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Hello again! I hope you’ve been working through this study text with me and are seeing some remarkable things. If so, I encourage you to share what you’ve discovered in the remarks below or directly with me here.
Last Week’s Work
Here’s a look at my updated study sheets featuring a list and a few connectors I found this week:
Question 9 (Lists)
I found and marked just one list: it enumerates the men with whom the many from east and west will recline at table in the kingdom of heaven (v11): Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Question 10 (Causes and Motivations)
I was surprised to find only two causal connectors in this passage: usually it seems there are so many more! Here’s what I pulled from two instances of for:
Action: … only say the word, and my servant will be healed (v8)
Connector: For
Explanation: I am a man… with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it. (v9)
This statement by the centurion indicates he believes Jesus can effect change by command because he does so through his subordinate soldiers.
Action: … let it be done
Connector: for
Explanation: you as you have believed. (v13)
Jesus’s statement here lets the centurion and—maybe more importantly—everyone else within earshot, know that the healing was done because of the centurion and according to his faith.
Question 11 (Methods and Conditions)
Our last question this week deals with Matthew’s description of the methods by or conditions under which important action happened in the story. Because this is part of a series on miracles, the most important actions to me are how the centurion requested the healing (his “prayer”), and how Jesus granted that request.
Prayer
In verse 5, Matthew indicates the centurion came forward to [Jesus], appealing to him. The second verb, appealing, caught my attention. In fact, this verb is only used one other time in Matthew. It’s at Jesus’s arrest in Matthew 26:53, after Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant with a sword. He tells Peter to put the sword away, and then says, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” I’ll be looking into that next week for sure!
In examining how the centurion appealed to Jesus:
- He came forward—no shouting from the back of a crowd for this guy (v5).
- He addressed Jesus as Lord twice (vv6,8). A Roman military man using this term of respect with a Jew? That seems unusual, too.
- He respectfully declined Jesus’s offer to come to his home (v8). I want to research this a little more, also. I suspect Jesus’s Jewish followers would have been dismayed by Jesus’s proposal—a Jew entering the house of a Gentile?! But the centurion allowed Him to save face by insisting all He had to do was command the healing and it would be done.
Healing
Turns out, the centurion was right. And that’s the other action I want to examine: how did Jesus heal the servant in v13?
- He spoke—but it was more than one word (at least in English). But that’s assuming, Jesus’s first word, Go, was directed to the centurion, as in “go on about your business.” But… could He have actually directed that command to whatever was causing the painful paralysis? As in, “go, get out of the servant’s body, disease?” If so, “go” could be the one-word command that healed the servant!
- And finally, Jesus puts a small condition on this healing: let it be done for you as you have believed. Just asking isn’t enough: skepticism, as we saw in my previous study of Mark 9:14-29, [links coming, I promise!] is potent enough to threaten miraculous healing. In that passage I observed Jesus chastising the father for unbelief, who then cried out in desperation, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (vv23-24).
Wow! I am always so in awe of what the Lord reveals in these studies. I hope you are learning and growing in your work with God’s Word, too!
Dig In Challenges
Next week, I’m going to move beyond what’s in verses 5-13 to examine the context of this story. I’ll also be using original language tools to dig into the meaning of those words and phrases I’ve flagged so far.
If you’re studying with me, pray first (of course!), then see how the Spirit guides you to respond to:
- Question 12 How does the passage’s literal and historical context help you understand its message as the author and his audience did? by searching for and summarizing what you find about the biblical, cultural, and historical context for this passage; and
- Question 13 What meaning can you draw from studying certain words or phrases in their original language? by consulting original language tools like an interlinear Bible, concordance, and/or Bible dictionary to clarify the meaning of any unclear words or phrases from this passage.
I’m looking forward to checking back with you next week!