Yet many of the crowd believed in him and said, “Whenever the Christ comes, he won’t perform more miraculous signs than this man did, will he?”

The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about Jesus, so the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.

(Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.)

Others said, “This is the Christ!” But still others said, “No, for the Christ doesn’t come from Galilee, does he?

Then the officers returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why didn’t you bring him back with you?”

(Now they were asking this in an attempt to trap him, so that they could bring charges against him.) Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger.

(Jesus spoke these words near the offering box while he was teaching in the temple courts. No one seized him because his time had not yet come.)

But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth I heard from God. Abraham did not do this!

The one who belongs to God listens and responds to God’s words. You don’t listen and respond, because you don’t belong to God.”

His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man or his parents?”

Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind so that the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him.

Having said this, he spat on the ground and made some mud with the saliva. He smeared the mud on the blind man’s eyes

Then the neighbors and the people who had seen him previously as a beggar began saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”

They asked the parents, “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?”

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

He replied, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. I do know one thing – that although I was blind, now I can see.”

We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is devout and does his will, God listens to him.

Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and asked him, “We are not blind too, are we?”

“I tell you the solemn truth, the one who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber.

The doorkeeper opens the door for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.