A Pepper Grinder Post

Such Great Faith

Have you ever felt that you lacked faith, because you doubted that God would give you what you were asking for? I have. But I found encouragement recently in a story from the Gospels, where Jesus strongly and explicitly holds someone up as a model of faith. What can we learn from this man? Here is my translation of Luke 7:1-10:

After Jesus had finished saying all this to the people, he went into Capernaum. And there was a slave who was ill and was about to die. He was the servant of a centurion and was very important to him.

When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to ask Jesus to come and save his servant. When they came to Jesus, they begged him earnestly, saying, "He is worthy for you to do this, for he loves our people and built our synagogue."

Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say, "Lord, don't take the trouble. I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof. I didn't even think it was fitting for me to come to you myself. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell one to go and he goes, and I tell another to come and he comes. I tell my servant to do this, and he does it."

Jesus was amazed when he heard this, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I haven't found faith like this even in Israel!"

The ones who were sent returned to the house and found the servant in good health.

The first thing we need to understand is that this man was a Roman official. Generally, there was no love lost between the Jews and the Romans. The Romans were the hated oppressors, who stood between the Jews and their goal of once more ruling their own land. The Jews were the obstinate and troublesome subjects, who did not have the same acceptance of Roman rule that many other people groups had.

This official, however, was different. This centurion appears to be someone who truly believed in the God of Israel and tried to please him. He had a good relationship with the Jews in Capernaum and had even built a synagogue for them. Because of this, the local Jewish leaders were willing to come to Jesus and intercede on the centurion's behalf. Jesus agreed to come and started heading for the man's house. So far, all seems normal. Then the centurion sent messengers asking Jesus NOT to come. It is his explanation of why Jesus shouldn't bother to come that elicits one of the strongest compliments Jesus is recorded giving.

Lots of people mentioned in the Gospels had faith in Jesus's ability to heal. Let's take, for example, a woman mentioned in the ninth chapter of Matthew:

Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed." (Matthew 9:20-21 NIV)

It's clear that this woman had faith. Nothing she had tried for twelve years had fixed her problem, but she knew Jesus could. She also knew that to be healed, she had to have some kind of direct contact with Jesus, even if it was just touching the edge of his cloak. Contrast this with the centurion. Not only did he believe that Jesus could heal his servant, he believed that Jesus could do it from a distance just by saying a word. He did not believe that Jesus was like some of the other healers people might have experienced. He believed that all the power of the omnipotent God was available to Jesus, and that this power was unlimited by space. He truly had faith, in the sense that he saw things from God's perspective, not from a human point of view. (For a fuller explanation of this, see my three-part series on faith which starts here.)

But here's the thing that also struck me about this great example of faith--he didn't demand that Jesus heal his servant. He asked. There is some teaching which says that since God has promised to grant our prayers, all we need to do is claim the thing which God has already given us. Indeed, according to this way of thinking, boldly claiming what we want shows that we have true faith and ensures we'll have our prayer granted. Yet here, in this man who amazed Jesus with his faith, we see none of that brashness. He sent the Jewish elders to plead for his servant's healing. These elders convincingly presented the case for this man. All of this shows clearly that Jesus agreeing to heal the servant was not a foregone conclusion. The centurion had utter faith that Jesus could heal his servant. What he did not know was if Jesus would.

What's more, the centurion showed amazing humility in his interaction with Jesus. Although he was one of the Roman conquerors, and one with certain amount of authority in the Roman system, he did not consider himself worthy to come directly to this penniless Jewish prophet. In fact, he didn't even feel comfortable having Jesus come to his house, because he had such a strong feeling of Christ's superiority. This is the exact opposite of the swaggering confidence that demands that God do what he promised.

Am I saying we should get others to pray for our needs, rather than presenting our petitions to God directly? No. I think Jesus clearly gives us an example in the Lord's Prayer and elsewhere of making our requests directly to God. But, if we are trying to pray with faith, it makes sense to follow the example of the man Jesus held up as a model of faith. We should come to God with absolute confidence that he is able to grant our request. But we should also come with the attitude that God is the king of the universe. He does not have to give us what we want. In fact, precisely because he is a loving father, he will not always give us what we want. If we want to follow the example of the centurion, we should come to Jesus humbly, asking him to grant our prayer, rather than demanding it.

This parable teaches us that asking God for something we know he can do, but we do not know if he will do, is not an example of a lack of faith. On the contrary, it is held up as an example of great faith.

- Pepper
Posted 2019-07-13