Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.
One of them, when he saw he was healed,
came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a
Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed?
Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to
God except this foreigner?” Then he said to
him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Luke 17:11-19
“Are you better?” you say to a friend. And they reply
“Well, better than I was”, implying, “Not fully well, but at
least improved”.
Whether or not we’re “well” covers a vast range – from
desperately ill to bursting with health and vitality; and you might be anywhere
on that spectrum.
We’ve been reflecting on the story of the ten men with
leprosy who were healed by Jesus. Its main theme is gratitude – only one of the
ten (and he a Samaritan!) stopped to give thanks to God, and Jesus is
disappointed.
But there’s another point of interest. Luke, like the whole
of the New Testament, is written in Greek. And even though the story is only
nine verses long, about 135 words, three different Greek words are used to
describe what happened to those men. I’ve underlined them in order to pick them
out.
In verses 14 and 17 they are described as “cleansed”
– which, given the nature of leprosy, is understandable: a leprous skin, while
not necessarily dirty, might certainly look in need of cleansing. Then,
in verse 15, the word is “healed”, a general word meaning pretty much
the same as “cured”. And then, in verse 19, Jesus tells the Samarian that his
faith has “made him well”. Three different words to describe the same
thing.
So what, you yawn. And yes, it could be that there is no
particular significance in this use of different words. But then again…
The really interesting one is the one in verse 19. Most
Bible translations, like the NIV that I have used, give it as “your faith has made
you well”. But the word used by Luke occurs elsewhere in the New Testament to
mean “saved”. In fact, it is the standard word to describe what Jesus
came to earth to achieve - in John 3:17, for example, we are told that God sent
his Son “to save the world through him”; in Ephesians 2:5 Paul tells us
that “it is by grace that we are saved”.
In that sense, to be saved means to be made not just
physically well, but to be put right with God, to have your sins forgiven.
So… when Jesus told the grateful Samaritan that he was
“saved”, was he suggesting that, unlike the other nine, he was not only
“healed” or “cleansed” or “cured”, but also in a right relationship with God?
(The Message Bible hedges its bets – if you’ll pardon the expression –
by translating “your faith has healed and saved you”.)
Well, we’ll never know. I suppose that just conceivably
when we get to heaven we might be able to button-hole Luke and ask him outright
what was in his mind when he recorded Jesus’ words in this particular way.
(Though I somehow doubt it: we will have weightier matters on our minds…)
Forgive me if all this has got a bit technical. But there
is a serious and very practical point behind it.
We belong to a society which is preoccupied with physical
health. I read once about a very rich man who got angry with his doctor when
told, “I’m afraid there is nothing more we can do for you”. “What do you mean?”
he protested. “I can pay you whatever you ask! I’ve hired you because you are
the top person in your field. Of course you can cure me…!” But, sadly,
he was wrong.
Physical well-being is, of course, a wonderful, precious
thing; mental well-being perhaps even more so. But you may be as fit as the
proverbial fiddle – yet what is the good of that if you are a stranger to God,
living under the cloud of darkness and sin? What is the good of that if you
still need to be saved?
By the way, while we’re being a bit technical, Luke 17:19
contains another word which can mean more than one thing. When Jesus told the
Samaritan to “Rise and go”, that word “rise” is related to the word used
in the New Testament for… the resurrection.
So… Could it be that Luke wanted his readers to understand
that Jesus, on that wonderful day, called that man not only to be physically
healed, and not only to be “saved”, but also to rise up to a
whole new life at peace with Almighty God? After all, the Bible describes anyone
who trusts in Christ as already “raised” (Colossians 3:1).
Again, we don’t know. But what we do know is that Jesus
calls each one of us to do just that: to trust and follow him, and in so doing
to rise up to eternal life.
Have you done that yet? If not, why not today?
Heavenly Father, thank you for the measure of
physical and mental well-being I enjoy; please help me to cherish and safeguard
it. But thank you even more that in Jesus I am saved and raised up to eternal
life; please help me to live as one raised from the dead! Amen.