Spiritual Blindness
As I was preparing for my sermon for Delta this week on Genesis 6 (to cover for Pastor Ron’s vacation), It was evident that although the flood brought a renewal to the planet, it could not renew or redeem the human condition of sin. And I was reflecting on that passage; I randomly came upon Luke 18:9-14 that helped to point out the impossibility of human renewal and redemption without God. In this passage Jesus shares a parable that compares two types of people. One of them being a pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee’s were teachers of God’s law, kind of like your every day pastor, that tries to follow God and encourage others to do the same, but in this story, there was something wrong with this pharisee. And it is a wrongness that we all share and plagues the human condition. The other person was a tax collector, who was seen as someone that lied and cheated to get more money and was considered a sinner. When reading the passage, I hope we can relate to both and realize that the tax collector showed an important attitude and behaviour when talking to God in his prayers. And I pray that God will help us emulate the same attitude and behaviour when encountering Him in our prayers.
When reading the parable, we need to ask who did God accept and Justify (declared righteous)? It was the tax collector that was declared righteous by God. But why not the pharisee? The pharisee seems to be like a guy that’s been following God’s laws and in fact is trying to show off to God in v. 11 where he prays (it’s not really a prayer, more like a self-congratulatory speech) to God:
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
First of all, even if he is not like the robbers, evildoers, adulterers or the tax collector, he is still bad. And that’s the thing that the pharisee fails to admit and see. He likes to compare himself to others and look down on them, and when he does that, he fails to see his own sin and that he has done wrong at some point in his life too and needs a savior.
In Romans 3:23 it says:
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Everyone is under the power of sin and to prove that we have James 2:10-11, where it says:
10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,”[b] also said, “You shall not murder.”[c] If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
You break one law of God; it’s like breaking them all and you are now categorized in God’s eyes as a law breaker.
What this pharisee suffers from is a case of pride, but also spiritual blindness. Spiritual blindness is different from actual blindness. Because when you are actually blind, you know you are blind and you can’t see. And that’s very evident in your life. But spiritual blindness is a type of blindness that we all suffer from, where we have trouble and/or cannot see our own sins, mistakes and lawbreaking. And a lot of the times we don’t know that we are spiritually blind, unlike actual blindness. That is the wrongness that the pharisee and all of us suffer from and causes an inability and impossibility for renewal and redemption.
You will never have a blind person or someone that has really horrible vision say that they can see things clearly visually, because with actual blindness or bad vision, you can’t fool yourself or others to think that you have amazing vision and can drive a car or fly a plane safely.
While spiritual blindness, we can fool ourselves to think that we can see sin or lawbreaking in ourselves.
And this parable is telling us to realize that we are spiritually blind to our own sins. We can see the sin of others pretty well at times, but we have trouble or an inability to see our own sins, our own mistakes our own lawbreaking imperfections and shortcomings.
And we need God’s Word and those who we can trust, like our closest friends or mature people in the church to be able to help us and spot it out for us.
The pharisee was trying, in his spiritual blindness, to declare himself right before God and to impress God, but can we do that? Is God impressed?
No.
We need to be reminded of passages like Romans 3:23 and James 2:10-11 and many other passages that makes it very clear that we are broken. And we don’t even have to look at the bible to realize that, just look how broken we ourselves are and everyone else in the world. Work in retail and you will find out soon enough your brokenness and the brokenness of others. We need to be reminded because there are many times that we want to justify ourselves before God.
That is why the Pharisee wasn’t justified, because how can God justify someone who is that blind or someone who doesn’t think they need saving?
The pharisee says the word “I” and mentions himself and congratulates himself 3-4 times in this passage. If the person doesn’t see their sin and therefore doesn’t see their need for God then they can’t be saved, unless God acts. Only God can do the impossible. A flood like in Genesis 6 cannot renew or redeem us, but Jesus can.
When the tax collector encounters God in his prayers, he is made aware and unblinded of his sins, and God justified him. When the Tax collector cried for mercy the Greek word he used also means atonement.
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
The Tax Collector is asking God to atone for his sins, to pay and make right the wrongs and sins he has done. He took an attitude and posture and behaviour of begging God to make things right again.
Only through Jesus can we be redeemed, renewed, justified and atoned. In Romans 3:24 it says,
24 “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
My hope and prayer for all of us, including myself, is that God will unblind us as we encounter Him in prayer, in reading His word, and interacting with our church family and have the same attitude and behaviour of the tax collector and know that it is only through Jesus that the impossible can happen, where we can be redeemed and begin renewal.
Blessings,
Pastor Edgar