It Is Finished

Excerpt taken from It Is Finished: A 40-Day Pilgrimage Back to the Cross by Charles Martin

 

Day 2
“I am the light of the world.”
John 9:1–7

“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ Having said these things, he spit on the ground, and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud.”

Jesus is making mud pies.

He’s done this before—to this man. He made these eyes. But in this moment, He’s finishing, or completing, the job. Making them perfect. Science tells us there are over two million working parts to the human eye. So while we see Jesus spitting and making mud, there’s much more going on here. This is Handel, Mozart and Bach, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rembrandt, Milton, Shakespeare, plus the entire NASA team rolled into one. In the blink of an eye.

“Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.”

One minute he cannot see. Blind as a bat. Shuffling his feet while his hands feel the walls. Then he meets a man who makes a mud pie, packs it on his face, tells him to wash, and whammo! Now he can see. For the first time ever. I imagine the man screaming at the top of his lungs, “I can see! I can see!” I find the next part comical, and I think Jesus did too.

“His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, ‘Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?’ Some claimed that he was. Others said, ‘No, he only looks like him. ’But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man.’”

“‘How then were your eyes opened?’ they asked. He replied, ‘The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.’ ‘Where is this man?’ they asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. ‘He put mud on my eyes,’ the man replied, ‘and I washed, and now I see.’”

The man is beside himself. What is wrong with these people? I was imperfect. Now I see perfectly. Don’t you get it? But the Pharisees aren’t interested in his eyes. Or the fact that he can see. Instead, they ask, “Where is this man?”

Which is the wrong question. Let’s back up.

“Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” The verb “formed” paints a picture of a potter or sculptor. God kneeling down, squinting one eye, rubbing His chin, rolling up His sleeves, and playing in the dirt. Delighting in the thing in His hands. Pretty soon a shape comes together. Shoulders. Hips. Legs. Feet. Wrinkles. Freckles. Hands. God is meticulous. Taking His time. He’s not in a hurry. He’s laughing, smiling, considering, delighting. A touch here. A touch there. A nose. A finger. An ear. Finally, an eyeball. He needs it to be roundish, so He spits in the dust, makes mud, rolls it into an oblong ball, and then gently places it into the man’s skull where he covers it, or protects it, with a lid.

But man is not yet alive. Sizing up His perfect creation, He smiles. It’s time. Like a kid blowing out candles on a birthday cake, God takes as deep a breath as He can, filling His lungs, then presses His lips to our lips and nostrils and breathes out—filling us with the ruach of God.

The very breath of God. Meaning, our first breath started in His lungs.

Our lungs expand, and we blink, becoming a living, breathing soul. In that moment, we are perfect in every way.

Stop right there—that Edenic place of perfection was and is His intention for us. Always has been. The heart of God for us is expressed in that moment. Perfect union. Perfect relationship. Perfectly perfect.

How do I know? John 17. One of the most amazing dialogues in Scripture. An intimate conversation between the Father and the Son.

This is Jesus talking with the Father hours before He goes to the Cross:

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

There’s a lot here. Too much to digest over a single cup of coffee. But notice a few things with me. Jesus’ desire is that we “may become perfectly one.” Perfectly one. Where do we see that? Don’t miss the word “perfect.” The root Greek word is teleo. Same root word for tetelestai. Why is this Jesus’ desire? It’s simple. “That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” This is why we were created. To reveal and return us to the Father so that we might know His perfect love and be in perfect relationship.

This is also the reason for Jesus. That we might know that perfect love.

When sin entered, the perfect became imperfect. And God did not then, and does not now, like that. In fact, He hates it. The word used to describe that hatred is wrath.

In the garden, having eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve knew they had messed up, so they ran and hid. But watch what happened. “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

Maybe we’ve trivialized this with Sunday school puppets and felt boards, but God appeared in the garden searching for Adam and Eve. Calling out. Closing the distance. He initiated the search. The rescue.

Eden may well be beyond my ability to comprehend, but my guess is this: In Eden we (mankind) got to do what we wanted (save one thing: “Don’t eat from that tree”), when we wanted, however we wanted, without sin or guilt, with no consequences, all while in the presence of God and the sound of His voice. His laughter. His participation.

When we made mud pies, God’s hands were dirty too.

Now look at the moment sin entered. Pull away the vines. Look down through the trees. The serpent tucks tail and slithers back into the grass. Adam and Eve are attempting to hide. God leans around a tree and asks an amazing question. And it’s not because He doesn’t know the answer. It’s not like He got caught off guard and lost his prized creation in the garden. He’s asking for their benefit. Gently allowing reality to set in. “But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”

Adam hears the question “Where are you?” and while they’ve played hide-and-seek before, this is different. Adam doesn’t answer, because for the first time in his short life, he doesn’t know.

God voices the question because Adam and Eve need to know that for the first time ever, they have a problem. A big one. They are lost, hiding, and feebly sewing fig leaves together in an attempt to cover a mess way bigger than a fig leaf. A single spark has ignited a forest fire, and within seconds their entire world is ablaze. Adam and Eve didn’t just choose a forbidden fruit. They chose a rival kingdom. And a rival king. At the root, their choice, their desire, was to be independent from God. (Which is also our root problem. It’s the result of the snakebite, the venom in our veins.) And God, in His love, is about to let them live out their choice—while doing everything to return them to Himself. Including eventually sacrificing His Son. “For God so loved the world, that he gave …”

Their Edenic life has been fractured, they are powerless to save themselves, and they don’t possess the remedy. If Adam and Eve know anything in that moment, they know this: they can’t undo what they’ve done. Can’t fix what’s broken. And what’s broken is their once-perfect relationship with God.

That’s the reason for God’s question—which Adam and Eve filter through their newly acquired knowledge of good and evil.

Rather than bend them over His knee, God expresses His kindness, goodness, mercy, and grace; and out of His love for them, He asks, “Where are you?” Because to answer, they need to know their need. They need to see where their feet are standing. Which, judging by the hasty patchwork of fig leaves, they’re starting to understand.

Adam and Eve’s choice to eat forbidden fruit was outright rebellion. Defiance. A desire for independence. In doing so, they chose a rival king and kingdom. The kingdom of darkness. And so the rescue mission began. Paul wrote to the Colossians: “He [Jesus] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Back to the man born blind.

Jesus heals the man born blind, and while the man is ecstatic and jumping around like a kid on a pogo stick, the religious rulers are in an uproar because Jesus healed on the Sabbath. They are indignant. “Where is this man?”

But that’s the wrong question.

Jesus healed the man “that the works of God might be displayed in him.” The work of God is standing before them. Making mud. Perfecting eyes. The blind see. Where the man once saw only darkness, now he sees light. And yet the self-righteous Pharisees are clueless. Blind as bats. They have no idea they’re standing three feet from the promised Savior of the world.

From the garden to Jerusalem to this page, God has sought man. Closed the distance. Come searching. And in healing the blind man, restoring his sight, turning darkness to light, Jesus is asking a silent yet in-your-face question: “Where are you?”

And according to the narrative, only one man knows: the man with the new eyes.

…

Taken from It Is Finished: A 40-Day Pilgrimage Back to the Cross by Charles Martin. Copyright 2024 by Charles Martin. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson Publishing. harpercollinschristian.com

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