One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.
(John
9:25)
What is the
beginning of the Christian life? It is a seeing. It must be a seeing. The very
logic of things demands that it shall be a seeing; for this reason – that the
whole of the Christian life is to be a progressive movement along one line, to
one end. That line and that end is Christ. That was the issue with the man born
blind in John 9. You will remember how, after they cast him out, Jesus found
him, and said to him, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" and the man
answered and said, "And who is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him?" Jesus said
unto him, "Thou hast both seen Him and He it is That speaketh with thee." And he
said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped Him. The issue of spiritual sight is
the recognition of the Lord Jesus, and it is going to be that all the way
through from start to finish.
We may say
that our salvation was a matter of seeing ourselves as
sinners. But had it been left there it would have been a
poor lookout for us. No, the
whole matter is summed up into seeing Jesus; and when you
really see Jesus, what happens? What happened to Saul of
Tarsus? Well, a whole lot of things happened, and mighty
things which nothing else would have accomplished. You
would never have argued Saul of Tarsus into Christianity;
you would never have frightened him into Christianity;
you would never have either reasoned or emotionalized him into being a
Christian. To get that man out of Judaism needed something more than
could have been found on this earth. But he saw Jesus of Nazareth, and
that did it. He is out, he is an emancipated man, he has seen.