“We must do the works of Him who sent me”
John 9:4
Jesus healed a man who was born blind. What an incredible miracle! He gave light and color and perspective to a man who had never seen wildflowers, waterfalls, his best friend’s smile or his own mother’s face! He didn’t have a progressive disease that gradually took away his sight. He wasn’t stricken blind in some freak injury. He had never seen at all in his entire life and for the disciples of Jesus, a life like that posed a deep theological question: Who was to blame? Jesus answered their question in such a cool way, but His answer is fairly easy to completely misunderstand and it is worth digging in a little deeper - especially into the original language exact punctuation of our translations.
When you read John 9:3-4 in English, there seems to be something funky and fairly cutthroat about the response of Jesus about the plight of the blind man. It seems at first that Jesus is telling His disciples that this poor man was subject to an entire life with no sight just so Jesus could swoop in and be the hero of the moment, saving the day. When you read it, it’s as if Jesus needed a stage to show what He could do, so in order to set that up, this poor man had to suffer through an entire life of sightless struggle. Wow. Check it out for yourself:
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of Him who sent me.” (NIV)
Pretty cut and dry, right? Well, not really. Sometimes translations can be incredibly interpretive. In other words, the translators get as close as they can, but sometimes they let their own preferences of meaning come through in the English words they choose. For instance, in this translation, they simply added the words, “this happened so that” into the verse when they translated it. That idea is not in the original Greek at all. Not only that, but the Greek of the New Testament had absolutely no punctuation. In fact, it had no lower-case letters or paragraph indentions or even spaces between words! The entire original Gospel of John manuscripts looked like a 30 page unbroken block of capital letters. John 9:3-4 in our words (without the added stuff) would have looked something like this:
NEITHERTHISMANNORHISPARENTSSINNEDBUTTHATTHEWORKSOFGODMIGHTBEDISPLAYEDINHIMASLONGASITISDAYWEMUSTDOTHEWORKSOFHIMWHOSENTME
Whoa. Okay. So, when we translate that, we have work to do. We not only have to change Greek words to English equivalents, but we have to figure out where to put the punctuation. Greek scholars will tell you that the only way to decide which punctuation to use comes down to context, meaning and which rendering of the verses lines up with our doctrine best. In other words, what do we know about Jesus and which version sounds more like something He would really say? So, if we change the punctuation, what happens to these verses? Well, try this on and see how it reads:
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned. (stop) But that the works of God might be displayed in Him, as long as it is day, we must do the works of Him who sent me.”
Do you see the difference? Do you feel it as you read it? This version of the punctuation isn’t saying a guy had to suffer a sightess life so Jesus could show up all of a sudden and be the hero of the day. This version is saying, “The world is complicated and broken and you can’t just assign blame for suffering, but God wants to get to work in the business of reducing and relieving pain. Let’s join God and see if we can help this poor man.” Now that’s the Jesus I know. He doesn’t make people live through pain so that He can show off. He knows life is hard in a messed up world and His compassionate heart wants to roll up His sleeves and get down to helping the hurting. Let’s join Him.