October, 1940
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
378
come and heal his servant” (v. 3). But the elders stood on legal ground and besought Jesus for aid because of what the centurion was and did: “ He loveth our nation, and he hath built us a syna gogue” (v. 5). The attitude of the centurion was wholly unlike that of the elders. He felt he was not worthy to have Jesus enter his house. He recognized that the One who could do what all human agencies failed to do must be more than human. And he was not ashamed to reveal his belief in the Saviour’s superhuman pow er and authority. His faith secured the high commendation of Jesus. Strange it is that such faith as this should have been unusual, for one would think it would be shown at every turn in Christ’s ministry; but it was peculiarly absent in the very ones who should have mani fested it. The needed help came at once. There was no necessity for our Lord to visit the patient, for He saw all that was needful to be seen, regardless of the distance that intervened. And the heal ing was complete; the servant was made whole before the centurion had time to return to his house. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but His methods are not always the same, and He may or may not deal with us in the manner in which He dealt with the cen turion. R estoration for t h e D ead (11-15) The hopeless condition of the widow’s son was apparent. Many people were present at the bier. They all knew the man was dead, or they would not be on their way to bury his body. The grief of the mother moved our Lord’s compassion; He could not look upon human woe without being moved with sorrow for the sorrowing. There was nothing in either the woman or the dead man to appeal to Him except the widow’s grief and pain. Certainly there was nothing in the dead man which could exercise any faith in this One who stood beside him. This surely is a picture of the unsaved person, hav ing no desire to be saved, being beyond all feeling, hopeless because already dead, and helpless because passed be yond human ken. But at that funeral procession the Lord of life was present, and that made the difference. The renewal of life which the young man experienced was a res toration, not resurrection. Resurrection involves the entering into a life that is ■eternal and ageless, and the possession of a body that will never die. Here again we need to guard against thinking that because our Lord brought life to the widow’s son,. He will do like wise whenever He may be asked. The incident was to show His right to the claim of being the Son of God with power. Today this fact needs no demon stration, for the Word of God and the events of history fully establish it. We should also carefully note that no one
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asked the Lord to perform this miracle. There was helplessness and hopelessness in the widow’s grief, as there was dead ness and corruption in’ the body of the corpse. Viewed from a spiritual stand point, it is in just such cases as this that the power of Jesus can reach out to the sinner who, helpless and hopeless before God’s righteous judgment, finds in Him a sufficient Saviour and a pres ent Deliverer. Points and Problems 1. In the two great miracles recorded In this lesson we see clearly the deep interest of our Lord in the physical life here and now. He was no monkish re cluse who despised the present life and regarded its physical side as of little account. In healing the body of one man, and raising from the dead the body of another man, He indicated His con cern in the physical life. Of course, to Him, the spiritual life and health of men were always vastly more important; but He never made the mistake of setting up an irreconcilable antagonism between the spiritual and' the physical sides of human life, as did the ahcient Gnostics and as the modern Christian Scientists do. The body of the Christian belongs to the Lord. It" is redeemed and holy, not something- inherently evil from the beginning. Furthermore, the body is to be raised from the dead, glorified, and made the permanent dwelling of the soul throughout eternity. The fact that the Son of God Himself entered the world in a physical body, which was made an eternal possession through resurrec tion and glorification, proves there is no truth in that popular Platonic theol ogy which regards the body as a mere impediment of the soul, to be discarded at death as the necessary step toward a higher kind of life. Physical death is an enemy, not a frieiid, of the soul—if we accept the testimony of the Word of God. And in saving from death the two men of this lesson, our Lord was only beginning His battle against the “last enemy” which will not end until it has been utterly destroyed (1 Cor. 15:25, 26). 2. But while the two miracles of the lesson reveal our Lord’s concern for phy sical life and health, they also reveal His deep interest in the intimate ties of family and friendship and in the tender feelings involved in these ties. The sav age blow of death, after all, falls most heavily upon those who live, not on
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