Healthy - in body, mind and soul?

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.