Blessing For Gentiles As Well As Jews
BLESSING FOR GENTILES AS WELL AS JEWS
MATTHEW 8:1-13
Jesus’ authority could be seen in what he said and did, but people had to respond to it in simple trust.
Having given prominence to the Sermon on the Mount as the programme of our Lord’s ministry, Matthew now relates detailed incidents from the earlier Galilean phase of his ministry (8:1–9:34). The healing of the leper illustrates his compassion and disregard for the isolation imposed on one whom the law pronounced “unclean” (Leviticus 13:46), for he “touched him” (8:3); at the same time it shows that he had no desire to overrule the recognized procedure, for the cured man was directed to offer the prescribed sacrifice and so obtain a priestly declaration that he was now “clean” (8:4; cf. Leviticus 14:2-32). Conflict with the religious establishment came soon enough, but it was not of Jesus’ seeking.
The leper was cured by the healing touch of Jesus’ hand: by contrast, the centurion’s servant, like the Canaanite girl in 15:28, was healed at a distance (8:5-13). This may serve as a parable of the fact that Jesus’ active ministry on earth, with rare exceptions, was confined to Jews. With them he lived in close physical contact. The blessing which in due course he bestowed in unstinted measure on Gentiles was communicated not by personal contact of this kind but from the heavenly throne of glory through the agency of his disciples (cf. 28:18ff.). Jesus did not withhold his sympathy from Gentiles; he was ready to “come and heal” the centurion’s paralysed servant (8:7), and he saw in the centurion’s faith, which made his doing so unnecessary, a foreshadowing of the day when “many” would come from the Gentile lands and share the blessings which the patriarchs of Israel would enjoy in the new age. The ingathering of the Gentiles was an “eschatological” sign—a sign of the age of fulfillment of what the prophets had foretold (cf. Psalm 102:15; Isaiah 60:3). Jesus’ ministry marked the inauguration of this new age, but not until the Son of Man was raised from the dead would its full power and outreach be manifested (contrast the commissions of 10:5 and 28:19). The centurion, recognizing that Jesus had unseen powers at his command which could obey him at a distance (8:8f.), exhibited a quality of faith such as Jesus had met in no one else; hence his delighted response (8:10). The hard saying about “the sons of the kingdom,” ie those who were the natural heirs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (8:12), is absent from the parallel in Luke 7:2-10, but the same lesson is taught in the Nazareth sermon of Luke 4:23-27. The “outer darkness” (8:12) continues the picture of 8:11; those who expect to head the list of guests find themselves, because of their lack of faith, excluded from the brightly lit banqueting hall, grinding their teeth in vexation in the darkness outside.