Psallam​​ TIBI​

​

NUMQUID ET NOS CAECI SUMUS

 

"ARE WE NOW BLIND?" – a question the Pharisees rather impudently asked Jesus, but one that we have a tendency also to ask him, if not in word then certainly in thought and deed. There is a certain brazenness that comes with being the People of God. Israel, through the long and often tumultuous history of salvation, often cast itself the petulant child, so self-assured they were of a preferential love that set them above kings and nations. Descended from one to whom God had revealed himself in an intimacy unknown to other peoples, they could not recognise him even as he walked among them. They had recreated God in their own image, and their sight was to them the blindness of pride and delusion.

​

When the Pharisees asked, “Are we now blind?” they believed that they could see with perfect clarity the path to salvation. But what they saw was a mere mirage; a salvation based on their own reflection; a salvation they would earn by guile; a salvation that was their right and possession to be dispensed on their terms and at their will. They had indeed been granted the gift of sight and squandered it, and in the process exchanged salvation for perdition. Better indeed that they had been born blind, for it is the blind that yearn for the light of truth to pierce the darkness, and with the dawning of the light on this deadened sense they rejoice and can never bring themselves to look back again into the shadows of sin and death.

 

Or can they?...

 

Each of us has received the light of Christ that led us out from the dark night of spiritual blindness into the radiance of the Lord’s day. But how perceptively do we use this gift of sight to help us navigate the path to salvation? Christ is the light of the world, he is our light, but often times we find ourselves walking into the shadows, sometimes momentarily, but other times obstinately as the Pharisees, adjusting our sight to become ever more accustomed to the darkness. God forbid that we should be so bathed in the shadows of this world that when the Lord comes again, rising like the sun in the east, we should hold fast to our darkness as if it were light and ask, “Are we now blind?” only to hear our judgment pronounced, “Blind? If you were, you would not be guilty, but since you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”

 

For as we are more than capable of hearing without listening, so too are we adept at seeing without looking, when all Christ has ever said for our desire to see Salvation is, “You are looking at him; he is speaking to you.” Would that we had the humble simplicity of faith to respond as the man healed of his blindness, “Lord, I believe”.

​

It behoves no man to speak his own words when the great Apostle of conversion from blind darkness to Christ’s glorious light has said it first and better:

​

“Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  

(2 Corinthians 4:1-6)

 

and,

 

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”

(Ephesians 5:8)