Luke 7

Human faith has a central position in the gospel accounts of interactions between Jesus Christ and those who needed His help. Luke 7 begins with one of the most important of these encounters recorded in the Scripture, showing to us some important principles of the kind of faith that is pleasing to God.

True faith can never start with our worthiness. This was the posture of the elders of the Jews when they considered the centurion whose servant was in great need. They claimed that the man was worthy, and that on the basis of this soldier’s worthiness, Jesus should heal. If we compared this man to other people there is little doubt that the elders were correct. The man was worthy. He had come to love Judaism, and had helped in the building of a synagogue. Yet when the man sent friends to Jesus, the message from the centurion that they spoke was not of worthiness, but of unworthiness. This is an important aspect of our faith. We must see our unworthiness, or we will never understand the cross. This sense of personal unworthiness is not the same as low self-esteem. A man can have a right appreciation of the gifts and advantages that he possesses, and a correct sense of duty concerning the use of these that might yield an appropriate confidence in the living of life. There is nothing wrong with this, particularly when it is undergirded with a humble appreciation of his unworthiness to receive any favor from our great and holy God. Any claim of merit before God is misplaced and delusional. Unworthiness is necessary for faith.

The second aspect of faith displayed by the centurion is an appreciation for the worthiness and power of Jesus Christ. He understood what it was to have rightful authority. He knew how to take orders and he knew how to give orders expecting them to be followed. He was convinced that Jesus could effectually give orders to whatever it was that ailed his servant, so much so that it was not even necessary for the Lord to be under his roof in order to heal his servant. This is the kind of faith that caused Jesus to be amazed.

Though faith is often central to the work of Christ in displaying the blessings of the age to come, this is not always the case. This fact suggests that there may be something more foundational to grace than our exercise of faith, as important as faith certainly is. The incident of the marvelous faith of the centurion is immediately followed by one in which there is not even a request made to Jesus, let alone any mention of faith that He could or would heal. What is mentioned is the Lord’s compassion, and that is more important to the coming of the resurrection then our request or our exercise of faith. The Lord sees a funeral procession and has compassion on a mother at the loss of her son. Without any request by anyone, He touches the funeral stretcher, and a dead man is restored to life.

This kind of merciful display at this moment in the history of salvation may have even surprised John the Baptist and his disciples. John certainly knew that the Messiah, the Lamb of God, would die for the sins of His people. He also certainly believed in the coming age of resurrection. What was perhaps surprising is that the signs of that resurrection were pouring out immediately in the ministry of the Lord, prior to the coming of final judgment. Christ cited Isaiah in order to prove that nothing here was ill-timed, and that Jesus was performing these works of life in accord with the Scriptures. This was surely the encouragement that this messenger needed to hear at that moment. He had faced the rejection and ridicule of men, but it was these very same people who had found a way to reject both John and Jesus, though the feel of their respective ministries was necessarily different. The wise follower of Jehovah God would be able to accept both the preparatory ministry of repentance in John and the beginning of the age of glory in the coming of the Messiah.

Most of the Pharisees rejected both John and Jesus. They had no place for a mercy that would come through the righteousness of a Substitute. It is this message that enlivens us today and has been the best passion of the church for many centuries. We have come to believe that One has died for many, and that in the wake of His death has come resurrection, not only for the One, but for the many who are covered by His cross. This is why mercy can come to us ahead of schedule. The Pharisee sees mercy to the unworthy, and he can only conclude that Jesus is not a very smart prophet. The unworthy sinner weeps at His feet, because she sees what the Pharisee misses.

She sees what the centurion saw. She embraces by faith what the grieving mother did not even ask for, but received in her son – life from the grave. Do we merit resurrection? The very question is preposterous. The reason for the cross is our demerit. There we can see what we deserve if we dare to gaze at that hell and consider our own guilt before God. It is only then that we will grow in our awareness that we had a great debt to pay that was far beyond our means, but that Christ has come for us and has cleared that debt, filling our account with a righteousness of surpassing worth. The one who thinks that he will get far with God based on his own merit will surely not be able to understand Jesus Christ, and will easily forget to extend to him even basic civility. But the one who comes to Him with some sense of the heavy weight of her unworthiness and finds compassion and life in His touch, will soon know that she has been forgiven much. It will be very natural for such a person to love Christ much, for she will know the blessing of a love that can only come to us by divine grace.