Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
Jesus told His disciples to leave alone the offended Pharisee leaders who had come seeking accusation, for they were blind guides leading blind followers and both would fall together into ruin. They were blind because they set human tradition above God's commandments, shut their minds to the light He gave, and twisted plain Scripture to protect their own ideas and worldly expectations. To leave them alone was judgment upon those who hated light and refused it after entreaty, to be rooted up like plants the Father did not plant, and it also means to give no further evidence to those who demand signs while rejecting God's Word. His warning against their assumption of authority was recorded as a safeguard for all ages against exalting human authority to rule the conscience and against following blind religious leaders. A spiritually blind minister who lacks conversion and God's saving grace cannot guide safely but scatters and misleads, so blind leaders and followers alike must be converted, come to Jesus to have their eyes opened, and refuse to put any man in God's place.
Words and Historical Setting
The saying was spoken in a dispute with Pharisees and scribes who came to Jesus seeking an accusation against Him. They were jealous leaders intent on carrying out their purpose. Their traditions were treated as more sacred than God's law and distracted people from its great principles.
The command to leave them alone answers the disciples' warning that the Pharisees were offended by His teaching about what truly defiles. He knows the hearts of all, with nothing hidden from Him. To leave them alone is judgment on those who hate Him and refuse light after being entreated. The unwilling cultivate bitterness and see everything in a perverted light in the unconverted heart. Like plants the heavenly Father did not plant they will be rooted up, and like fruitless branches they will be taken away. As leaders who cause the people to err, they and those led by them are destroyed, with no joy and no mercy on young men, fatherless, and widows, because all are hypocrites and evildoers speaking folly.
To leave them alone also means to give no further evidence to infidels and rationalists who demand a miracle before they will believe. They refuse to receive God's Word, treat Christ's miracles as idle tales, reject great light, and disbelieve the record of the Lord's past working of power. They close their eyes and senses and prefer to cherish scientific delusions. No further evidence will be given them, because monuments of Christianity are already to be seen on every hand. To leave them alone means not to follow a class that tramples on God's rights, accepts an idolatrous Sabbath, and embraces strong unreasonable beliefs.
Nature and Causes of Blindness
Blindness came because truth had become so mixed with error that human tradition was taught for the commandments of God, customs received from tradition being repeated and accumulated from age to age and generation to generation until the teachers were ignorant of Scripture and of the power of God. Age never turns error into truth, even when the oldest error is pleaded because of its age, and sight is given by taking away traditions and maxims, removing the rubbish, rescuing truth from where it was made to strengthen error, restoring it to its native loveliness and letting it stand before the people. Those who have received light must not let their mouths be stopped nor let anyone put falsehood in their mouths because of tradition, but must speak the truth as it is in Christ Jesus without mixing in self and human ideas and opinions.
Despite learning and claims to explain the law and prophecies, the leaders failed to recognize the Messiah because proud, worldly expectations of a mighty earthly prince contradicted the prophecies of His humble, poor first coming in poverty and humility, leaving them unprepared and leading others astray. Though claiming scriptural knowledge and spiritual sight, they rejected abundant evidence of His divine character and misread plain prophecies from pride, and this moral blindness was more dangerous than physical blindness. The chief priests and leading men, whom the people had been taught from infancy to reverence and implicitly obey, were baffled in finding accusation and felt divine power and wisdom in His words, yet encased themselves in prejudice and rejected the clearest evidence of Messiahship lest they be forced to become His disciples, and their influence led the nation to reject its Redeemer.
Blindness is shutting the mind to the light and knowledge God gives, so that one cannot discern holiness or sin, follows Satan instead of heaven's way, yet claims ability to lead the blind. Blind guides impose their own ideas on clear Scripture instead of accepting it, twisting its plain teaching to protect worldly plans and favored theories, while prejudice darkens the mind and distorts judgment. Preconceived opinions, wishes and impulses must be tested by God's Word, while humble willing hearts receive its light. Blindness continues as in Christ's day: some who have preached or still preach are blind in mind and deaf in spirit and will never see, hear or understand, leading another blind person. This brings peril and offense to God when Satan works by alienation to separate brethren from one another and from God, calling each person to examine his own position and peril in the light of the Holy Word, since God does not leave His people but they separate themselves by cherishing jealousy and hatred and turning warfare against brethren.
Ministers become blind leaders when drifting from Christ, piety and religious principle, unless truth as it is in Jesus is presented and planted in the heart by the Spirit as shield and buckler and safeguard. Blindness comes through self-conceit, self-esteem, self-confidence and self-satisfaction taking the place of true knowledge, with little of the Holy Spirit, ceasing earnest humble seeking to be guided into all truth, failing to keep pace with the Leader into all truth, and ceasing to walk in the light, leaving one behind, belated, blinded and confused. Blindness is loss of discernment of God's will and way after His requirements were laid in clear lines, with eyes blinded and discernment perverted by despising sanctifying light. Such unconsecrated, unreliable, false leaders are rooted in self and rebellion, resist truth, choose their own way, and lead souls step by step into by and forbidden false paths, including some in Battle Creek who once knew the truth, so there is no safety in putting confidence in man and making flesh an arm but only when truth is enthroned in the heart.
Those who trust their own limited ability and merits for salvation are blind guides leading themselves to ruin, for selfishness and covetousness, which are idolatry, make one try to be his own savior unto failure and eternal loss. The Holy Spirit breaks down and removes self-love, self-approval and an accusing spirit to cleanse the heart for Christ to dwell there and shape a holy life, and faith in Christ brings victory. Ministers who proclaim truth in theory without its principles deeply rooted in the soul and ruling the heart under Christ's Spirit, who have not truly turned from darkness to light and made the thorough transition, cannot rightly guide others and are blind guides whose principles cannot sanctify character and who leave followers in danger. Men who wander far from God, true righteousness and His Word, blinded by selfishness and long resistance to the Holy Spirit, yet continue as leaders, stand on the brink of a precipice ready to slide into the depths below and put souls in danger. Their blindness shows in grasping large wages, depriving others of God-given rights, holding strange ideas contrary to God's Word, departing from its spirit and practice, serving under Satan's banner and being leavened by unseen wrong principles, with hope only in thorough conversion and renovation, feeling the Spirit striving, becoming conscious of guilt, awaking from paralysis, and grieving over lost time and opportunities, since God wills none to perish but that all have everlasting life.
False teachers are blind leaders as men of the world volunteering as guides, regarding their own evil course as wise and needing to become fools to be wise in God's wisdom. They lead away from where Jesus' voice says This is the way, walk ye in it, and divert attention from the work for this period, while followers of the true Leader hear the True Shepherd step by step. Some teachers, ministers, medical missionaries and men in office who should be faithful watchmen to uplift God and proclaim His message are asleep and blind, blinded by commercialism, desire for profit and their own exploits, without clear scriptural understanding, sounding no certain warning, and under Satan's leading dictating to brethren, accusing burden-bearers, and deluding many to fall with them. Excusing too great familiarity with a woman blinds a man's eyes and makes him a blind leader, this moral and spiritual blindness from his own improper course endangering the woman who follows him and leaving both unsafe under trial and temptation with no excuse for either. The shepherds heard in high places teach a religion handed down from fathers without truth applicable to the present time and without better deeper teaching, leaving soul-hunger unsatisfied, so those hungering for more need personal efforts bringing present truth.
Shared Fall into Ruin
If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch, meaning spiritually blind leaders who cannot discern truth and blind followers who cannot discern it come to ruin together, for one blind to truth misleads others unable to discern it, a leader rejecting light and teaching mistaken faith becoming a stumbling block and increasing confusion instead of guiding to truth, and those lacking truth in the heart and remaining in darkness cannot safely guide others even with sacred responsibilities, including men whose hearts yield to temptation and spread false claims and those not walking in light. The ditch is the consequence of following those who reject God-given light, and those who turn others from it bear responsibility for the harm done to their followers. Followers may take a leader's rejection of a message as proof that it is error, so both the one misleading and those being misled bear the consequences. Blind leaders who reject truth and turn from received light lead others into false paths and the same danger, so both face the ditch, which calls for watchfulness and prayer and warns against leading others away from God's Word.
Leaders in responsible places who condemn others while practicing worse faults mislead followers, teaching one thing while practicing another, judging duty by the shallow example of professed Christians, and failing to recognize their own need, and both face ruin unless they truly repent and confess sins before God with godly sorrow. Ministers who continue strengthening people in a wrong position and fail to receive and teach Bible truth will fall into the pit along with those they lead, leaving followers in danger. A person whose un-Christlike conduct encourages less-informed friends to follow a course away from God is a false guide misdirecting them in the wrong direction, endangering both himself and them.
The warning applies to following E. P. Daniels when misled by his claims, to Elder Smith blinded by evil in wrongly accepting William Gage as counselor and guide while rejecting light and misjudging God's work so their guidance cannot be trusted, and to Dr. Maxson's spiritually blinded attempt to lead the blind, with both headed for ruin. The image applies to a father who accepts his daughter's false visions and leads her and others to trust them while she deceives him in turn, so blind guides lead one another into error and ruin. Unconsecrated men in responsible places who walk in their own ways are blind leaders leading into a pit those who sustain them, and continuing to support such leaders brings ruin upon the supporters themselves and harm to God's cause.
The warning applies to church members who lead others astray while their names are on church records but not in the Lamb's book of life, and both such leaders and followers come to destruction. Those who have wandered from God and true righteousness and departed from God's Word are blind leaders of the blind whose blindness endangers both themselves and those they lead, as do brethren whose example and influence as blind teachers led others into error and caused them to stumble.
Prophetic Warning to Future Church
Christ's rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees for their undue assumption of authority was a warning to the people not to follow blind leaders who claim religious authority while spiritually blind and lead their followers to ruin. That warning looks beyond the dispersion of the Jews, foreseeing the work of exalting human authority to rule the conscience. Such exalting of human authority to rule the conscience has been a terrible curse to the church in all ages and through history.
His denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees and His warning were placed on record as an admonition and safeguard to future generations and later generations not to follow blind religious leaders who claim authority to rule the conscience. The chief of the priesthood and leading men of the nation were men the people had been taught from infancy to reverence and implicitly obey, yet though baffled in finding accusation against Jesus and feeling divine power and wisdom in His words, they encased themselves in prejudice and rejected the clearest evidence of His Messiahship lest they be forced to become His disciples, and their influence led the Jewish nation to reject its Redeemer. The same spirit is manifested by those making high profession of piety who refuse to examine the testimony of the Scriptures concerning the special truths for this time, who point to their own numbers, wealth, and popularity and look with contempt on advocates of truth as few, poor, and unpopular.
Errors Exposed by Verse
The verse exposes blind guides as those who oppose the Sabbath and work to make souls as blind as themselves by exalting themselves against the truth. Looked to as men of God and looked to for light, they are troubled when inquired of about the Sabbath, and answer with the object of getting rid of the fourth commandment. Their main object is to get around the Sabbath of the Lord and observe another day instead of the day sanctified and hallowed by Jehovah, without real honesty in the many positions they take, so that when driven from one argument they take an opposite one, even one they had just condemned as unsound.
It also exposes professed ministers who teach that God's law is arbitrary, severe, or no longer binding as blind guides leading people away from safety into violation and lawless freedom. Those who willingly follow them shut themselves off from truth and are blind as well, and neither leaders nor followers are guiltless. The law acts as a mirror revealing true character and sin, so rejecting or breaking it does not remove guilt or protect from the penalty of transgression but removes the basis of moral responsibility.
Spiritualist teachers are likewise blind guides, promising freedom while encouraging rebellion against God's law. They are themselves overcome and enslaved by sin and Satan, so their claims of liberty mislead, and those they lead are brought into the same bondage and spiritual ruin with both leaders and followers ruined together. The same principle applies to healthful living as taught in Scripture: those ignorant of it must first learn the truth of health reform before they can lead others into its light, lest blind leaders mislead the equally blind.
Application to Leaders and Believers
A spiritually blind minister cannot rightly lead others because he cannot convey conversion and saving grace he does not himself possess, and his attempts to teach mislead and harm those who listen. Such a minister has abandoned the desire to know and do the divine will and therefore cannot guide souls safely, with both the unseeing guide and the led stumbling together in darkness. A leader who lacks grace and remains selfish is blind, his influence scatters love and unity instead of building it, and he cannot bring the church into the position God requires. Unconverted ministers who work from self rather than from Christ lack spiritual sight, yet self-confidence keeps them in error, and their ministry turns people from truth so that guide and followers alike stumble in darkness.
Teachers who lack spiritual sight cannot guide safely, and neglecting the divine way to do only surface work harms students and works against true Christian education. Teachers who fail to uplift the true God and to prepare people through Scripture are blind guides, and both they and their followers are in danger of ruin. The danger falls on teachers who study Scripture with little interest, whose worldly ideas and inadequate knowledge of God mislead the young, so that followers share the fall with their leaders. It is unsafe to trust youth to blind leaders in modern institutions of learning, including theological schools, where the sacred oracles are studied with far less interest than classical Greek and Roman authors, instruction is separated from the word of truth and the gospel of salvation, searching of Scripture and knowledge of God and the future life are neglected, and education is governed by worldly maxims and heathen conceptions of liberty, morality and justice, leaving graduates with less real knowledge of God and religious truth. Teachers who lack knowledge of God and of the message given for their time are blind guides whose false education leads students into error, and those students may spend years unlearning what they were taught.
Even among the professed people of God there will be blind leaders of the blind who are hirelings and wolves in sheep's clothing, persuading the flock to sacrifice to other gods. They corrupt and draw away youth who are not established, rooted and grounded in the truth, and they corrupt the faith of the unwary. They are ungodly despisers who wonder and perish, despising the sovereignty of the Ancient of Days, enthroning a false god of their own defining altogether like themselves, and acting as agents in Satan's hands.
Spiritually blind men cannot lead in safe paths and must not be followed or put in the place of God. Safety is standing on the immovable foundation that God is the sufficient helper, finding efficiency in God rather than in position, understanding duty distinctly, and carrying the mind forward in strenuous cooperation with Jesus working in faithful servants to do His pleasure, so that the Creator's honor is not given to the creature. Healthful labor requires partnership with divine resources, a wholesome outlay of mortal energies with the immortal, careful attention to eternal things, laying hold of provided divine power instead of puny human strength, refusing to let human minds control the mind or human suggestions interweave with God's work, and drawing nigh to God.
Blind leaders and followers are in danger when, like those in Christ's day, they claim to see yet cannot discern their true spiritual condition and misread themselves while misleading many into straying. Both guides and followers are deluded souls who misjudge themselves and lead one another astray. Unless they are converted and transformed they cannot become laborers together with God.
Great pity, love and forgiveness are extended both to blind souls who lose their way and to leaders who led those souls into darkness and themselves became blind. Blind eyes are opened by coming to Jesus, who is present in every assembly gathered to learn of Him and hear His Word and who makes all see clearly because He never makes mistakes. Serious blunders come from refusing His counsel and going forward in self-kindled light. Unless the blind come to have their eyes opened they will lie down in sorrow, keep walking contrary to the divine will, refuse humility to bear Christ's yoke, and become helpless withering branches bearing no acceptable fruit.
One who should guide others but neglects truth and follows selfish ideas in teaching and example is a false guide pointing the wrong way. Divine truth makes savingly wise and keeps one so. Minds brought into harmony with the divine mind learn from Christ and teach others away from prevailing error.
Even ministers become blind leaders when truth is not presented as it is in Jesus and planted in the heart by the Spirit, which is drifting away from Christ, from piety and from religious principle. Such blindness shows in preaching with little of Christ and His righteousness, feeble, empty and unnourishing, without power to preach in demonstration of the Spirit, and with no Christ carried into private life. It shows further in boasting, pride and self-esteem, speaking evil of things without real knowledge, impatience with everything not in one's own line, and scoffing at sacred things because spiritual things are spiritually discerned, by which a man degrades himself in perverting and falsifying truth.
Jesus told His disciples to leave alone the offended Pharisee leaders who had come seeking accusation, for they were blind guides leading blind followers and both would fall together into ruin. They were blind because they set human tradition above God's commandments, shut their minds to the light He gave, and twisted plain Scripture to protect their own ideas and worldly expectations. To leave them alone was judgment upon those who hated light and refused it after entreaty, to be rooted up like plants the Father did not plant, and it also means to give no further evidence to those who demand signs while rejecting God's Word. His warning against their assumption of authority was recorded as a safeguard for all ages against exalting human authority to rule the conscience and against following blind religious leaders. A spiritually blind minister who lacks conversion and God's saving grace cannot guide safely but scatters and misleads, so blind leaders and followers alike must be converted, come to Jesus to have their eyes opened, and refuse to put any man in God's place.
Words and Historical Setting
The saying was spoken in a dispute with Pharisees and scribes who came to Jesus seeking an accusation against Him. They were jealous leaders intent on carrying out their purpose. Their traditions were treated as more sacred than God's law and distracted people from its great principles.
The command to leave them alone answers the disciples' warning that the Pharisees were offended by His teaching about what truly defiles. He knows the hearts of all, with nothing hidden from Him. To leave them alone is judgment on those who hate Him and refuse light after being entreated. The unwilling cultivate bitterness and see everything in a perverted light in the unconverted heart. Like plants the heavenly Father did not plant they will be rooted up, and like fruitless branches they will be taken away. As leaders who cause the people to err, they and those led by them are destroyed, with no joy and no mercy on young men, fatherless, and widows, because all are hypocrites and evildoers speaking folly.
To leave them alone also means to give no further evidence to infidels and rationalists who demand a miracle before they will believe. They refuse to receive God's Word, treat Christ's miracles as idle tales, reject great light, and disbelieve the record of the Lord's past working of power. They close their eyes and senses and prefer to cherish scientific delusions. No further evidence will be given them, because monuments of Christianity are already to be seen on every hand. To leave them alone means not to follow a class that tramples on God's rights, accepts an idolatrous Sabbath, and embraces strong unreasonable beliefs.
Nature and Causes of Blindness
Blindness came because truth had become so mixed with error that human tradition was taught for the commandments of God, customs received from tradition being repeated and accumulated from age to age and generation to generation until the teachers were ignorant of Scripture and of the power of God. Age never turns error into truth, even when the oldest error is pleaded because of its age, and sight is given by taking away traditions and maxims, removing the rubbish, rescuing truth from where it was made to strengthen error, restoring it to its native loveliness and letting it stand before the people. Those who have received light must not let their mouths be stopped nor let anyone put falsehood in their mouths because of tradition, but must speak the truth as it is in Christ Jesus without mixing in self and human ideas and opinions.
Despite learning and claims to explain the law and prophecies, the leaders failed to recognize the Messiah because proud, worldly expectations of a mighty earthly prince contradicted the prophecies of His humble, poor first coming in poverty and humility, leaving them unprepared and leading others astray. Though claiming scriptural knowledge and spiritual sight, they rejected abundant evidence of His divine character and misread plain prophecies from pride, and this moral blindness was more dangerous than physical blindness. The chief priests and leading men, whom the people had been taught from infancy to reverence and implicitly obey, were baffled in finding accusation and felt divine power and wisdom in His words, yet encased themselves in prejudice and rejected the clearest evidence of Messiahship lest they be forced to become His disciples, and their influence led the nation to reject its Redeemer.
Blindness is shutting the mind to the light and knowledge God gives, so that one cannot discern holiness or sin, follows Satan instead of heaven's way, yet claims ability to lead the blind. Blind guides impose their own ideas on clear Scripture instead of accepting it, twisting its plain teaching to protect worldly plans and favored theories, while prejudice darkens the mind and distorts judgment. Preconceived opinions, wishes and impulses must be tested by God's Word, while humble willing hearts receive its light. Blindness continues as in Christ's day: some who have preached or still preach are blind in mind and deaf in spirit and will never see, hear or understand, leading another blind person. This brings peril and offense to God when Satan works by alienation to separate brethren from one another and from God, calling each person to examine his own position and peril in the light of the Holy Word, since God does not leave His people but they separate themselves by cherishing jealousy and hatred and turning warfare against brethren.
Ministers become blind leaders when drifting from Christ, piety and religious principle, unless truth as it is in Jesus is presented and planted in the heart by the Spirit as shield and buckler and safeguard. Blindness comes through self-conceit, self-esteem, self-confidence and self-satisfaction taking the place of true knowledge, with little of the Holy Spirit, ceasing earnest humble seeking to be guided into all truth, failing to keep pace with the Leader into all truth, and ceasing to walk in the light, leaving one behind, belated, blinded and confused. Blindness is loss of discernment of God's will and way after His requirements were laid in clear lines, with eyes blinded and discernment perverted by despising sanctifying light. Such unconsecrated, unreliable, false leaders are rooted in self and rebellion, resist truth, choose their own way, and lead souls step by step into by and forbidden false paths, including some in Battle Creek who once knew the truth, so there is no safety in putting confidence in man and making flesh an arm but only when truth is enthroned in the heart.
Those who trust their own limited ability and merits for salvation are blind guides leading themselves to ruin, for selfishness and covetousness, which are idolatry, make one try to be his own savior unto failure and eternal loss. The Holy Spirit breaks down and removes self-love, self-approval and an accusing spirit to cleanse the heart for Christ to dwell there and shape a holy life, and faith in Christ brings victory. Ministers who proclaim truth in theory without its principles deeply rooted in the soul and ruling the heart under Christ's Spirit, who have not truly turned from darkness to light and made the thorough transition, cannot rightly guide others and are blind guides whose principles cannot sanctify character and who leave followers in danger. Men who wander far from God, true righteousness and His Word, blinded by selfishness and long resistance to the Holy Spirit, yet continue as leaders, stand on the brink of a precipice ready to slide into the depths below and put souls in danger. Their blindness shows in grasping large wages, depriving others of God-given rights, holding strange ideas contrary to God's Word, departing from its spirit and practice, serving under Satan's banner and being leavened by unseen wrong principles, with hope only in thorough conversion and renovation, feeling the Spirit striving, becoming conscious of guilt, awaking from paralysis, and grieving over lost time and opportunities, since God wills none to perish but that all have everlasting life.
False teachers are blind leaders as men of the world volunteering as guides, regarding their own evil course as wise and needing to become fools to be wise in God's wisdom. They lead away from where Jesus' voice says This is the way, walk ye in it, and divert attention from the work for this period, while followers of the true Leader hear the True Shepherd step by step. Some teachers, ministers, medical missionaries and men in office who should be faithful watchmen to uplift God and proclaim His message are asleep and blind, blinded by commercialism, desire for profit and their own exploits, without clear scriptural understanding, sounding no certain warning, and under Satan's leading dictating to brethren, accusing burden-bearers, and deluding many to fall with them. Excusing too great familiarity with a woman blinds a man's eyes and makes him a blind leader, this moral and spiritual blindness from his own improper course endangering the woman who follows him and leaving both unsafe under trial and temptation with no excuse for either. The shepherds heard in high places teach a religion handed down from fathers without truth applicable to the present time and without better deeper teaching, leaving soul-hunger unsatisfied, so those hungering for more need personal efforts bringing present truth.
Shared Fall into Ruin
If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch, meaning spiritually blind leaders who cannot discern truth and blind followers who cannot discern it come to ruin together, for one blind to truth misleads others unable to discern it, a leader rejecting light and teaching mistaken faith becoming a stumbling block and increasing confusion instead of guiding to truth, and those lacking truth in the heart and remaining in darkness cannot safely guide others even with sacred responsibilities, including men whose hearts yield to temptation and spread false claims and those not walking in light.
The ditch is the consequence of following those who reject God-given light, and those who turn others from it bear responsibility for the harm done to their followers.
Followers may take a leader's rejection of a message as proof that it is error, so both the one misleading and those being misled bear the consequences.
Blind leaders who reject truth and turn from received light lead others into false paths and the same danger, so both face the ditch, which calls for watchfulness and prayer and warns against leading others away from God's Word.
Leaders in responsible places who condemn others while practicing worse faults mislead followers, teaching one thing while practicing another, judging duty by the shallow example of professed Christians, and failing to recognize their own need, and both face ruin unless they truly repent and confess sins before God with godly sorrow.
Ministers who continue strengthening people in a wrong position and fail to receive and teach Bible truth will fall into the pit along with those they lead, leaving followers in danger.
A person whose un-Christlike conduct encourages less-informed friends to follow a course away from God is a false guide misdirecting them in the wrong direction, endangering both himself and them.
The warning applies to following E. P. Daniels when misled by his claims, to Elder Smith blinded by evil in wrongly accepting William Gage as counselor and guide while rejecting light and misjudging God's work so their guidance cannot be trusted, and to Dr. Maxson's spiritually blinded attempt to lead the blind, with both headed for ruin.
The image applies to a father who accepts his daughter's false visions and leads her and others to trust them while she deceives him in turn, so blind guides lead one another into error and ruin.
Unconsecrated men in responsible places who walk in their own ways are blind leaders leading into a pit those who sustain them, and continuing to support such leaders brings ruin upon the supporters themselves and harm to God's cause.
The warning applies to church members who lead others astray while their names are on church records but not in the Lamb's book of life, and both such leaders and followers come to destruction.
Those who have wandered from God and true righteousness and departed from God's Word are blind leaders of the blind whose blindness endangers both themselves and those they lead, as do brethren whose example and influence as blind teachers led others into error and caused them to stumble.
Prophetic Warning to Future Church
Christ's rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees for their undue assumption of authority was a warning to the people not to follow blind leaders who claim religious authority while spiritually blind and lead their followers to ruin. That warning looks beyond the dispersion of the Jews, foreseeing the work of exalting human authority to rule the conscience. Such exalting of human authority to rule the conscience has been a terrible curse to the church in all ages and through history.
His denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees and His warning were placed on record as an admonition and safeguard to future generations and later generations not to follow blind religious leaders who claim authority to rule the conscience. The chief of the priesthood and leading men of the nation were men the people had been taught from infancy to reverence and implicitly obey, yet though baffled in finding accusation against Jesus and feeling divine power and wisdom in His words, they encased themselves in prejudice and rejected the clearest evidence of His Messiahship lest they be forced to become His disciples, and their influence led the Jewish nation to reject its Redeemer. The same spirit is manifested by those making high profession of piety who refuse to examine the testimony of the Scriptures concerning the special truths for this time, who point to their own numbers, wealth, and popularity and look with contempt on advocates of truth as few, poor, and unpopular.
Errors Exposed by Verse
The verse exposes blind guides as those who oppose the Sabbath and work to make souls as blind as themselves by exalting themselves against the truth. Looked to as men of God and looked to for light, they are troubled when inquired of about the Sabbath, and answer with the object of getting rid of the fourth commandment. Their main object is to get around the Sabbath of the Lord and observe another day instead of the day sanctified and hallowed by Jehovah, without real honesty in the many positions they take, so that when driven from one argument they take an opposite one, even one they had just condemned as unsound.
It also exposes professed ministers who teach that God's law is arbitrary, severe, or no longer binding as blind guides leading people away from safety into violation and lawless freedom. Those who willingly follow them shut themselves off from truth and are blind as well, and neither leaders nor followers are guiltless. The law acts as a mirror revealing true character and sin, so rejecting or breaking it does not remove guilt or protect from the penalty of transgression but removes the basis of moral responsibility.
Spiritualist teachers are likewise blind guides, promising freedom while encouraging rebellion against God's law. They are themselves overcome and enslaved by sin and Satan, so their claims of liberty mislead, and those they lead are brought into the same bondage and spiritual ruin with both leaders and followers ruined together. The same principle applies to healthful living as taught in Scripture: those ignorant of it must first learn the truth of health reform before they can lead others into its light, lest blind leaders mislead the equally blind.
Application to Leaders and Believers
A spiritually blind minister cannot rightly lead others because he cannot convey conversion and saving grace he does not himself possess, and his attempts to teach mislead and harm those who listen. Such a minister has abandoned the desire to know and do the divine will and therefore cannot guide souls safely, with both the unseeing guide and the led stumbling together in darkness. A leader who lacks grace and remains selfish is blind, his influence scatters love and unity instead of building it, and he cannot bring the church into the position God requires. Unconverted ministers who work from self rather than from Christ lack spiritual sight, yet self-confidence keeps them in error, and their ministry turns people from truth so that guide and followers alike stumble in darkness.
Teachers who lack spiritual sight cannot guide safely, and neglecting the divine way to do only surface work harms students and works against true Christian education. Teachers who fail to uplift the true God and to prepare people through Scripture are blind guides, and both they and their followers are in danger of ruin. The danger falls on teachers who study Scripture with little interest, whose worldly ideas and inadequate knowledge of God mislead the young, so that followers share the fall with their leaders. It is unsafe to trust youth to blind leaders in modern institutions of learning, including theological schools, where the sacred oracles are studied with far less interest than classical Greek and Roman authors, instruction is separated from the word of truth and the gospel of salvation, searching of Scripture and knowledge of God and the future life are neglected, and education is governed by worldly maxims and heathen conceptions of liberty, morality and justice, leaving graduates with less real knowledge of God and religious truth. Teachers who lack knowledge of God and of the message given for their time are blind guides whose false education leads students into error, and those students may spend years unlearning what they were taught.
Even among the professed people of God there will be blind leaders of the blind who are hirelings and wolves in sheep's clothing, persuading the flock to sacrifice to other gods. They corrupt and draw away youth who are not established, rooted and grounded in the truth, and they corrupt the faith of the unwary. They are ungodly despisers who wonder and perish, despising the sovereignty of the Ancient of Days, enthroning a false god of their own defining altogether like themselves, and acting as agents in Satan's hands.
Spiritually blind men cannot lead in safe paths and must not be followed or put in the place of God. Safety is standing on the immovable foundation that God is the sufficient helper, finding efficiency in God rather than in position, understanding duty distinctly, and carrying the mind forward in strenuous cooperation with Jesus working in faithful servants to do His pleasure, so that the Creator's honor is not given to the creature. Healthful labor requires partnership with divine resources, a wholesome outlay of mortal energies with the immortal, careful attention to eternal things, laying hold of provided divine power instead of puny human strength, refusing to let human minds control the mind or human suggestions interweave with God's work, and drawing nigh to God.
Blind leaders and followers are in danger when, like those in Christ's day, they claim to see yet cannot discern their true spiritual condition and misread themselves while misleading many into straying. Both guides and followers are deluded souls who misjudge themselves and lead one another astray. Unless they are converted and transformed they cannot become laborers together with God.
Great pity, love and forgiveness are extended both to blind souls who lose their way and to leaders who led those souls into darkness and themselves became blind. Blind eyes are opened by coming to Jesus, who is present in every assembly gathered to learn of Him and hear His Word and who makes all see clearly because He never makes mistakes. Serious blunders come from refusing His counsel and going forward in self-kindled light. Unless the blind come to have their eyes opened they will lie down in sorrow, keep walking contrary to the divine will, refuse humility to bear Christ's yoke, and become helpless withering branches bearing no acceptable fruit.
One who should guide others but neglects truth and follows selfish ideas in teaching and example is a false guide pointing the wrong way. Divine truth makes savingly wise and keeps one so. Minds brought into harmony with the divine mind learn from Christ and teach others away from prevailing error.
Even ministers become blind leaders when truth is not presented as it is in Jesus and planted in the heart by the Spirit, which is drifting away from Christ, from piety and from religious principle. Such blindness shows in preaching with little of Christ and His righteousness, feeble, empty and unnourishing, without power to preach in demonstration of the Spirit, and with no Christ carried into private life. It shows further in boasting, pride and self-esteem, speaking evil of things without real knowledge, impatience with everything not in one's own line, and scoffing at sacred things because spiritual things are spiritually discerned, by which a man degrades himself in perverting and falsifying truth.