesh, was being wrongly understood and persecuted despite the words he spoke and the miracles he performed. He suffered the horrible anticipation of his death in every sense that any ordinary man would. God gives us a world to live in, yet the pharisees of us walk on our own food, pee in our drinking water, and kill the innocent.
It is God's nature to love and to reach out to his creation. Who can say that he does not seeing we have food in our teeth and stand by the risen cross of Christ? There is no way any man can justify himself before God. God does not stand before us as a cruel or detached or self-serving taskmaster. He stands as one with an open hand as one who wants a relationship, as one who wants involvement with our lives.
