THE KING’S BUSINESS
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Lord (Gen. 18:14; Luke 8:49, SO). Often in our day does the Lord come in with His healing when all earthly physicians have failed. Man’s extremity is always God’s opportunity. It is not only the extreme cases of sickness that can be taken to Him, but the extreme cases of sin as well (1 Tim. 1:15; Heb. 7:25). He can heal not only those who are at the point of death, but those who are already “dead” (Eph. 2 : 1 ). This man came to Jesus because there was no one else to whom he could go. It is for the same reason that we go to Him now (John 6 : 6 8 ). If we would induce men to go to our Lord, we must make clear to thern that there is no one else who can save (Acts 4:12). Jesus not seem to have even occurred to this father that Jesus could heal at a distance. He thought there was a possibility that He might be able to heal if He would ‘‘come down.” In a short time he learned that Jesus could heal by His mere word from a distance as well as He could by His touch when close at hand. v. 48. “Then said Jesus (Jesus therefore said) unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not (will in no wise) believe.” Seldom did our Lord have men in such high position come to Him during His earthly life, but He never sought favor with great or small, and He has unsparingly laid bare the paltriness of the faith of this king’s officer as He would that of the most ordinary and common of sin ners. He read him through and through, He saw that he did have faith of a certain character, but,it was a faith built simply on signs and wonders that he might see or hear of, and Jesus desired in him, and desires in us, a nobler faith than that (cf. ch. 20:29 ; vs. 39-42). A faith that is merely compelled by signs and wonders is scarce worth the name of faith at all. It is an evil and adulterous generation that demands a sign as a condition of faith (see Matt. 12:39). Apparently this king’s officer was a Jew, for Jesus says, “Ye will
in .no wise believe,” and it was pre-emi nently the Jews who asked for signs (1 Cor. 1:22), and our Lord is apparently comparing in His thought the faith of this man with that of the Samaritans, who asked no sign, but believed simply because they heard His word (vs. 39-42). The phrase, Ye will not believe,” is more accurately rendered in the Revised' Version, “Ye will in no wise believe,” and sets forth not merely the simple fact of their not believ ing, but points to the state of mind of heart lying back of the fact, a settled unwilling ness to believe except on the conditions which they themselves impose, viz., that Jesus should perform some wonder that should be a sign of His Divine wisdom and interview, taken thought it was his dying child who was in need of a physician, but before he gets through he finds he himself is in need of a physician, a physician for his soul; and in coming to Jesus as the physician his son needed, he finds the only physician who could meet and supply thé needs of his own case. Our Lord, in this verse, describes miracles by two words, “signs” and “won ders.” The word “signs” describes the miracle from one point of view, the spiritual aspect. A miracle is a “sign” of a deeper fact of truth, the outward sign meeting the eye and pointing to the deeper fact which it proves, the Divine mission and Deity of our Lord. The word “wonders” describes miracles from another point of view, that " of the strangeness or marvelousness of the thing wrought. This phrase “signs and wonders” occurs nowhere else in the Gos pel of John, though it is frequently found elsewhere in the New Testament. The two Characteristic words for miracles in John are “sign” and “work.” Probably the rea son why John does not use this expression “signs and wonders” more frequently is because the latter word sets forth the miracle on its physical side, and John was events that follow, brought out of this our Lord into a higher In coming to the Lord he
wishes us to come to Him with all our power. But through this in connection with the this man was to be low order of faith in order of, faith.
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