R.C. Sproul

And how does Jesus answer the question?

Neither.

Didn't have anything to do with this man's sin or his parents, but that God may be glorified.

And he was indeed glorified through the healing of the man born blind.

But what was behind that question?

that the disciples raised of Jesus in John's gospel was the assumption that all suffering in this world is proportionately related to a person's particular degree of sinfulness.

This is a weighty matter.

I don't know how many times I've stood in a hospital room and talked

privately as a confessional situation with dying people who have expressed to me their conviction that the reason for their pain and their suffering was some particular sin that they had committed, and they wanted to get that off their conscience before they died.

That is far more present and pervasive among people than we realize.

We hardly ever talk about this.

because we want to divorce ourselves from any thought that there is a relationship between sin and suffering.

Yet, in the broad picture, the general scope of Scripture, we are told that it is because of sin that suffering and death come into the world.

so that there was a sound idea, at least partially, in the minds of the disciples when they asked the question, why is this man blind?

Is it because of his sin or the sin of his parents?

Because the disciples at least understood that there is some kind of a connection between moral evil and physical suffering.

But Jesus took that opportunity to teach them that though in general there would be no suffering and there'd be no death in the world if there were no sin in the world, nevertheless, we cannot rush to judgment, leap to the conclusion that everybody suffers in proportionate measure to the degree of their sin.

The Bible makes that very clear that that's not the case.

There are the wicked who prosper and the righteous who suffer.

The whole book of Job is designed to belie that misunderstanding and to show that Job was the most upright man in the whole world when he was visited with untold misery and suffering.