29/10/2011 - The damage of mistranslation

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Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.

John 9:3-4

Although I am not an expert on the Scriptures, the verse above has always seemed to me to have been poorly translated and, with time, I realized that other people also had doubts about it. That does not mean that we must rule out the Gospel for one of its parts that, perhaps, were not appropriately interpreted, after all there are groups of people who publish the Word of God and who are always fixing that kind of problem. If that was not the case, we could infer that there are people who are born with some kind of walking impairment so that the Lord can be praised if they obtain healing someday. But actually, how many are born that way and die without being healed?

The punctuation marks of ancient Greek do not match those we use today and that might have caused the misinterpretation of the passage mentioned above. When asked about who had sinned for that man to be born blind, Jesus did not enter the merits of the case, but getting straight to the point He said that neither that man nor his parents had made any mistake and his healing was dependent on other people to do the work of God.

The question raised by the disciples was what we call a complete nonsense. How could that blind man have sinned without having been born? Now, the Bible teaches us that evil came into the world with the sin committed by Adam. Someone might say that the disciples believed in reincarnation, but the Word of God states that notion to be false both in Job 7:9 and in Hebrews 9:27.

Some time ago I had access to a copy of the Bible translated in 1871 by the Benedictine monks of Belgium in which what I am saying here can be clearly understood. There are translators whose interpretation is the following: “He did neither sin nor did His parents. But for the work of God to be fulfilled we need to do it”. When I found that out my heart rejoiced; after all, other people are also interested in showing The Truth. My brother, how could Jesus, who is love, want someone to be born with any handicap in order for him or her to be healed later so that the Lord would receive the praises? I have always believed that our Master would never do that!

We have to do the works of Christ because otherwise they will not be done. We need to understand that we decide if what the Lord declares will be done or not. There are, by the way, many servants of God without a direction because they worry about material issues that other people can take care of. Yet, we do not have to waste time with those tasks that even those who are not saved can carry out. Doing the work of God is not for everybody but for those who are called. This is a time of miracles, but after the Rapture of the church the time to do the will of God will be over. Therefore, my prayer is that you may do what you are told!

In Christ, with love,

R. R. Soares