Jesus Raises A Widow’S Son
JESUS RAISES A WIDOW’S SON
LUKE 7:11-18
Jesus showed his love and proved that he was Lord of life and death by raising the widow’s son.
A good map is always an interesting aid to the study of Scripture. The position of Nain is worth noting. It lies ten miles as the crow flies south-east from Nazareth, across the eastern extension of the lovely Esdraelon plain. A few miles south-west lies Shunem where Elisha similarly brought an only son back to life (2 Kings 4). At the same distance in the other direction lies Endor, scene of the doomed Saul’s grim encounter with the dead. The village is called Nain today and there are rock-cut tombs nearby which may have been the goal of the sad procession which the Lord met coming from the gate.
It was a grievous sight. A woman utterly desolate, her husband gone, her only son dead. The widow of Nain need not have been over forty years, perhaps even less, and a long wilderness of left-over life stretched ahead of her, to live in the loneliness and anxiety which the ancient world regarded as the widow’s lot. It is a vivid little scene as the Lord stopped the cortege of noisy mourners and touched the dead. Those who seek to “demythologize” Scripture and eliminate tales of miracle fail to explain the artless marks of truth on such narratives, how, in a community which could draw no advantage from mendacity, invention or deception, the stories found origin at all, or why a competent historian, as Luke undoubtedly was, came to include them in his narrative after due investigation (Luke 1:3), and no doubt the interview of eye-witnesses. The New Testament is to be accepted or rejected. It cannot be rejected, and any semblance of Christianity retained. Honesty before God must at least face those alternatives.
In 7:13 Christ is called “the Lord” for the first time. The setting is significant. Luke was writing thirty years after the incident, and uses the term which had become current in the church. It should be our habitual usage.