In an irony of monumental proportions the council of Jewish leaders lead off their final assault of the credibility of the once blind man and the alleged miracle worker by calling on the man claiming a miracle has taken place to give glory to God, which is in essence what the man is doing without even knowing it. The council have no idea they are asking the man to do the very thing they do not want him to do. But given the fact that Jesus is God incarnate that is the end result!
They follow up their sanctimonious call for worship to God with a unilateral condemnation of the man called Jesus. Without mentioning his name they clamor, “We all know this man is a sinner.” The obvious implication is that the blind-man-now-healed knows this for a fact as well. Their verdict is obviously based on their assertion that Jesus broke the appropriate keeping of the Sabbath by making clay on the holy day. On their warped balance of justice, the act of making clay on the Sabbath overrides the healing of a blind man on the Sabbath, thus there is no way God would work through a person who is so flippant about keeping the Sabbath appropriately.
Their self-deceit is reaching the tipping point. They have called Jesus a Samaritan and dog. They have sought to discredit him. They have questioned his heritage and birth narrative. They have challenged his authority. They have denied his miracles in the past and now. And in the midst of their machinations to kill Jesus they seek to discredit him as well. All because of the inconvenient truth that Jesus preaches. When truth is deemed inconvenient, my unconverted heart will rationalize, compromise, negotiate, and ultimately deny truth in favor of a more palatable pabulum that does not unsettle my preferred reality. God, deliver me from my selfish leanings and let me humbly submit to your leading even if it is not convenient or comfortable at the time.
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