The second to last of Jesus’ “signs,” or miracles, narrated in the Gospel of John is his giving sight to a man who had been born blind (John 9:1-41). As spectacular as such a miracle must have been, it is not the climax of the narrative but is completed quite early in the passage (9:7). The climax is the blind man’s spiritual healing:
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 [prosekynēsēn] him. (John 9:35-38)
It is likely that the formerly blind man did not realize or understand at the time that Jesus was God incarnate. However, the reader of the Gospel has abundant reasons to understand the man’s action toward Christ to be presented in the literary and theological context of the Gospel of John as worship in the full, religious sense of the word. We will simply list these without detailed elaboration.
1. The man does not perform the act of worship out of fear, nor does he do so because he is asking Jesus for something. This is not, as in some other instances in the Gospels, an act of humble respect when first meeting Jesus. This is instead what the man does at the end of his encounter with Jesus.
2. John elsewhere consistently uses the word “worship” only in reference to the worship to be given to God (John 4:20-24; 12:20).
3. The man addresses Jesus as “Lord” (9:36, 38). Whereas the first use of this title might justifiably be understood in the polite sense of “sir,” the second clearly cannot, at least in the narrative context of the Gospel.
4. Jesus asks the man if he “believes in” him (9:35), and when the man understands that Jesus is referring to himself, the man agrees, “I believe” (9:38a). Thus, Jesus is not only the object of “worship,” he is also the object of belief or faith.
5. Jesus identifies himself as “the Son of Man” (9:35), a divine title in John that Jesus has already used in reference to his heavenly origin (John 1:51; 3:13; 6:62).1
6. Jesus’ statement that he “came into the world” to enable the blind to see and those who falsely claimed sight to judicially blinded (9:39), in the context of the Gospel of John, is another reference to his heavenly origin as the divine Son (cf. especially John 1:9-11).
7. Elsewhere, Jesus asserted that it was the Father’s will “that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (John 5:23), so that it would make sense that people should give Jesus the Son the same worship they give to the Father.
8. This passage anticipates the climactic passage in the Gospel, in which Thomas’ response to seeing the risen Jesus is widely acknowledged to be an expression of worship. The formerly blind man was able to see, invited to believe in Jesus, addressed him as Lord, believed in him, and worshiped him. In John 20, Thomas was graciously given the opportunity to see Jesus (20:26), urged by Jesus to believe (20:27), responded by confessing Jesus as Lord and God (20:28), and was told that those who believed without seeing would be blessed (20:29).
One of these points by itself might not be sufficient basis for understanding the man’s action in the Gospel’s overall teaching as worship. However, cumulatively these eight points make a strong argument for that interpretation. Ray Lozano offers the following comment in his monograph on the worship of Jesus in the New Testament:
However, while it is probably right to insist that on the story level, the formerly blind man does not himself fully recognize and render proskynēsis [“worship”] to Jesus as divine, the reader of John’s Gospel perceives the deeper significance of key narrative details and motifs, and accordingly is meant to see that the formerly blind man is portrayed worshipping Jesus better than he knew.2
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This article is based on material in the forthcoming new book The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, by Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2024).
NOTES
1. We discuss the evidence that “the Son of Man” is a divine title in chapter 37 of our book.
2. Ray M. Lozano, The Proskynesis of Jesus in the New Testament: A Study on the Significance of Jesus As an Object of “Proskuneo” in the New Testament Writings, LNTS 609 (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 112; see 109–115.