MCLEODS, New Brunswick, November 15, 2023 – There’s a passage in scripture that many find odd – the one in Isaiah about God blinding people supernaturally so they won’t convert and be healed. Why would God prevent people from being healed? Isn’t God all about leading people to the Truth? Why then does he purposely blind them?

Supernatural blindness is the state of being unable to receive God’s Holy Spirit. It is a state imposed by God on people who are burdened by sin but who refuse to repent or even acknowledge their sin or need for repentance. In such a state, you can still believe in God, though you can’t know him personally. You can know of him, but you can’t know him. Only through the presence of God’s Spirit in you can you know God personally.

God will not give his Holy Spirit to those who are motivated by lust or pride. They may well want to know God personally and receive all the blessings and rewards that come with knowing God, but they don’t want it enough to give up their sin. Sadly, the majority of professing Christians fall under this category.

I knew God personally before I had any real knowledge of him, as I was an atheist until I was born-again. God had supernaturally blinded me for all the usual reasons (lust, pride, etc.). But being supernaturally blinded by God didn’t mean God had given up on me. Far from it. My supernatural blindness, like that of everyone else, formed a sort of invisible prison wall around me that served both to restrain and protect me. Being supernaturally blinded doesn’t mean you’re an outcast from God, like the fallen angels; it just means you’re a work-in-progress that has yet to reach the repentance stage.

Jesus spent much of his ministry reminding the supernaturally blind of their need to repent. The so-called religious elite were a particular target of this message, as they well knew that God existed, but they refused to acknowledge their sin. Their hard-hearted and proud stubbornness against repenting or acknowledging Jesus as their Messiah not only deepened their sin but further separated them from God.

In the book of Acts, a magician offers money to the apostles, eager to buy God’s Holy Spirit so he can perform miracles and charge money for them. This is one of the main reasons why God supernaturally blinds people. Peter tells the magician that his heart is not right before God and that God’s Holy Spirit cannot be bought for any amount of money. If God gave his Spirit to those whose heart was not right, what damage they could do in his name! It would be like giving a nuclear detonation code to someone who hated humanity.

People who know God and have his Spirit in them can also be supernaturally blinded on occasion, for their benefit as well as for God’s purposes. For instance, God may withhold certain knowledge from his children until it’s time for them to receive it. This is the purpose of revelation. In the book of Daniel, the angels tell Daniel that they’re “sealing” the book and its meaning until the end times, and that even he as a beloved prophet of God won’t be privy to its contents. This is another form of supernatural blinding.

Jesus, too, was supernaturally blinded by God on occasion as a way to test him and those around him. One example was when a non-Hebrew woman begged Jesus to heal her daughter, and Jesus told her he’d come only to heal the children of Israel. The woman then responded that even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table, at which point Jesus realized God had sent this woman to him because of her great faith in him. The date of his crucifixion was also kept from Jesus until shortly before it happened. God, at times, keeps us ‘in the dark’ supernaturally for our own protection so that we don’t over-worry things and go off the path. This protective temporary haze with regard to future events (or those going on around us currently) is likewise a form of supernatural blindness. In other words, it’s sometimes to our benefit that we don’t see clearly or at all.

Finally, supernatural blindness can take a physical form, as witnessed several times in the Bible. Paul was physically blinded during his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He was then told to seek out a specific person to heal him. This was a type of test of faith both for Paul and for the person tasked with healing him. Other instances of people made blind as a form of faith test can be found in the various men Jesus healed from blindness, such as “Blind Bartimaeus” and the man Jesus healed on the Sabbath, whom he explained to his disciples was made blind to show the works of God. Conversely, some examples of physical supernatural blindness were less about faith and God’s works and more about punishment, such as when the Sodomites molesting Lot were struck blind or when an army fighting against the children of Israel were temporarily blinded before being defeated.

Supernatural blindness is a state of being that occurs in unbelievers as well as believers. It is meant to be a bridge or temporary state, but it can last a long time (even a lifetime) in some people. Whether spiritual or physical, supernatural blindness can be conferred by God as a form of protection or punishment; it can also be conferred as a test of faith. Ideally, believers should live in a state of supernatural clarity, but sometimes even the strongest of believers are supernaturally blinded temporarily, whether as a test or as protection.

If we find ourselves supernaturally blinded by God, our job is not to fight it but to endure it, like Paul did, and to seek to remedy it by whatever way God advises. At the same time, we should take comfort knowing that whatever God does to us – including blinding – he does for our ultimate benefit.