John 9:1-4 says: “As he passed by, he (Jesus) saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work’.” (ESV) Some claim that the disciples’ question points to an assumption that either the man born blind had sinned in the womb or in a previous life, or someone else’s sin had resulted in his condition. Based on a specific Greek syntactic construction found in John 9:3, some have argued that Jesus’ reply did not amount to an explicit rejection of the idea that one could sin in a previous life and be judged for that sin. This paper examines that assumption and Jesus’ answer in verse 3 (“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him…”).