I have been legally blind since birth and am fascinated with how Jesus healed blind people in the Bible. I want to take a closer look at each method He used.

In my last post, I talked about how you can have faith in the interruptions of life, like Jairus. In this post, I want to talk about another favorite topic, Jesus’s healing of blind people.

Jesus healed all kinds of sickness, disease, disability, and every other affliction in His ministry. You member my excitement as I talked about Jesus healing paralyzed people. I am just as excited about Jesus healing the blind because I have been legally blind since birth. I believe He will heal my eyes along with my body.

It’s fascinating to look at how Jesus healed blind people. Sometimes the Bible does not give us specifics but when it does, I find the ways Jesus healed blind people incredible. As we examine what Jesus did and how He did it, I hope you will be as intrigued as me.

Causes for Biblical Blindness

Blindness in biblical times could be caused in much the same ways it is caused today. There is only one instance of a man born blind in the Gospels. I would imagine most blindness was caused perhaps on the job or through accidents.

The Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionaryl offers that people could be blinded as a result of infection, called trachoma. Leprosy can also affect the eyes and cause blindness in its advanced stages. Unfortunately, people in ancient times considered blindness to be caused by spiritual sinfulness and being unclean.

Jesus Healed Blind People in Groups

You see Jesus healing many people at once, and the blind were included among these crowds of people (Matthew 21:14; Luke 7:21; John 5:3). In these cases, Jesus heals blind people among the groups of people He is healing. It shows how blindness was not impossible for Him to cure. He just did it in large groups.

Jesus Healed Blind People in Multiples

A couple times in the Gospels, Jesus heals two blind men. He actually does this multiple times, but the other healing was done in the same city as another blind person. I will cover that next. Matthew tells us of a time Jesus healed two blind men who called out to Him (Matthew 9:27-31). It’s possible this also occurs in Jericho as Matthew recounts of two blind people healed by Jesus in the next section.

The Bible doesn’t tell us how these blind men knew Jesus was around, but they followed Him and cried out, “can’t have mercy on us, Son of David!” It was unusual for anyone to call Jesus the Son of David because it had prophetic overtones that most people did not realize Jesus fulfilled at the time.

Jesus entered a house and these two blind men were so desperate for healing that they followed him! Jesus questioned if they believed His healing ability, and they told Him, “Yes.” Even though they had been following Him and crying out to Him, He wanted to hear their confession of faith. He healed them according to their faith.

Many people wonder why Jesus tells people that He heals not to tell anyone, but John explained the best. He says Jesus kept telling His disciples, “My hour has not yet come.” It seems that Jesus could only do so many miracles before it would catch up with Him and the religious leaders would seek to kill Him.

Jesus Heals Blind People at Jericho

The city of Jericho experienced a couple of healing miracles by Jesus of blind people. Here, we see our second reference to Jesus healing two people on His way out of town (Matthew 20:29-34). Look at the faith of these two blind people.

As Jesus is passing by with a great crowd following Him, and these two blind men outside of Jericho here that it is Jesus. They had a similar cry of help for healing as the other two blind men we discussed earlier. They call Jesus the Son of David. It amazes me that these physically blind man understood Jesus’s prophetic role and powers better than the crowd around Him.

The crowd tried to shut them up but these men refused to give up. I believe it is because of their persistence that Jesus stops and calls to them. Even when the crowd tells them to be quiet, they get even louder. They know the significance of who Jesus is.

Jesus’s reply to them is instructive for us prayer intercessors. He does not assume anything. Although anyone can see they are blind and want to be healed, Jesus asks them what they wanted Him to do for them.

We should not presume based on what people look like or are select acting when they come for prayer that we know what they need. Sometimes it’s something we could not have expected. In a sense, it’s rude to think you know what someone’s request is and how to pray for it.

It’s also a bit ironic that Jesus asks. But as we have seen so many times in our healing studies, Jesus wants them to declare their faith. They asked Jesus to open their eyes. Look at Jesus’s actions. First, He is moved to compassion. Their life would have been lonely and dark and they could not work for a living. Jesus understands that.

Next, Jesus touched their eyes. In other places, we are not told the method of healing. Here, we see Jesus reaches out and touches their eyes out of compassion. Finally, they immediately recovered their sight…and followed Him.

They already believed in Jesus’s ability to heal them. They follow Him as they did before, only this time as disciples and not people in need of healing. We wonder in our Western mindset why we don’t see as many healings today as we used to.

One reason is that healing is meant for unbelievers as a first step toward following Jesus. It’s not that this always has to be the case, but many times it is. Jesus does amazing miracles among unbelievers to show them His power. How can you not believe when Jesus does the impossible for you?

Another famous healing of the blind person from Jericho occurs perhaps before this healing (Mark 10:46-52; Luke 18:35-43). This blind beggar has a name, Bartimaeus, which may mean he was well-known by the people in Jericho.

Mark says Jesus was leaving Jericho and Luke says He was coming to Jericho when He met Bartimaeus. Mark has the crowd interacting with the man, telling him to take heart, that Jesus has called him forward. Luke is more passive about this moment.

I like Mark because sometimes his Gospel reads like a comic book. Bartimaeus throws off his outer cloak and springing up to come to Jesus. We should be excited to go before Jesus when He calls us.

Jesus asks the same question He asked the other men from Jericho. “What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus knows Bartimaeus is blind. But He wants to hear Bartimaeus declare his need. Some people teach you should not talk about your sickness or infirmity. If you don’t, how will Jesus heal you?

In Mark, Bartimaeus refers to Jesus as Rabbi while in Luke, he refers to Jesus as Lord. Like the other blind man Jesus healed, he asks, “Let me recover my sight.” Mark and Luke have Jesus’s reply worded slightly differently.

I like Mark here because He tells Bartimaeus, “Go your way; your faith has made you well. The reason I like this version is because Bartimaeus could for the first time see which way to go his own way.

Luke has Jesus saying, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” Say he immediately recovered his site and followed Jesus. Luke adds that he was praising God and glorify Him along with the crowd.

This should always be our automatic response to Jesus healing us. I recommend we praise Jesus even before we see the healing miracle in our bodies. We can glorify Him every moment for everything He does for us leading up to our healing.

Praying for Your Healing

If you are dealing with blindness or any loss of sight, let me pray for you and myself.

All seeing Lord Jesus, I bring my brother and sister in You and myself before You. We have been dealing either for a short time or our whole lives with some form of blindness. We know You have made the human eye and it is glorious. You have made it so intricately, and although doctors are trying to help us as much as they can, only You know it’s intricate design perfectly because You created our eyes. We ask You in Your powerful name to completely heal our eyes so that we can see what is around us as well as we can see you. We ask this in faith and in Your powerful name, amen.

Up Next

There is so much to cover when we talk about how Jesus healed blind people in the Bible that I had to split this into a two-part post. You can read Part 2 next.

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