Glorious-blindness? That sounds like one unlikely pair of words. We know that blindness is the absence of light in the retina, but glory on the other hand connotes brightness which comes from light.
How then can the blind experience the brightness of light? With God all things are possible! There is a necessary blindness which every servant of Christ must possess and treasure – it is the glorious blindness.
As it is written, “Who is blind as the servant of the Lord?” (Isaiah 42:19). What then is this glorious blindness? Or better still, who is a glorious blind?
Glorious blindness is the experience of a man who has sanctified himself for the use of Christ alone. Such a fellow has stepped into the glorious light of the Coming Lord and so, he has become blind to the glamour of this perishing world.
Just as a person would probably stop walking if they suddenly can no longer see clearly because a huge beam of light is right in their face, so has the glorious blind ceased from the works of the flesh and from the pursuit of owning any portion of this dusty sphere because he can no longer see the point of such mundane enterprise because the light of eternity now shines brightly in his heart.
This fellow lives with an ambivalent aspiration for the return of the Lord and for an honourable service to render in the mean while.
Consequently, he is blind to frivolities and cannot make any sense of the fuss with which the lost go about their empty existence.
Again, this fellow is no respecter of persons because he is blind to social classifications. To him, there is neither rich nor poor, neither white nor black – only the saved and the lost. Therefore, he pleads with the entire dark and dying world around him to turn to Jesus Christ for redemption.
Who is the glorious blind? It is he who has stepped into the holy of holies. You see, the outer court of the tabernacle Moses built was exposed to sunlight while the holy place was illuminated by the golden candle stick.
But inside the holy of holies, wherein sat the Ark of the Covenant, was completely dark. And except God actually came down, there was neither natural nor artificial light to mimic the glory of the Lord in there.
Therefore, the glorious blind is that fellow who has resigned himself to the place where he would have nothing but God. He wants God or nothing else! He is desperate for the ultimate – for the purest – for the real deal – for the Source.
He would not settle for religious gimmicks. He would not play church. He would not fill the absence of God with showmanship or human theatrics. He would not venture to solve the fundamental problem of human depravity with Psychology or any other –logies for that matter.
As far as this fellow is concerned, God must come down or else religion might as well perish. He is the Moses who says to God, “Visit Your people or kill me”. He is the Jacob who says to God, “I will not let You be unless You bless me”. He is the bride of Christ who says to the Lord, “Make me fruitful for You or else I die”.
He is the Elijah who does not stop praying until the rains come. He is the Shadrach and the Meshach and the Abednego who say to the world, “God must save us or else we will all burn”.
And he is the Simon Peter who says to Jesus, “To whom else shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life”. Indeed, the glorious blind is not in a hurry to leave the presence of God.
He does not belong to the category of those who practice instant-coffee religion – easy but shallow. God is not something this fellow shabbily attends to in order to move on to the things which really delight him.
For the glorious blind, God is both the means and the end of all things. God is everything!
Who is the glorious blind? It is the perfect servant of Jesus Christ. This fellow takes after Christ in integrity and in temperament. He is blind to the disdain of the world and he is deaf to the insults of the scorners.
He is no slave to his appetite or his emotions. He has mastered abundance just as well as he has mastered lack. He is happy in whatever condition his Lord puts him. He is not fazed by the threats of the forces of evil. Neither is he impressed by the gifts of the affluent.
He is the Paul who says, “Beyond any doubt, I count all things loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them all as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ Jesus, even the righteousness of God that depends on faith.
So that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and to share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death”. The glorious blind, then, is he who has been crucified to the world. And because the death cannot move, nothing of this world moves the glorious blind any longer.
Who is the glorious blind? It is he whose transgressions are forgiven and to whom the Lord would not impute iniquity. As Christ said to the hypocritical Pharisees, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt”.
The glorious blind, then, are those who are blind to their own righteousness and accomplishments, but see their worthlessness outside the grace of Christ. And they therefore have turned to the Lord and they are saved.
For the poor in spirit are the blessed ones who may indeed possess the kingdom of heaven. They are the ones whom the Lord will bring by a way they could not otherwise find on their own because they are blind. And for them, the Lord will make darkness light and crooked things straight.
As it is written, “The inhabitants of a land enveloped with darkness receive the Great Light; and those who once sat hopelessly in the region and shadow of death now celebrate the Light of life.
The glorious blind mourn for their sin. The glorious blind are meek. The glorious blind hunger and thirst after righteousness. The glorious blind are merciful. The glorious blind are peacemakers who choose to love even when they are hated. Truly, blessed are the glorious blind!
