8:22 – Here is another one of these remarkable miracles of our Lord. He assented to their request by touching his eyes. But you notice that He led the blind man out of town. Had Bethsaida, where many of His mighty works had been performed, become like Nazareth where He could no longer perform mighty works? Surely there is no medicinal value in saliva, but the Lord uses this to increase the faith of this man. Let us read this and learn the spiritual truth for us here.
8:23-26 – This place of Bethsaida had already had judgment pronounced upon it (Matt. 11:21). Now there’s something in this miracle we want to look at very carefully. Why did He use this method? Couldn’t He have opened the eyes of this man as He did in other instances? Of course, He could have. He could have made this man see clearly at the very beginning. But there is a lesson for the man and a lesson here for us.
There are three stages in this case:
1. Blindness. We are all first spiritually blind. Like the blind man we can say, “Once I was blind, but now I can see.” But you’ll notice that He gained only partial sight, and only Mark tells us this.
2. Partial sight. Is this not our condition today? “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face…” (1 Cor. 13:12).
3. Perfect sight. The third stage is perfect vision. We’ll get our 20-20 spiritual vision when we come into His presence, and that’s when we’ll really be able to see.
You’ll notice that when our Lord had finished, He had healed this man perfectly.