Two things interest people about this miracle story: Once again, Jesus spits as he cures a man, which never fails to weird people out. What’s more, the man isn’t instantly cured, but gradually cured. Here’s the story.
Jesus went to Beit Chayda.People brought him a blind man, and begged
Jesus to heal him. Taking the blind man’s hand,Jesus led him out of the village, spat in his eyes, put his hands on him, and asked him,“Can you see anything?” He was getting his sight back, and said, “I see people; they’re like trees. I can see them walking around.”
Now
Jesus put his hands onthe man’s eyes, and he saw clearly; he was cured, and could clearly see everyone’s face.Jesus sent him home, telling him,“Don’t go into the village.”
Cleaning with spit.
Nowadays we don’t cure with spit. We tend to think of saliva as unclean and bacteria-filled; put it in an open wound and it’ll infect the wound. Yet lots of people do clean with spit: People will spit-shine their eyeglasses, their mirrors, their jewelry; some mothers will even clean their children’s faces with spit (and ewww).
Well, that’s what was happening here—and with every other instance of Jesus curing people with spit. The spit wasn’t so much for healing as it was for cleaning.
The ancient Jews used to think of sickness as a form of uncleanness. Lepers, fr’instance, were unclean, and had to stay away from the well lest they infect them. There was an all-too-common (and all-too-wrong) belief that disease and misfortune was the result of karma: If you sinned, God, or the universe, would punish you for it. This is why Jesus’s students once commented about a blind man, “Rabbi, who sinned so that this man became blind?—he, or his parents?” (Jn 9.2) Unclean living produces illness.
And sometimes blindness was caused because of unclean living. Let’s face it: Sometimes people get stuff in their eyes, and it blinds them. Happens to me every allergy season. In Catholic bibles, we read where this happened to Tobit:
That night, I sat shiva, and because I was unclean, I slept by the courtyard wall. My face was uncovered. I didn’t know there were sparrows on the wall. My eyes were open, and the sparrows emptied their bowels into my eyes, and my eyes became white
as tablets. I went to physicians, and they didn’t help me.
Tobit spent the next four years blind, until an angel instructed his son Tobias to cure him by anointing his eyes with fish-gall salve. And while this story isn’t in the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible), it wasn’t unfamiliar to the Jews of Jesus’s day. People were blind because, again, they were unclean; they had stuff in their eyes. Tobit had bird droppings, Paul had scales, (Ac 9.18) and the other blind men, whom Jesus cured with spit, had something which needed to be washed away. Wash it away and see.
So when Jesus cured people with spit, it wasn’t because there were any sort of magical properties in spit. Even Jesus’s spit. It was to represent cleansing. Maybe there was actual cleansing which needed to be done; maybe it was all in the heads of the people Jesus cured. No matter. Where Jesus felt it necessary, he used spit.
Sometimes when we pray for people to be healed, they ask for certain things. They might want us to put our hands on the afflicted area. They might want to be daubed with oil. They might want a certain prayer. They don’t need any of those things—and they probably know they don’t need any of those things; they just need Jesus—but it comforts them, and there’s nothing wrong with comforting people. Jesus didn’t need to cure with spit, but he recognized his patients needed it, so he provided, because he’s kind. Let’s follow his example.
Gradual results and stretching faith.
This story is unique in the gospels because the man wasn’t cured immediately. Every other miracle story depicts an immediate miracle: They’re instantly or quickly fixed. Paraplegics can stand up, deaf can hear, mute can talk, blind can see, high fevers vanish, and the dead can have lunch. Yet in this story, Jesus spits, gets a partial result, then touches the blind man’s eyes and gets a full result.
Why did God heal this man in stages? Well, when he does this sort of thing to us—when he heals a person part-way, then as we continue to pray, he heals the person the rest of the way—it’s to stretch our faith. It’s to get us to keep praying, and not stop till we see full healing; to not be satisfied till we see a complete work.
So… would Jesus need his faith stretched like that? Well, sometimes that’s precisely how popular fiction describes him. To put a little drama and tension into novels and movies, the writers make Jesus sound like he’s not so sure whether he can cure certain people—but he tries, and succeeds, and hallelujah. And if Christians are more familiar with the fiction than the gospels, some of that idea slips into our minds, and makes us wonder how far Jesus trusted the Father. But don’t base your ideas of Jesus on fiction. The scriptures make clear Jesus absolutely trusted the Father. It’d be hypocritical of him to rebuke his students for their tiny faith and huge doubts, when he had similar doubts—but he had no such thing. He didn’t need his faith stretched. His faith was absolute. He wants our faith to likewise be absolute.
So if the healing took place this way in order to stretch faith, whose faith might need the stretching? Maybe the students who observed this. Maybe the blind man. His statement, “I see people; they’re like trees. I can see them walking around,” (8.24) implies at one point he could see, ’cause he knew what people should look like, and he knew what trees did look like, and he could tell what walking around looks like. (Some translations like the NLT have him say, “They look like trees walking around,” as if walking trees makes any sense.) It may be that other healers had tried cleaning his eyes to see what results they might get—and this was as good as it got: He could see shapes and forms, but nothing distinct. It may be that there was nothing miraculous at all about this part. This was as far as people, unaided by the Holy Spirit, can go.
The next step was as far as the Holy Spirit can go: Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes, and he could see everyone. They looked like trees no more. He could distinguish faces. He had his eyesight back.
It is our duty, as God’s followers, to push the Holy Spirit as far as he’s willing to go. Jesus taught us to pray for things and not give up, (Lk 18.1-8) so when we see partial answers, we’re to persistently pray through to the full answer. Being part cured is not the same as cured, yet some people are perfectly satisfied with improvement—which is why they’re not entirely cured, even though the Spirit is entirely willing to cure them. Never settle. Keep praying.