While this man responds in faith “Lord, I Believe”, we can see looking back through this chapter, that there was a progression to this man’s belief and subsequent faith in Jesus.

First, in verse 11, this man says Jesus is a “man”; in verse 17, he says Jesus is “a prophet”; in verse 27, the man says that he is “a disciple” of Jesus; in verse 33, the man says Jesus must be “from God”; finally, in verse 38, this man believes that Jesus is the “Son of Man”, the Messiah.

All of this occurred after the man was healed of a life-long disability. There are several important things we can learn about from the experience of this man.

First, we often need to care for the physical needs of people before they can hear the importance of our spiritual message. Second, people need time to process the idea of coming to faith in Christ. It may take a person while to progress through the man-prophet-rabbi-God-Savior stages of faith and we need to give them as much space and time as they need. Finally, we must remember that Jesus is ultimately responsible for bringing people to salvation. We can do our best to share our faith with others and trust God to take care of the rest.

Before we leave this chapter, we need to see the intentional juxtaposition between being blind and seeing created in these verses. The Pharisees, who were supposedly the ones who could truly see, were blind to spiritual truth, while the man who was literally blind was the one who ended up being able to see. (v. 25)

Jesus tells us that this is exactly why He came into the world, and we would do well to heed His words.