Hardship and God’s Kindness
3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
From a close reading of John 9 we know that it was not that this man or his parents sinned, but that Jesus might display the works of God through his hardship. Jesus said so himself in verses 3-4. John goes on to tell us that Jesus mixed up some mud, rubbed it on the man’s eyes, and healed him. The disciples and especially the Pharisees should’ve known the significance of this miracle.
The prophet Isaiah foretold that the dawning of God’s kindness, the age of salvation, would be marked by the healing of the blind. Isaiah predicted, “The the eyes of the blind shall be opened…” Jesus, who is true Light from true Light and true God from true God, has come, sent by the Father, to make God’s kindness known to those trapped in physical and spiritual darkness. So in Jesus what do we learn of God’s kindness?
In kindness, God uses hardship to bring us near to Christ (v. 1-6, 35-41). It was the man’s blindness that attracted Jesus. This is a consistent pattern in Jesus’s ministry. Jesus moves away from those who think they see and who think they are well, instead drawing near to the blind, sick, poor, lame, outcast, and ashamed. Jesus draws near to those trapped in hardship. Jesus came near to the blind man and invited the man to believe in him and have life in his name. John tells us in verse 38 that the man believed in Jesus and worshipped him. So you see, God used blindness to bring this man to life in Jesus. This was also true for a man named Job.
Job was a decent man and the Lord permitted Satan to afflict him with all sorts of hardship. Job lost everything except his own life. Job’s friends were sure that he must have done something to deserve what came his way, but they were woefully mistaken. In the end, reflecting upon his hardship, this is Job’s conclusion: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…” (Job 42:5). God used hardship to make his kindness known to Job too. Isn’t this also true for us?
Consider your own past troubles. For some of us God used hardship to bring us to experience his kindness in Jesus for the very first time much like the blind man in John 9. And for some of us God is using hardship to bring us deeper into the knowledge of his kindness in Christ more like Job. Either way, we can look back today and conclude that without hardship we might not know the depth and tenderness of Jesus’s kindness.In kindness, God is bringing all hardship to an end (v. 7, 25). The world wasn’t created to be tainted with blindness, lameness, injustice, sickness, or death. Such things are the result of sin. Jesus heals this man of his blindness to demonstrate that God is bringing these sorts of things to an end. A new world is coming. One where all sad things come untrue and where hardship finally comes to an end. God’s word says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:1, 4). We can be sure that in his kindness God is bringing hardships to an end because of Jesus’s own hardship.
Jesus most clearly reveals God’s kindness in the hardship of the cross. He embraced the cross which he didn’t deserve. There was no sin in him that he should suffer in that way, and yet he did so for our sake. The sin from which all our hardship results was laid on him, and in kindness, Jesus closed his eyes in death only to open them again in resurrection power and glory. Because this is so, we can be sure today through faith in Him that one day our eyes will also open in a world without hardship or end. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Paul helps us apply this truth.
He writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted.” Be comforted by Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. Hardship does not mean that God’s kindness has departed. Rather, in his kindness God is using hardships to draw us nearer to Christ, and to prepare us for the world to come. Now, out of the overflow of the gospel’s comfort we can so comfort others in Jesus’s name. The gospel empowers us to be agents of God’s kindness in the world. Like Jesus, we can move towards the hurting. We can be present with them and we can pray and work in his name to reverse the hardships of our neighbors where it is in our power to do so.
