“Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” “When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, ‘I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.’ Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.” (Luke 7:6-10)
IT IS DIFFICULT for us to picture Jesus caught off-guard by the actions of any individual. His astonishment over the faith of the centurion, therefore, warrants careful consideration of some of the factors that motivated the Roman’s reaction to Jesus’ willingness to heal his servant. These motivations were in fact presaged by Jesus’ own actions. First, Jesus did not respond because of a personal interaction with the man; instead, he heard a good report about him from the Jewish elders: “He loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” (Luke 7:5) Next, though Jesus was responding to the soldier’s request, he was primarily doing so for the benefit of the one needing healing, who was a Jewish slave and fellow Israelite; in another interaction with a non-Jew, Jesus had said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” (Matt. 15:24)
But most tellingly, Jesus and the centurion were each men under authority. Jesus was under the authority of his Father, God of all creation; the soldier was a man in the chain of authority that stretched the lowliest soldier in the empire all the way up to Caesar. Responsible to the authority above him, the centurion was also responsible to take authority over those below him. Both men immediately developed mutual esteem for each other in regard to their jointly shared high regard for the authority over them in their respective mission. It is this aspect of faithful responsibility while under authority that arrested Jesus’ attention regarding the centurion, and which led him to state, “I tell you; I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” (Luke 7:9)
Why should this willingness to work under authority so astound Jesus? The answer is patently obvious; the Israel of Jesus’ time was standing at the brink of chaos, and this centurion’s faith was the faith needed but lacking in Jesus’ own people. All of Israel seethed in anger at their subjugation to harsh Roman rule. That anger permeated every level of Jewish religion, government, and culture. Strident social discord was the norm, not the exception. There was a pervasive spirit of rebellion throughout the land, and this would finally lead to the Roman annihilation of the land and the people of Israel, beginning in 68 A.D. Jesus foresaw the Isaiah prophecy coming to fulfillment: “Ah, I will get relief from my foes and avenge myself on my enemies. I will turn my hand against you; I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities.” (Isa. 1:24-25)
All cycles of civilizations that have gone before us have suffered the same outcome, time and time again, that we see in the story of Israel. Always, the destruction of a nation is preceded by a falling away from shared core values. When this happens, no one can agree on a common goal, and the center of a culture is torn away from its axis, with the inevitable result of increasing destabilization leading to destruction. This, we fear, is our current cultural condition. We live in a time of lawlessness; the same fate that became Israel’s awaits us all.
What, then, is our individual responsibility to the authorities of our nation, when clearly those responsible to administer law and justice have consistently and systemically failed to balance those mandates under the pressures from various factions within the culture? It is not a simple question to answer, and your own answer is very likely to be biased in favor of your particular segment of the culture.
Maybe we need, each of us, to ask a different question. And to ask that question, not of others, but of the man in the mirror. And here it is: “Do I have a spirit of rebellion, or a spirit of obedience?” That might be easier to answer if we respond in the context of our citizenship, not in our nation, but in God’s kingdom. A spirit of rebellion in God’s kingdom is dangerous—we know this. It is fairly easy to say that we recognize God’s sovereign authority over our life, for who can win a battle with God?
However, this smacks of rather banal theology without an application, so let’s make it a little harder in the context of Paul’s exhortation, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” (Phil. 2:3) When someone is placed in authority over us (cf. Rom. Ch. 13), whether in our citizenship in our nation or our citizenship in the now-but-not-yet kingdom of heaven, how do we react? Specifically, when we don’t want to do what is asked of us, what has our response typically been? This is a litmus test, and it is a test that both we and our nation must answer if we are to be healed.
Father, give us a heart like Jesus, a mind like Jesus, a will like Jesus, and a walk like Jesus. Let us be found faithful in our generation, at our time of trial.
Q. Do I have faith that amazes Jesus?
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