Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 201st episode. In this episode we’re going to continue our study of Matthew’s gospel. We are in chapter 8. In scripture we often see prophesying or preaching coupled with miracle working. The reason for this was to further prove the prophet was sent by God. Miracles in scripture, though rare, functioned as God’s seal of approval on a given teaching. We see the same with Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Having just concluded the sermon in chapter 7, chapter 8 gives us a survey of some of Christ’s miracles. These miracles revealed the divine power and authority from which Christ preached. They also show us an important part of His character as the great Healer. Jesus is the Great Physician who has come to heal a disordered world.
In this chapter we’ll see Jesus cleanse a leper as well as a person paralyzed with fever. We’ll see Him converse with two individuals who seek to follow Him, and He’ll make clear to them they must count the cost of discipleship. Towards the end of the chapter Jesus will calm the storm, a powerful miracle showing His executive authority over creation itself. And finally we’ll study how Jesus healed two men who were demon possessed. We won’t get through all of the content of chapter 8 in this episode, because I want us to dive as deep as we can and take our time with the scripture. Let’s begin with verses 1-4:
Mat 8:1 When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him.
Mat 8:2 And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Mat 8:3 Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
Mat 8:4 And Jesus *said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
In the previous chapter I mentioned how relatively few people committed themselves to following Jesus because of His Sermon on the Mount. Indeed during the final hours leading up to His crucifixion He was mostly abandoned. But in the immediate aftermath of the sermon large crowds were astonished and wanted to know more. This astonishment, and consequently the crowds themselves, would grow the more they witnessed His miracles.
It’s curious that anyone would want to follow Jesus at all after the strictness of the doctrine He laid down in His sermon. One mistake preachers often make is to avoid difficult subjects in their own sermons. This is a mistake because every person in the room already knows that life is tragic, life is difficult, and the world is filled with evil. Jesus being blunt about sin and the penalties for sin rang true in the hearts of those who heard Him. They knew He wasn’t telling them soft lies to appease them and win their favor — they knew He was telling them the truth.
People today still crave the strictness of such a Lawgiver and the faithfulness of such a Reprover — even if they don’t realize it. The low-resolution ideology which teaches all persons are perfect just the way they are is damaging nonsense. And what’s more, almost everyone who hears it knows deep down that it’s damaging nonsense. A college professor telling a room full of 18 year-old students that they’re perfect just the way they are is a very defeating message because it steals their hope of a better future.
The truth is, when you’re 18 you’re inexperienced and have much to learn about yourself and the world. More than likely your life is not yet what you want it to be because you’ve only just become an adult and have had no time to work on it. You’re probably unskilled and if you have any talents at all they haven’t been developed to their full potential. Taking someone in such a nascent condition and telling them life doesn’t get any better than what they’re currently experiencing is a recipe for despair.
So you can see why so many were astonished at Christ’s sermon and were interested in what He had to say. He was calling them to a higher order of existence. He was beckoning them to the gates of Heaven, and alerting them to the dangers of Hell. Many of them had never been given such an adventure carrying such meaningful consequences. This tends to be the same effect conversion has on new believers today. Once the reality of Jesus snaps into focus He changes everything all the way down to how you understand your past, present, and future.
The more we get to know Jesus the more we should want to grow in our knowledge of Him. Many people view Heaven as the great prize of the Christian faith, but I actually think a prize of similar grandeur is to have the mind of Christ. I think having the mind of Christ opens your eyes so you see reality as Jesus sees it — which is the way it actually is. The mind of Christ allows you to see the world with one-to-one mapping and free of distortion. On this side of Heaven none of us mortals will develop the mind of Christ sufficient to see all things clearly, but it’s hard to say where the upper limit is if one dedicates his entire life to the pursuit.
One of Christ’s first miracles in His ministry was to cleanse a leper. Leprosy was commonly understood to be a sign of God’s displeasure with a person. This is why in the Old Testament Miriam, Gehazi, and Uzziah are stricken with leprosy as a consequence for their particular sins. Jesus cleansing the leper is therefore symbolic of His overarching mission to cleanse us of our sins and turn away the wrath of God. It’s also the case that lepers were normally sent to the priests for inspection instead of to the physicians for treatment. This is because the ancient Jews believed God was the one who struck people with leprosy and God was also the one who healed people from it.
It’s possible the biblical lepers were inflicted with a disease markedly different from what we understand leprosy to be today. In fact the Levitical law provides prescriptions for what the priests should do if this leprosy is found on a garment or on the walls of a house. These examples suggest a supernatural malady rather than a mere dermatological disease. In the Old Testament one of the kings of Israel is recorded tearing his robes in a sign of anguish and asking if he is God that he should be able to kill and make alive, and to cure one of leprosy.
So the curing of leprosy represented a cleansing of sin but it also functioned as a proof of deity. Jesus healed many lepers and He granted authorization and power to His disciples to do so as well. In Matthew 11 the cleansing of lepers is just plainly listed among the signs that the Messiah has come to earth. In the Old Testament leprosy was counted remarkably worse than normal diseases and was treated more like a form of uncleanness.
A leper was separated from his people and was forbidden from approaching holy things in the tabernacle. Jesus, being the High Priest of our profession, cleansed the lepers to show us that by His power sinners are able to approach holy things. Our sins can be washed clean by the righteousness of Jesus such that we are able to approach God directly as our Father who is in Heaven. The cleansing nature of Christ’s character is one of the elements which made Him distinct from the law itself. The law was never able to cleanse a person of his or her sins — it was only able to reveal such sins. One of the purposes of God’s law is to reveal who we actually are as sinners in need of a Savior.
Galatians 3 teaches how the law kept us in custody and closed us off to the faith which was later to be revealed in Jesus. But the law actually works in tandem with Jesus because a broken sinner only turns to Jesus for healing if he or she realizes they’re a broken sinner. That law gives us this realization. The gospel truth is that Christ tore the veil which was a barrier for us to enter into the most holy space. Because of Jesus we can be sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the scriptures, and a sanctified person — much like a cleansed leper — is able to stand in the presence of God.
Assuming Christ’s healing of the leper happened chronologically after His sermon on the mount, we can see that Jesus forbade him not from coming close to listen — even though the leper would have been barred from the cities of Israel. Often you hear people say they can’t attend church or listen to sermons because their sin is too great. Their sense of shame makes them feel like they can’t approach God or learn about Him. Jesus breaks that false boundary here and the leper is encouraged enough by the sermon to approach Him and ask for healing.
Sermons are very important because sermons are God’s chosen vehicle for delivering the exhortation and teaching which draws sinners in to be healed by Jesus. As a sinner, or as one trying to help a sinner, you should never feel like you’re unfit to listen to a sermon. So the leper likely worshipped Jesus while he was still leprous and before asking to be healed. The cleansing of the leper reveals the mercy of God to us in a variety of ways.
The first way is the most obvious in that it was a temporal mercy or a mercy to the body. Leprosy was not a pleasant disease to have and it made life very bitter. You would have to live in isolation while being racked with physical and emotional distress. Even leprosy as the skin disease we know of today requires a long course of multi-drug treatments to resolve. If you were stricken leprous in the biblical era your probability of being healed was slim. Despite the intimidating reputation of this disease, the leper approached Jesus with confidence in His power to heal the body.
The leper’s confidence shows us the kind of assurance that we ourselves should hold in regard to God’s power over physical disease. I want to be careful here. As a cessationist, I do not believe individual human beings are still endowed with such power to miraculously heal. But I do believe that with prayer it is possible for the Spirit of God Himself to heal the body. However, even if we have this assurance of God’s power like the leper did, we need to keep in mind the other important part of the leper’s appeal. He said to Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Every time you ask God for a supernatural healing or any kind of answer to your prayers, you must always remain submitted to God’s will. The leper had no doubt of Christ’s capacity to heal, but he didn’t know whether it would be Christ’s will to heal him. So if we can be certain of God’s power but uncertain of His will, are we then left to struggle in fearful anxiety as to whether or not God will save us? Unfortunately many people end up characterizing their perspective on God in this way. I asked for healing and God didn’t heal, so God must not be good or He must be against me specifically.
This kind of warped perspective is only possible when you are convinced of God’s omnipotent power while being ignorant of His wisdom and His mercy. The wisdom and mercy of God is such that even if His will departs from our own desires — we can be certain that His will is best. Absolute faith in the will of God is most famously demonstrated by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when He prays for this cup of suffering (meaning the crucifixion) to pass from Him but then He concludes His prayer with the faithful acceptance of God’s will whatever that might be.
So we see the mercy of God in His ability to heal the physical body, but we also see it in His ability to heal the spirit. Unrepentant sin makes us spiritual lepers and inhibits us from communion with God. That doesn’t mean God remains unapproachable when a sinner repents and needs spiritual healing — all praise be to Jesus for His grace — it just means we cannot experience the fullness of spiritual well-being while we live in the midst of unrepentant, unhealed sin.
Shame takes hold when a person is inflicted with a form of guilt they don’t believe God is sufficient to heal. We can resist shame by practicing a humble, believing boldness in the power of Jesus. When we accept the comprehensive sovereignty of God, we realize there is no act of depravity which escapes His notice nor which goes beyond His ability to redeem. There is no corruption so strong that it defies God’s power to subdue it. Part of this humble confidence in God which inoculates us against malignant shame is remembering that we ask God to heal us not because He owes us — but as a favor to us because He loves us. Our view of God should be such that we throw ourselves at His feet in search of healing and if we are to die from our sins we desire to die at the foot of Jesus.
What’s especially important in this interaction is Christ’s response to the leper’s pleas for healing. The scripture says Jesus reached out and touched him. Remember a leper would have been considered so unclean that not only would he be forbidden from entering the temple, but he would be dislocated from the cities in Israel as well. Why was Jesus able to touch the leper and dine with sinners without becoming unclean Himself? Wasn’t He breaking the laws of the Levitical priests by doing this? Not at all, in fact He’s demonstrating for us the purpose of the law itself.
The Levitical laws against the unclean were purposed to prevent the spread of contamination. They were meant to separate the sacred from the profane. When Jesus touches the leper and when Jesus dines with sinners — He’s showing us that Satan and the principalities and powers of this world have no sway over Him. He doesn’t have to worry about being infected by sin because He is sovereign over sin. It’s because of Jesus that Christians today are able to evangelize the lost and be among them without becoming like them. The power to do this comes from the Spirit of God within us. But we should be careful to remember that being among sinners doesn’t mean endorsing their sin — Jesus healed the leper of his disease, He didn’t sit there and commiserate with him.
Jesus healed the leper by speaking a word. He didn’t give the leper instructions to go carry out himself the way Elisha did with Naaman when he told him to wash in the Jordan seven times. What we learn about Jesus is that He is as willing to heal our spirits as He is able to heal them. This means we should have no hesitation in applying ourselves to Christ for His grace and mercy. Jesus is the Great Physician. Unlike human doctors, Jesus never needs to be sought out because He is already present with you. You don’t need to beg or encourage Him to do His healing work because He hears your prayers even while they are nascent meditations in your heart. Jesus does not heal for a price, rather He does it freely by the unsearchable wealth of His own grace.
Jesus is able to heal the leper with a word because the words God speaks are powerful and authoritative. The scripture is the word of God and within it is the power to transform your soul. The scripture is able to completely change your inner man. Part of the healing word given to the leper contains a command as well. He cleanses the leper and He tells him to be clean. This is analogous to Christ forgiving the woman caught in adultery and telling her to go and sin no more. If you truly desire the grace of God He will not deprive you of it — but part of desiring God’s grace is recognizing the danger of the sins from which you are repenting. If you have a near-death experience as a consequence of your own poor decisions, and you recognize the gravity of what nearly happened to you, you would be hesitant to resume meddling in such things again.
Throughout the gospels when we see Jesus do healing miracles like this one we see the results are both immediate and permanent. There is never any ambiguity about whether a miracle just took place. The supernatural quality of Christ’s healings is one of the many reasons why I hold to a cessationist view concerning the apostolic gifts of the Spirit. Christians who profess to have the gift of healing are simply not able to prove results as immediate, certain, and permanent as those which Christ and His apostles demonstrated. If any person on earth were able to do this then functionally they would be able to permanently heal entire cancer wards and they’d be a household name overnight.
I do believe the Spirit of God is able to work supernatural, miraculous, physical healing in response to the prayers of the faithful — but it’s not something that happens regularly and these kinds of prayers are always subject to the will of God. Throughout scripture we see characters like Moses healing himself of leprosy and the Levitical priests offering atonement for their own sins before making sacrifices for the sins of the people. Jesus skips this step and goes straight to healing the leper because there is no sin in Jesus to atone for.
After He heals the leper Jesus tells him to keep it secret and to go present the offering prescribed by Moses in the law as a testimony to the priests. One thing to remember here is that being transformed by God is a good reason to make yourself subject to His Lordship. That sounds obvious but too often Christians put their godless hardships so far behind them that they forget just how terrible the morass was from which Christ extricated them. It’s good Christian practice to memorialize the time of your conversion and always be grateful you didn’t continue walking down your old path to destruction.
It’s possible Jesus didn’t want the leper to tell anyone he was healed without first showing the priests because He knew how easy it is for people to cast doubt on miracles. Perhaps He wanted to make it clear to the priests that this man was the same man who was once a leper and now was cleansed. It’s also possible that Christ was concerned the priests, out of spite for Himself, would deny certifying the leper’s cleanliness if they knew Jesus was the one who healed him. When we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ today, we should be aware that many people will carry bias against it because of their aversion to Christ Himself. We should always be prepared to defend the faith with reason and evidence, and we should be wise as serpents and harmless as doves while we do our ministerial work.
There’s a common misconception that Jesus was some kind of rebel or revolutionary. Some people even mistakenly believe that He was against governmental power in general. Contrary to these misapprehensions, His instruction to the leper to observe the Levitical precepts and pay respect to the priesthood reveals Jesus as a God of order and good discipline. Even if the priests of His day were wicked individuals, He still paid respect to the office of the priesthood. We should treat our own leaders similarly today. Even bad presidents and evil world leaders are only in their positions of power because God permitted them to be. And so even if we dislike the leader, we should do what we can to respect the office so long as doing so does not require us to sin or rebel against God.
It’s also just good advice to readily approach your pastors or your priests for help. If you are a repentant sinner who has found forgiveness in Christ and been cleansed of your spiritual leprosy — a good (and some would say necessary) next step is to get in contact with a pastor or a priest and let the clergy help you walk through your next steps as a Christian. A good pastor will be able to teach you, encourage you, comfort you, connect you with a Christian community, and pray for you.
The final part of this passage is Jesus instructing the leper to present the offering that Moses commanded so that it will be a testimony to the priests. This passage could mean the ceremonial offering would represent acknowledgement of God’s authority, God’s care, and the cleansing grace to come. Or it could mean He wanted the leper to show the priests there is one among them who has power to do what even the high priest cannot do. In this case the testimony of Christ’s miracle would either encourage the priests to acknowledge the truth and improve themselves upon it — or the testimony would stand against them if they chose to reject Jesus.
The words and works of Christ are testimonies which either encourage our faith in Him or stand to condemn our rejection of Him. The Resurrection is chief among these miracles. The Resurrection is the miracle which makes Christianity the only falsifiable religion on the planet. If you find the body of Jesus then the faith is proven false. The Resurrection is a demonstration of God’s power over death and therefore His power over our own deaths. The Resurrection proves the divinity of Jesus and shows us His mighty power to save. Let’s continue with verses 5-13:
Mat 8:5 And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him,
Mat 8:6 and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.”
Mat 8:7 Jesus *said to him, “I will come and heal him.”
Mat 8:8 But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
Mat 8:9 “For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.”
Mat 8:10 Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.
Mat 8:11 “I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven;
Mat 8:12 but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Mat 8:13 And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment.
We know that Jesus was living at Capernaum during the time of this passage. Jesus traveled to do good and He also came home to do good. Every place Jesus went ended up being better because of Him. This is the kind of impact all Christians should aspire to have in their own lives. I think Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well when he said, “To know that even one life breathes easier because you lived — this is to have succeeded.”
One of the first things we notice about this passage is the person Jesus is helping is a centurion. A centurion would have been a high-ranking soldier in the Roman army. This man was a gentile and likely the commander of the part of the army which was quartered in Capernaum. The faith of the centurion shows us that God has His people in all walks of life. At the throne of judgment, a person’s profession will not serve as an excuse for impiety. Sometimes God’s grace shows up in the most unlikely of places.
We can unpack just how unlikely God’s grace was in this moment as well. Here we have a Roman centurion, whose very presence in Capernaum functioned as a representation of the Jews’ subjection to Rome. And here we have Jesus the King of the Jews showing the centurion favor. This is what Christ means when He says to love our enemies. We must seek to do good to our enemies both individually and nationally. If your country has a subset of people the entire nation considers undesirable — you must remember as a Christian there are likely some in that group who belong to the Lord.
It is the case in the gospels that we see Jesus pay special attention to the people of Israel and spend less time on gentiles. But it’s also true that His reception of gentiles and ministry to gentiles accomplished more to magnify His name. The person being healed was the centurion’s servant, and that shows us how Jesus is no respecter of persons. It didn’t matter that the servant had a low station in life — he would be healed nonetheless. In Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision (this means Jews and gentiles are counted the same) and there is neither bond nor free. Christ is equally ready to heal both the poorest slave and the wealthiest master. One of the reasons Jesus took on the form of a servant was to show humanity His regard for the poor and for the dispossessed.
We notice immediately how the centurion speaks affectionately to Jesus and calls Him Lord. This would have been remarkable coming from a man of his station and being spoken down to Jesus the Jewish servant. To further support the point, this interaction is markedly different than Naaman’s interaction with the prophet Elisha. Naaman was a centurion as well, and he approached Elisha demanding a cure for his leprosy. The centurion in Christ’s case gives pious regard to Jesus and believes Him willing and able to relieve poor petitioners.
The scripture teaches in Isaiah 53 that there was nothing about the appearance of Jesus which commanded our attraction or respect. He came to earth as a suffering servant. But having the eyes of faith, the centurion saw past this marred visage and got a glimpse of the King of kings. To look on Jesus from a perspective of faithful humility means to understand that even the most powerful men on earth become beggars in His presence. The centurion recognized the sovereignty and supreme omnipotence of Jesus Christ and therefore he humbly referred his case to Him. This is how we ourselves should approach Jesus in prayer. A humble confession of our spiritual downfalls and desires will be met with the incomprehensible peace of God’s mercy.
Another insight into the centurion’s character is the fact that He is seeking Jesus for the well-being of his servant. We commonly see instances of others seeking Jesus for themselves or their children — but the centurion is unique in that he’s paying charitable regard to his poor servant. It is the duty of every master, boss, or manager to care for the well-being of his servant when he is in affliction. The servant’s malady would have made him worthless in terms of the work he could do for his master — yet his master did not let this sickness diminish the man’s inherent value. There’s a story in 1 Samuel of a young Egyptian who falls sick and his Amalekite master abandons him because of the sickness. The centurion is doing the godly opposite here: not only is he choosing to care for his servant but he’s seeking out the best possible treatment for him.
Jesus does not assess a person’s worth based on the quality of their contribution or their abilities. The only way to please God is by faith. I want to be careful here. The quality of a person’s contribution can degrade as a consequence of character problems including bad faith. So it’s not that the person is giving their best and their best doesn’t measure up to what we all consider excellent. It’s that the person is refusing to give their best because of their lack of faith. In that kind of situation an improper sacrifice is displeasing to God much the same way Cain’s sacrifice was displeasing to God.
There’s also a leadership lesson to be learned here. The centurion’s servants were very loyal and dutiful to him. This is almost certainly because they loved and respected him. They loved and respected him because he was very kind to them. It’s tempting for leaders to use intimidation tactics to inspire fear in their followers. The logic is that if my servants fear me they will also respect me. But this is a fallacy. The Russian dictator Joseph Stalin is perhaps the most famous example of this going wrong in the 20th century.
Stalin was a thug who would have you killed for looking at him the wrong way. All of the people in his circle knew this about him and so they were constantly afraid when they were around him. This caused them to lie to him if lying seemed like the best approach to stay his wrath. So Stalin found himself lodged into a feedback loop of lies and he didn’t have anyone in his life who was willing to give him honest feedback or who wasn’t always walking on eggshells around him. This treatment further solidified Stalin’s disgust in humanity because all he ever saw were people acting like pitiful cowards around him. This disgust made Stalin’s aggression even worse and therefore lodged him deeper into the pathological feedback loop.
The leadership lesson learned from the centurion is that servants will always work harder for and follow further a leader they love than they will a leader they fear. A good leader will not despise his servants when they contend with him and a good leader will look after his servants when they’re struggling. In the sight of God there is no distinction between masters and servants — all of us are servants before the great throne of the divine.
The faith of the centurion is demonstrated by the fact that he chose to come to Jesus with such a difficult request. Paralytics were commonly beyond the capacity of natural physicians to heal. Even though the doctors couldn’t do it the centurion presents confident faith that Jesus can. The centurion’s servant was in exceptionally poor condition because he was both paralyzed and greatly tormented which implies he was in a lot of pain. When we’re surveying the people around us today we should keep in mind that Jesus is able to redeem even situations which appear impossible. You may know someone whose life has been a conveyor belt of suffering and poor choices, but even this person is not beyond the Great Physician’s skill to heal. As Christians we should take time to pray for even the people who seem to be permanently lost.
When Jesus offers to come heal the centurion’s servant the centurion responds with an even greater display of humility. Notice how the centurion counts himself as unworthy and doesn’t say his servant is unworthy — so he’s demonstrating ownership rather than denigrating his servant. Those who approach Jesus with a humble heart tend to react with humility when shown His grace.
So if by the grace of God you make it out of some trial in life, a humble person would glorify God and feel an immense sense of gratitude. A prideful person would react as if God’s grace was a perfectly normal and expected occurrence. They would think something like, Of course God would show up for me, I don’t deserve this trial and God loves me because I’m a pretty good person so He’s only holding up His end of the bargain by helping me. Contrast this attitude with the humility of the centurion — who after Jesus offers to help him, insists that he’s unworthy of Christ going out of His way to do so.
If you were a bystander watching the interaction between Christ and the centurion from a worldly perspective, you would see a man in Jesus who looked very much inferior to the high-ranking Roman soldier. The centurion had the presence of mind to see the things of God in those who outwardly seem unimpressive. We should practice this mindset as Christians today. A Christlike mode of being is not reserved for those who occupy prestigious stations in life. While all people are sinners and none should exalt himself, Christians should do what they can to honor Christlike characteristics wherever they see them. If a homeless man approaches you and says or does something which in keeping with the character of Christ, you should pay respect to that thing even though it’s coming from such a diminished vessel.
An indispensable requirement for child-like faith in Jesus is servant-like humility in yourself. Your confidence in God is proportional to the lack of pride in yourself. A prideful person follows his inclination to trust himself more readily than he trusts in God. The humble centurion had an assurance of faith that not only could Jesus cure his servant, but that Jesus could cure his servant from a distance. Scripture recounts a story of people who, surmounting great difficulty, bring a man sick with palsy into the presence of Jesus to be healed. They end up having to let him down from a rooftop in order to get him in front of Jesus. Jesus commends their faith as a working faith. The centurion realizes he doesn’t need to bring his servant to Jesus and Jesus can still heal him — so Jesus commends the centurions faith as a trusting faith.
The trusting faith of the centurion affirmed the reality that there is no limit to the power of God. He didn’t need to bring his servant into Christ’s presence because Christ’s presence was already with his servant. In Jeremiah 23 God asks, “Am I a God who is near and not a God far off?” This means geographical distance is irrelevant to the presence and sovereignty of God. Jesus is just as much God when He’s standing right in front of you as He is when you feel like you’re all alone. The centurion realized the omnipresence of God and he also realized that God can heal people and change things in nature merely by speaking words.
For human beings spoken words and actions are separated by our finitude. But with God His words are the same as actions. Jesus speaks to the tempest and it calms. In the creation account God spoke the universe in to existence. One of the titles for Jesus Christ is the Word of God or the word made flesh. James warns Christians against being the kind of person who gives well-wishes but refuses to take any action to help the person in need. He says if you tell a person to go be warm and be filled but you don’t give them what is necessary for their body then what use is that? This distinction between words and actions does not apply to Jesus, because when He says to go be warm and filled His words accomplish just that and do not return void.
The centurion illustrates his faith by referencing his own position as a high-ranking military leader. He explains how his soldiers obey his commands and thereby execute his will at a distance. His soldiers were well-trained and they understood commands from the centurion were to be obeyed without dispute. He compares his authority over his soldiers with Christ’s authority over sickness and nature itself. He went further to admit that he himself is a man under authority and so how much more could Jesus Christ, the supreme Lord of all, command the sickness to leave his servant with a word.
The roman soldiers’ obedience of the centurion is also illustrative of what our obedience to Christ should be like. The centurion’s servants would go and come at the very least of his commands. We should also move and stay at God’s bidding in accordance with His word. Being still and waiting for God’s command is much different than clearly receiving His command yet hesitating to carry it out. We should move quickly and diligently to where He sends us, we should return when He calls us back, and we should execute that which He commands with our best efforts. When the will of God explicated in His word falls into conflict with our own will — we must set aside our own will and allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify us so that we more readily accept God’s will.
So the next question is: If God is absolutely sovereign over sickness and disease in the same manner as the centurion was sovereign over his subordinates — then does that mean God allows us to be sick? I would go a step further and suggest not only does He allow it, but He Himself appoints it. Many Christians recoil at such a thought, but I think this conception of God’s comprehensive sovereignty is most aligned with the teaching of Scripture. And I actually think it’s the most comforting view of God on offer.
The first thing we should understand is that whether God is sovereign over sickness or not — people are going to continue getting sick regardless. Let me walk you through two common understandings of God’s sovereignty when it comes to sickness and disease. I’m going to say Option A is wrong and Option B is right. Option A would teach us that sickness and death are merely tragic consequences of the Fall and therefore God’s hands are off of them. God doesn’t want you to be sick anymore than you want to be sick, but for some reason He’s choosing not to help you or He is powerless to do so.
Option B provides that God is the one who sends the sickness and the sickness seizes us in exactly the manner which God prescribed. We are also cured of disease in the exact manner which God commands us to be — because every aspect of the disease itself is subordinate to God’s sovereignty. Every disease remains under God’s commission, under God’s control, and executes no more or no less than God’s command. And because we know the nature of God as a loving Father and a merciful Friend, we also know every disease is made and sent to serve the intentions of His grace. When we view sickness and tragedy by this light, we have much less reason to be afraid of them because we know nothing can transpire which is not in the hand of our good and almighty God.
Jesus shows Himself gracious to those who are gracious and He does so with the centurion for that reason. The centurion didn’t have to beg Jesus to heal his servant. Right at the beginning of the interaction Christ says, “I will come and heal him.” There was no ambiguity as to whether Christ could effectively perform the healing. He didn’t say He had to see the servant first before knowing whether or not the servant could be healed. Even upon examining the miraculous nature of apostolic healings, we don’t see such a certainty in the power of anyone else. This is because the apostles healed on an authority which was derived from Jesus — but Jesus healed on authority which was sourced in Himself.
Even today when a person gets sick the most a pastor can do is offer to come and pray for him. But Jesus has more authority than our ministers do — and He can say, “I will come and heal him.” When you read the passage you’ll notice how the centurion never even had to ask Jesus for healing let alone ask Him to come to his house. Jesus offered these things up in gracious response to the centurion’s plight. Sometimes people are afraid to pray because they’re afraid God won’t show up for them. But often we see instances in scripture just like this one where Jesus exceeds the expectation of a poor supplicant.
It is the impoverished station of the supplicant which sometimes lodges them within Christ’s favor. Many times humility attends poverty of spirit and God honors those who humble themselves. When we receive grace from God it should lead us to want to further humble ourselves and recognize proper relationship with Him. This was true of the centurion and Jesus applauded him for it. He commends the faith of the centurion and even uses the moment to speak kind words towards the Gentiles as a group. Jesus expresses admiration for the centurion in a similar way God declares that there is none like unto Job in all the earth. Both Job and the centurion receive admiration from God because of their strong, self-denying faith.
Jesus marvels at the centurion in principle because He wants to teach us what we ourselves should marvel at. Christ wasn’t surprised by the centurion’s faith because it was Jesus Christ who gifted it to Him. His expression of admiration is meant to show us that such faith is rare and uncommon. God wants us to see true beauty in holiness rather than in the vanity of pomp and circumstance. We should view people who are rich in faith as having true wealth even more so than those who are rich in worldly goods. And even when we meet admirable people who have faith like this, all glory must redound to God Himself and we should thank Him that He has gifted us with faith.
Christ’s commendation of the centurion cut against conventional Jewish teaching because the centurion was not a son of Abraham. He was a Gentile. In the Christian faith sometimes we’re too allergic to hierarchies. Since we know that God is no respecter of men and that all have fallen short of the glory of God, we tend to think there is no difference of value between believers. There may be no difference of intrinsic value, for instance it makes no difference in the sight of God whether you’re a child of Abraham or not. But there are certainly hierarchical difference in terms of a person’s faithfulness and responsibility.
God seeks faith more than anything else. That’s why a believer’s contribution to the kingdom of God can’t really be measured the way we measure worldly contributions. In the gospels there’s a story of an impoverished widow who tithes what little amount of money she has to live on. Even though the sum of her donation is much smaller than those of the wealthy, Jesus says she contributed more than them all. That’s because the purpose of the tithe is its representation of faith more than simply being a monetary donation.
Even today we recognize when a person has greater faith than others. This is the kind of person you turn to in the midst of your trials and they’re always there to help. This is the person who exemplifies the practice of spiritual disciplines in their daily routine. This is the person who doesn’t give up on the goodness of God when circumstances suggest He is either not good or not all-powerful. It’s okay to recognize these people as examples of spiritual well-being, and it’s even okay to see these people as being further sanctified than ourselves and therefore worthy of greater spiritual authority. But this recognition must always be attended by praising God and thanking Him for gifting the person with such faith. We always remember that this kind of faith comes from God and it is not the product of one’s own efforts.
Christ’s readily commending a gentile shows us that we need to be careful against siloing ourselves from other believers of different Christian traditions. If you’re hesitant to walk with another Christian because they’re in a different denomination, then you need to carefully sort out why you’re hesitant. Basic tribalism is not a good reason to steer away from people who are different from you. Doctrinal differences which manifest as major incongruences in spiritual practice might be a better reason. But even in a case of doctrinal difference there are usually a multiplicity of ways to navigate these differences which preserve the relationship while bringing honor to God.
The faith of the centurion, while providing an example for the gentiles, spoke a great deal of shame to the house of Israel. God’s people had been given the advantage of adoption, covenants, and all the assistance and encouragement of faith — yet Christ says He has not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. So when a person who has been given an unfair starting point or a hard life from the beginning demonstrates faithful obedience to God nonetheless, this person becomes an aggravating judge to those who have been given much and have borne little fruit. And I’ll mention that a little bit of spiritual jealousy is not a bad thing here. Paul speaks about his desire to move his fellow countrymen to jealousy so that some might be saved. When you’re inspired by a fellow believer’s example and it moves you to further sanctification in yourself then you should count this as a grace of God.
When Jesus uses the faith of the centurion to compare the Jews with the Gentiles the Jews learned two things which were undoubtedly quite shocking. The Jews were taught that salvation was of the Jews so there was a great emphasis on one’s familial heritage and one’s lineage to Abraham. But Jesus shows them that a great many Gentiles will be saved as well. The centurion’s faith functioned as a foreshadow of the conversion of the Gentiles and their adoption into the Church.
We read passages of scripture which indicate the number of people saved is few. But these passages must be read while taking into account the multiplicity of generations across which Christ’s redemptive work spans. This might look like only a few people when you’re in a room of 30 on one specific afternoon. But once you broaden your scope to include every room of 30 of every afternoon reaching all the way back to prehistory — then you see that there will be many who are saved.
When we see imagery of Jesus in all His glory at the second coming, He is attended by a great multitude of saints. Revelation says it is a multitude which no man can number. This multitude is composed of people from all stretches of the world and all epochs of time. This far-reaching diversity will gather at the right hand of Christ who is the center of their unity. Scripture says the elect of God will be gathered from the four winds and from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same His name will be praised in all the earth.
Gentiles at the time of the centurion would have been considered strangers to the Abrahamic covenant of promise made between God and His people. And yet we see time and time again that God has hidden faithful ones in strange peoples we would never consider. It’s very likely the case that when we enter Heaven we will not see some people we expected to be there and we will see some people we didn’t expect. The blessing of Abraham has come upon the Gentiles which is an expression of God’s love for the whole world.
It’s interesting in scripture how one of the first actions we see anyone do upon entering Heaven is to sit down. Revelation 3:21 says, “He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” The act of sitting symbolizes arriving at a final resting place. Heaven is your eternal home. Heaven is the place you come into and never have to depart again. There will be no more painful goodbyes. The feasts of Heaven pictured in scripture also indicate we’ll have familiarity with people who in mortal life were far from us. Ancient people and modern people will sit down together in communion with patriarchs like Abraham and church fathers like Augustine and Jerome. Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, all will be unified in the presence of Christ Jesus.
Verse 12 of Matthew 8 presents a dire warning for those who are sons of Abraham but lack faith in Jesus. He says the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The faithless of the Jews will be cut off from the Church. Scripture says that Israel, or the Jews, were pursuing a law of righteousness but did not arrive at that law. Those who boasted lineage to Abraham while rejecting their Savior Jesus will no longer be a people of God.
There is a crucial difference between being in a family and being of a family. It’s the difference between a title and a substantive identity. Professing the title of Christian is not the same thing as actually being one. You can have parents who are actually Christians, but if you simply claim Christianity because that’s what your parents believe — and you don’t truly believe it yourself — this is not the same as being a substantive follower of Jesus. Being this kind of nominal Christian is dangerous because it makes you vulnerable to self-righteousness and when tragedy strikes your life — and tragedy will strike your life — it can feel like you’ve been betrayed by God or by the godly people around you.
Jesus says the workers of iniquity will be cast into outer darkness where this weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the darkness of those who are outside the kingdom of God. To be cast out from God means to be given over to spiritual blindness, a hardened heart, and all of the terrors which attend this condition. Although there is fire in Hell, it is fundamentally a place of darkness with no light. Hell is utterly cutoff from God who is the Source of all light. This is a region of darkness in its extremity. The weeping and the gnashing of teeth denotes how Hell is a place where there is no hope and yet there is an acute awareness of things lost. To be in Hell means to suffer anguish of spirit preying eternally on your vitality. Tears are shed to no purpose and the wrath of God is the torment of the damned.
When we think about a place so terrible it can be hard to understand why God would allow anyone to go there. But the gnashing of teeth gives us a clue. The occupants of Hell remain at enmity with God. They are vexed by the fury of the Lord but they are not in capitulation to it. We see the same sort of thing happen during the series of judgments in Revelation. The unrepentant sinners writhe in agony under the weight of God’s judgments but none of them turn away from their sins. Instead they double and triple down on their war with God. The more they face God’s judgment the more vehemently they hate Him. There will not be a single living being in Hell who loves God. In fact it’s entirely possible there will not be a single living being in Hell who loves anyone at all. Such a capacity to love originates in the Spirit of God and none who submit to the Spirit of God will be cast out of Heaven.
So we finish this great passage of scripture with Jesus healing the centurion’s servant. But He does something much more important than the temporal healing of the servant — He confirms the faith of the centurion himself. Many times we pray to God about ourselves when we ourselves need encouragement. But here in scripture we see Jesus give encouragement to the centurion as a consequence of his intercession on behalf of the servant. This means as Christians we can expect a positive response of encouragement even while we’re praying for the help of someone else. Praying for the help of your neighbor might just be an even greater demonstration of faith than praying for the help of yourself.
In fact what we see in the book of Job is that God restores the fortunes of Job when Job prays for his friends. Really what we’re seeing in the story of the centurion and his servant is a prayer to God followed by a miraculous healing. Yes the centurion was talking face-to-face with Jesus but that is essentially what we’re doing as believers today when we pray. God’s omnipotence is put on full display when He speaks a word and the servant is completely, permanently cured immediately. No place is too distant for the long arm of God to reach. No trial is too difficult and no disease is to virulent for Him to heal.
And that’s the main takeaway of this long study of this passage in Matthew 8. God’s sovereignty is over every detail of every situation everywhere. When Jesus was performing His healing ministry it was very common for people to bring him cases of disease like paralysis which were notably difficult to cure. Leprosy and these sorts of things were able to steal a person’s hope and never bring it back again. Jesus healed lepers and paralytics because Jesus is able to bring hope to even the most hopeless. No measure of adversity exceeds the supply of God’s grace. He’s with you everywhere you go and He’s in control of every part of your life. All you have to do is believe. Believe as the centurion believed. Believe because Jesus is King and He is your Savior. Nothing stretches beyond His sovereignty. Believe because through Jesus not only are your spiritual wounds healed, but through Jesus you have everlasting life.
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