On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, maimed, lame, or blind.

“So the slave came back and reported these things to his master. Then in anger, the master of the house told his slave, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in here the poor, maimed, blind, and lame!’

A Blind Man Receives His Sight

As He drew near Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging.

After blindfolding Him, they kept asking, “Prophesy! Who hit You?”

Within these lay a large number of the sick—blind, lame, and paralyzed [—waiting for the moving of the water,

The Sixth Sign: Healing a Man Born Blind

As He was passing by, He saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples questioned Him: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

The Healed Man’s Testimony

They brought the man who used to be blind to the Pharisees.

Again they asked the blind man, “What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?” “He’s a prophet,” he said.

The Jews did not believe this about him—that he was blind and received sight—until they summoned the parents of the one who had received his sight.

They asked them, “Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”

“We know this is our son and that he was born blind,” his parents answered.

So a second time they summoned the man who had been blind and told him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner!”

He answered, “Whether or not He’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!”

Throughout history no one has ever heard of someone opening the eyes of a person born blind.

The Blind Man’s Sight and the Pharisees’ Blindness

When Jesus heard that they had thrown the man out, He found him and asked, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, in order that those who do not see will see and those who do see will become blind.”

Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and asked Him, “We aren’t blind too, are we?”

“If you were blind,” Jesus told them, “you wouldn’t have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see’—your sin remains.

Others were saying, “These aren’t the words of someone demon-possessed. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

But some of them said, “Couldn’t He who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?”

He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they would not see with their eyes or understand with their hearts, and be converted, and I would heal them.