Rescue from Original Sin and Actual Sin / John 9 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday March 15th 2026 / Season of Lent / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday March 15th 2026: Lent 4 / John 9 “Rescue from Original Sin and Actual Sin”

As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I Am in the world, I Am the light of the world.” Having said these things, He spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then He anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.

The neighbours and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is He?” He said, “I do not know.”

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for He does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about Him, since He has opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “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.”

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.” He answered, “Whether He is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?” He answered them, “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?” 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.” 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.” They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is He, sir, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen Him, and it is He who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped Him. Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near Him heard these things, and said to Him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends Saint Peter would later write how Jesus “Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds,” Saint Peter says, “you have been healed.”[1] In the season of Lent leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion upon the tree of the cross sin is of course an important consideration as it was our sin that brought Jesus’ death, a death He wouldn’t have had to suffer apart from our sin, because apart from our sin He was without sin of His own and was free of any personal condemnation. Now seeing Jesus hung upon His Good Friday cross a passerby could have asked the question: “Who sinned, this man or His parents, that He should suffer in this way?” This as it turns out is the sort of question that Jesus’ disciples asked Jesus about the man blind from birth, when they asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered [His disciples], “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”[2] Today let’s focus on this Q&A.

When Jesus says “It was not that this man sinned” notice Jesus is saying that being born with trouble in your life is not your own fault. There already is trouble in the world thanks to Adam and Eve: there already is sin and death and pain and thorns and thistles and hard labour thanks to Adam and Eve. You as an individual didn’t cause this original sin to impact your life. You inherited it. And like any inheritance it belongs to you and it eventually becomes yours and as a result you still suffer from it in many ways. Also this original sin is there regardless of the sinfulness of a person’s parents because the sort of sin that seemingly causes random birth defects entered into the World not due to any sins committed today but rather due to the very first sin committed by Adam and Eve now handed down to us.

For their part Jesus’ disciples knew that sins committed by individuals in the course of living their lives in the here and the now did have consequences so that was likely part of the reason they were asking their question about this man born blind.  They knew it didn’t take long from Adam and Eve’s fall for sin to worm its way into people’s lives causing death and destruction. They would have known about Adam and Eve’s firstborn son Cain and how he was jealous of his little brother Able because the Lord approved of Able’s offering and Cain’s offering the Lord didn’t regard. And they’d likely also have remembered the warning the LORD provided Cain in the Book of Genesis knowing how anger could lead to murder: “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”[3]And they would have been taught how God had warned Cain and Able’s father Adam saying “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”[4] You see Scripture doesn’t talk about death or sin or any trouble before that point, yet after that point trouble escalate quickly. That was ground zero for sin, ground zero for death and from that point these enemies entered into the world along with pain and thorns and thistles and sweat, and for some even blindness from birth. So apart from Adam and Eve they understood how sin pre-existed all of us, how it was already around before me or you were born, just as it was around before Cain and Able were born, just as it was around before any of Jesus’ disciples were born, around before this man — from our Gospel — was born and before this man’s parent’s were born.   

The way God warned Cain of the dangers of sin is intriguing, when God says “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it,” the Lord is reminding us that Sin is always there, seeking to control us, and yes ravenously seeking to eat us alive from the inside out. From the point of conception there it is hovering over you. Like a crow seeking to get into the mother Robin’s nest to eat her eggs, worse than that it has set up shop in the house of your heart and like an infestation you are in need of fumigating, and exterminating this deadly pest; it’s like that thriller “When a Stranger Calls”[5] based on an urban legend where it turns out that the murder is calling from inside the house, so it is with original sin.[6] Is there anyone for whom this is different? From the time of Adam and Eve and their first children to now is there anyone for whom this is different? Jesus, being born of the Virgin Mary, is the only one for whom this was different because He was conceived without sin and was born without sin: He was not conceived by the actions of a man but by the workings of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ conception and birth doesn’t fit the pattern of original sin making Him like unto Adam before Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, therefore Jesus is provided to us as the New Adam,[7] one uniquely qualified to face the sin “crouching at the door;” the sin that sets up shop in the house of our hearts until we are rescued from it by grace through faith in Christ. Keeping this in mind, and remembering that they had yet to fully understand Jesus’ incarnation at this point before Jesus’ death and resurrection from the dead, it is understandable that the disciples should ask Jesus the question that they ask Him from today’s Gospel reading.   

Dear ones when Jesus says, “It was not that this man’s parents sinned” notice that Jesus is pointing past the man’s parents into the past, but to where? ... Back to where sin began. Now this doesn’t mean that our parents were or are somehow perfect they are not: but if they break the fourth commandment and cheat on their taxes or if they get angry with their brother or sister such sins won’t cause their children to be born blind. The world was broken before they sinned sins of their own, the world needed to be restored before they themselves as parents were even born. We know that regardless of whether a mother ignorantly or wilfully takes certain drugs or drinks or smokes while pregnant such actions may adversely impact the health of her developing child in the womb but gossiping, and coveting what doesn’t belong to her, or missing church on Sunday won’t likely cause a child to be born blind.    

What Jesus does say is that, in this case, the case of the man born blind, he was born that way so “that the works of God might be displayed in him.” This is of interest here because there is an immediate way this is true and a second way this is likewise true that is further revealed to be true by the end of our Gospel Reading. So first off it was so that Jesus could then spit on the ground make mud with His saliva and anoint the man’s eyes with the mud and say to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” It was to provide opportunity for the blind man with mud on his eyes to go on his way and do as Jesus commanded him, to wash off the mud and come back seeing. Jesus gave the man his sight! For this man Jesus cleared away the effects of sin and death, for this man Jesus cleared away the pain and thorns and thistles of his blindness. Dear ones in this work of healing  Jesus shows that He can do this not just for this blind man but also for us, this then becomes and pledge and promise that Christ can and will do this either now or certainly in The End on the Last Day.

Now when Jesus says “We must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” What is Jesus talking about? Well some of those things, those works of God the Father would be baptism and the forgiveness of sins, along with preaching and teaching the faith. In all of these things pastors and people, mothers and fathers in their proscribed ways, are set aside by God as the means by which the church ‘work the works of God while it is day before the night comes.’ In a more immediate way Jesus says this to His disciples because soon they will be running up against the end of what we will later call Holy Week, where in the dark night of Maundy Thursday of that week on the Mount of Olives Jesus will be arrested and they will be scattered, and then by the end of the day on the day we now call Good Friday a supernatural darkness would fall upon them all as Jesus hangs dying upon the cross. Upon the cross in His death Jesus finishes His work, and leading up to that day the work God the Father does through His only begotten Son Jesus with this man blind from birth doesn’t only reverse the effects of his blindness it shines light on who Jesus is and what He’s been sent to do. What does Saint John record at the beginning of his Gospel “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”[8] This is the second work that is being done as a result of this man being healed of his blindness ... to show that Jesus is God to a people who had become blind to the eternal nature of God and what God was doing in the World. Consider how the whole situation concludes:

[When] Jesus heard that [the Pharisees] had cast [the man healed of his blindness] out, and having found him He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is He, sir, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen Him, and it is He who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped [Jesus]. Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near [Jesus] heard these things, and said to Him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”[9]

Dear ones this is a call to repentance for them, will they hear it?[10] As Jesus says in the Gospel of Saint Matthew “they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”[11] With the healing of this man born blind Jesus is providing an escape for them and for those who follow them, will they be rescued from the darkness of their blindness or will they recoil from that rescue?

For this reason we thank God today, that the grace of God, the face of God has shined upon us in His Son, that we’re being rescued from the blindness of our sin, that Jesus in the waters of baptism provides the clearing away of the eternal consequences and effects of sin and death for us, and that because of this baptism we have the promise that on The Last Day, Jesus, who is making all things new, will clear away pain and thorns and thistles and sickness forever as He promises to do.[12] Therefore as forgiven, baptised children of God who are now alive in Christ Jesus we can daily remember, even in our struggles, that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[13]

Jesus came into the world to save the World to provide rescue for a world undone by sin: He grew in His mother Mary’s womb, was born and lived and died so that this man born blind — from our gospel text — could have his sight, so that you could be made whole and be rescued from sin and death; so you could be rescued from the sin and death that you didn’t at first cause; from the sin and death that you had been saddled with from your conception; so you could be rescued from the sin and death that you have perpetrated by your own actions day in and day out. He saves you from all of it.

I leave you with this: A very early Christian teacher, Irenaeus who lived between 120-202 A.D., wrote the following: Irenaeus  said “[Jesus] came to save all through Himself - all I say, who through Him are reborn in God - infants, and children, and youths, and old men. Therefore [Jesus] passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, [making holy] infants; a child for children, [making holy] those who are of that age, and at the same time becoming for them an example of piety, of righteousness, and of submission; a young man for youths, becoming an example for youths and [making them holy] for the Lord.”[14] So while sin was ever crouching at Jesus’ door leading up to His death upon the cross and its desire was for Jesus just as its desire is for you we can now live knowing that Jesus didn’t let that crouching sin into His heart. He did this so you can have that sin evicted from your heart and shooed away from the threshold of your door. Instead of giving it a saucer of milk and free access to His heart Jesus ruled over it in His life, and at the cross in His death Jesus conquered it, and in that victory it was clear that he had not only ruled over it through His life He’d in fact conquered it at every step along the way: in the womb, and as an infant, and as a child, He conquered it as a youth and as a grown man and it remains conquered even now. This is the Word made flesh, God incarnate, who stood before the man born blind to set right His fallen creation giving us and all witnesses of this healing a foretaste of what will come upon His glorious return on The Last Day.

In the light of this Jesus all blindness is washed away, all sin is washed away, all death is washed away: in Him is life, eternal life. Jesus’ desire is for you and His desire for you outmatches sin’s desire for you, no crow of death, no murderer calling from inside the house of your heart, no physical trouble, no birth defect, no sin of any kind is stronger than Jesus and His forgiveness which He’s won for you. Jesus restoring the eye sight of the man born blind to what it ought to have been before the fall is proof that Jesus does the works of Him who sent Him, works that ultimately point to the work He accomplished upon the cross of His crucifixion: total and complete redemption, rescue, restoration. Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] 1 Peter 2:24
[2] John 9:2-5
[3] Genesis 4:6-7
[4] Genesis 2:16-17
[5] When a Stranger Calls (1979) by Fred Walton staring Carol Kane & Charles Durning.
[6] Psalm 51:5 in this Psalm King David acknowledges original sin and by extension we know it impacts us all.
[7] 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
[8] John 1:1–5
[9] John 9:35–41
[10] Isaiah 42:18–21
[11] Matthew 15:14
[12] Revelation 21:4
[13] Romans 8:38-39
[14] Against Heresies (Book II, Chapter 22) Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, Christian Literature Publishing Co., Buffalo, NY 1885.

Photo Credit: Jesus healing blind man WikiMedia Commons