“Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, ‘Do you see anything?’” (Mark 8:23)
Only Mark’s Gospel records this miracle – the time Jesus spit in the eyes of a blind man. In fact, only Mark tells the other story of Jesus using spit to perform a miracle. hat was in the previous chapter (Mark 7:31-37), when Jesus healed the deaf and mute man. Now, there is a third biblical passage (John 9:1-7) in which Jesus spat on the ground, made mud from the “spittle,” and then smeared it on the eyes of the blind man. That man was also healed by Jesus, through the medium of spit.
It’s interesting that while the New Testament only speaks of anointing with oil for healing twice (Mark 6:13; James 5:14), it mentions the anointing of spit three times. I’m not suggesting that we should practice spitting when we pray for those who are sick. There is no church which observes the “Ordinance of Spitting.”
It’s far more likely that Jesus purposely chose atypical methods – to keep us from focusing on those methods rather than on the Healer. For there is simply nothing redeemable or good about spitting. In the Scripture, spitting on someone was to treat them with contempt and to humiliate them (Deuteronomy 25:9; Isaiah 50:6; Matthew 26:57). Spitting on someone made them “ceremonially unclean” (Numbers 12:14).
Perhaps that’s the lesson for us here. God is in the habit of using the weak things, the basest of things, and the despised things to accomplish His purpose (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). God used the unclean ravens to feed the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 17:4-6). He used a donkey to reason with Balaam the prophet (Numbers 22:27-31). He used the sweat rags of the apostle Paul to heal the sick and drive out demons (Acts 19:11-12).
I say this because there are those times when we feel incapable and useless for any good work for the Kingdom of God. There are times when we hit our lowest and we feel like our lives aren’t worth much more than spit. Perhaps our personal life is a wreck, our performance at work is dismal, our souls seem defiled, and we feel utterly unfit for the Lord’s service. But Christ is telling us that if He can use something as nasty as spit to work such glorious miracles, he can do infinitely more with us.
REFLECTION
- Have you ever felt as worthless and defiled as spit?
- Yet, which of God’s servants had a spotless record? Was Abraham perfect? Or, Moses, Gideon, Samson, or David? What about the apostles? Were Peter or Paul without sin or besetting problems?
- Paul said, God’s power is perfected in human weakness, so that, when we are weak, then we are strong with God’s power. Trust in God’s ability, not your own.
