THE THIEF COMES TO STEAL, KILL & DESTROY (PART VI)

“Spiritual Blindness Begets Spiritual Deadness”

By Akin Ojumu

If this installment is your first foray into this commentary series on John 10:10, I say, welcome to the odyssey. We are happy you are able to join us as we take this exciting voyage into the Bible. To get the full experience of this adventure, though, you’d have to go back to review Parts I-V of the series. That way, you’d be able to catch up on what has been discussed up to this point.

John 10:10

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

John 10:10 is one of those popular Bible passages that has been a victim of serial abuse and misuse by church folks. Egregiously, the text is an eisegetical casualty of wrong interpretation, wrong implication, and wrong application. Many preachers have made a complete mess of this important passage of Scripture.

For any Bible text to have true meaning, it must be interpreted accurately and with precision. The efficacy and transforming power of the Word of God in the life of the believer comes only when Bible passages are perfectly interpreted, properly understood and precisely applied. Erroneous interpretation, understanding, and application of Scriptures will bring nothing but ruination and devastation to the soul.

When we kicked off the commentary series eleven days ago, we made it clear that what many of you understood John 10:10 to mean is not what the text actually says. Contrary to what you’ve been taught and told, the thief mentioned in this verse who comes to steal, kill, and destroy is not the devil. The Lord Jesus Christ wasn’t referring to Satan when He made these remarks.

For those who have followed this commentary series carefully, I’m sure you’d by now have gotten an inkling who the stealing, killing, and destroying thief really is. Given the extensively detailed contextual background provided so far, those of you who have been paying close attention should be able to hazard a guess on who is the thief that steals, kills, and destroys.

All that being said, this commentary series is not a hidden object puzzle adventure. Readers of this exposé are not players in a puzzle game with a mystery-themed storyline where participants must find hidden treasures. This is a serious expository deep dive into John 10:10. We are simply exegeting the text to draw out from it the intended meaning.

So far, we’ve talked about the prevailing religious context of John 10:10. It was during a period of religious apostasy which created a religious system that elevated the Traditions of the Elders to equal stature with the Torah, i.e., the Law of God given to Moses. This religious system taught that any affliction was the result of either the sin of the afflicted or their parents’. It was a system that put premium on the external shows of spirituality wherein empty ceremonies, superficial worship, errant doctrines, indifferent prayers, and legalistic moralism were mistaken for true worship.

Overseeing this apostate religious system were the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Scribes. These were spiritually blind religious leaders whose teachings and practices had turned the people away from God and were leading them straight to hell instead. Under their control, Judaism had become a Ponzi scheme. The religious leaders had transformed the worship of YAHWEH into a means of extortion, and the House of God had become a den of robbers.

In Matthew 23:23, the Lord Jesus excoriated the religious leaders for their emphasis on the minutiae; they were adept at keeping meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime, while neglecting the weightier matters of the law, like justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Furthermore, the Lord Jesus scolded them for their outward show of piety of buffing the surface of cups and bowls, so they sparkle in the sun, while on the inside they are maggoty with greed and gluttony (Matthew 23:25-26). He rebuked them for being manicured graveyards which on the outside appear beautiful but inside are full of rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh (Matthew 23:27). Lastly, the Lord castigated them for being serpents and a brood of vipers, who would not escape the sentence of hell (Matthew 23:29-33).

The cruelty and callousness of the religious leaders was in full display in the vicious manner in which they responded to the healing of the man who was born blind. Having been brought before them by the blind man’s equally cruel neighbors, the Pharisees subjected the man to fierce interrogation as though he was a criminal.

So grueling was the grilling of the blind man that the Pharisees even summoned his parents as material witnesses. Refusing to believe the man was blind and healed, they dragged the parents to come and testify under oath that the man was indeed their son who was born blind. 

John 9:19-23

“Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

Having understood that they would be kicked out of the synagogue if they attested to the fact that their blind son was healed by Jesus, the parents did what any of us would do, they went into the self-preservation mode. While they acknowledged that the man was their son, they punted on the question of the circumstances surrounding his healing. Scared to bits, they told the Pharisees that their son was old enough to tell them how he got healed and who healed him.

John 9:24

“So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.”

When the Pharisees couldn’t get the blind man’s parents to implicate themselves by saying Jesus is the Christ, i.e., the Anointed One, the Messiah, they brought the blind man back for another round of interrogations. This time around, they wanted him to outrightly denounce the Lord Jesus as a sinner. But the man simply wouldn’t. He refused to deny the miracle he had experienced.

John 9:27

“I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”

After repeatedly pressing him to tell them how he got healed, the blind man had had enough. Tauntingly, he asked them whether they wanted to become Jesus’s disciples.

John 9:28-29

“And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.””

When they heard the blind man say that, they flew into a rage and cursed him out. How dare you, they yelled at him? Feeling scandalized to be called the disciples of Jesus, a man they had already labelled a demon-possessed Samaritan, they unleashed their ire on the blind man. 

John 9:30-33

“The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.””

In there rage, the religious leaders foolishly revealed their profound lack of spiritual insight. Even though they were supposed to belong to the super-spiritual class of people and they considered themselves erudite scholars of the Torah, it took a man who was born blind to remind them what the Scriptures actually say.

In a twist of irony, while the uneducated beggarly blind sinner was able to clearly see that the Lord Jesus Christ was more than a mere man, the super-spiritual, fully sighted, Pharisees were too spiritually blind to that truth. The Pharisees, in their spiritual blindness, could not discern God or His truth.

The Pharisees were incensed and their anger prevented them from seeing the penetrating insight that the uneducated healed man had demonstrated. Enraged that a poor blind beggar would dare teach them what the Scriptures say, the religious leaders exposed their ignorance of Scripture, for the Old Testament had indicated that the coming messianic age would be evidenced by restoration of sight to the blind.

John 9:34

“They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.”

Unable to persuade the blind man to denounce the Lord Jesus, the religious leaders poured their ire on him. Consumed by hatred for the Good Shepherd, the evil shepherds of Israel shut up their bowel of compassion against a man delivered from a life of blindness. Like ravenous wolves, they sought to steal, kill, and destroy the poor man’s joy. In their bitterness and self-centeredness, they excommunicated the blind man from the assembly of his fellow Jews simply because he would not budge in his belief that the Lord Jesus is of God.

Stay tuned for the next installment.