The Second Touch
Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. (Mark 8:25)
There is more than one touch we receive from Christ in our lives.
In this event Christ did healing in two steps, and though there is no commentary on the reason for doing it this way, it serves as a wonderful illustration of our experience with Christ and with his work within us. In Christ we enter into life, and this envisions for us growth and development.
The touch of salvation: The first touch is the touch of conviction, as the Holy Spirit shines his light on our souls and shows us our need of forgiveness. Then he shines his light upon Christ and shows us that Christ is the answer to our soul’s need. He leads us in the process of confession of sins and trusting in Christ. The first touch is the miraculous touch of grace that brings us from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to the kingdom of God.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit… (Ephesians 1:11–13)
But there are other touches as well that reveal to us the living faith into which we are called — not a condition of stagnant status quo but of continual growth and spiritual development.
The touch of enlightenment: The miracle illustrates spiritual development in our lives, for normally when people first come to Christ the truths of the Christian faith seem only half-way illuminated. The heart of God’s revelation to us has to do with who we are and the blind man’s statement, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking” (Mark 8:24), is echoed in many hearts. “I do not see clearly as I want to, or as I should. There is still some cloudiness to the truth of God in my heart.”
We may all say this at some level, for no matter how much we learn about God and man, there will be some doctrines on which come that make people seem like trees. But God does not abandon us, and Christ is not through touching us or teaching us. He remains with us until things become clear.
Paul in the book of Ephesians lays out plainly the reality of salvation, that people had come from darkness to light, from death to life, from being excluded from Christ to being included in Christ. Yet he still prayed plainly:
…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe… (Ephesians 1:17–19)
We all need the Lord to continually enlighten our heart and to open our eyes to see, as the psalmist prayed: “Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions” (Psalm 119:18, NLT).
The touch of deeper healing: How many of us have wounds in our souls that go so deep that the Lord takes some period of time — sometimes years — to heal our hearts. We are like this man who sees in part but not in whole — we feel the touch of healing but yet we still feel the pain of the old wound, if only in our memories.
Yet as we grow in Christ, there comes a time when we look differently upon that matter, where by his grace the pain is gone. The scar is healed over and it is as though nothing happened. As long as we hold onto our hurt, we are the slaves of that pain. Only when we are able in God’s grace to let it go, to give it all to God, are we set free.
The Messiah has come to “Bind up the brokenhearted” (Isaiah 61:1), The Lord, “Heals the broken hearted, and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). There is in these prophecies not only the promise of God’s work of healing our hearts, but also insight into the means by which he does it. He “binds up” our hearts just as you would bind up or to stitch up a wound. It must be closed from further damage and the spread of infection. The body can heal itself if it is given time, and the Lord’s inner healing of our souls also takes time. Thank God for his continual touches of healing in our souls, for some of the old wounds still fester within us.
The touch of great forgiveness: There are many who come to Christ like the prodigal came home to his father, expecting, at least in some way, to work to earn our forgiveness. Like he was, we are surprised when we are enshrouded in his grace and find we have nothing to earn at all. Grace and forgiveness have all been purchased by Christ, paid in full.
Yet often it takes a period of time often we truly believe this in our souls. We carry around some level of shame and fear, and we need a new touch of God’s grace to assure us on a deeper level of our forgiveness in Christ. The author of Hebrews wrote, “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14). We need our conscience cleansed, and this is what the Spirit does, through his word and by his witness to it, affirming its truth in our hearts.
The touch of a deeper life: The Lord also brings people into a more profound and deeper walk with the Holy Spirit. We may have trusted in Christ for salvation years before but still pine away in relative emptiness of experience and fruitlessness in our service. Then the Lord touches us with his Spirit — we may also call this the touch of friendship. Just as he said to the disciples as he taught about the Holy Spirit, “I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). He calls us to walk with him in spiritual intimacy and closeness of fellowship, in the filling of the Spirit in our daily lives.
The touch of service: There are moments when he touches us with the opportunities to serve, sometimes in new and different ways. After John Mark left the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:13), he may have thought that his days of service for Christ was over, but then the Lord had something else for him to do. He wrote the first gospel, the one we are studying now. And often the Lord comes to us through another believer and says, “The Lord has need of you” (Mark 11:3).
The living faith: And there are many other ways the Lord touches us in our Christian walk. Having trusted in Christ as our Savior, we did not enter into a condition that would never have further development, rather we have come into life. Life by definition means growth and development and new things in the future. All that we have received of Christ to this point in our Christian experience is just the beginning. He shall complete his work within us, “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion” (Phil. 1:6).
