Your Faith Has Made You Well

I recently finished going through Luke (which I’ve done many times before) and I noticed something that I’d never really seen before. In Luke, there is a certain phrase which Jesus says four times.

In chapter eight we read of the woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for 12 years. She touches Jesus’ garment and immediately the discharge ceased. In 8:48 we read the words of Jesus: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

In chapter 17 we find the story of the ten lepers who Jesus cleansed, having sent them to the priests to be declared ceremonially clean. When only one returns to thank Jesus, he tells the former leper in 17:19, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

A chapter later we come across the story of the blind beggar who pleaded with Jesus to restore his sight. In 18:42 we read that Jesus healed him with the words, “Recover your sight, your faith has made you well.”

The one other place where we find the exact same words come out of Jesus’ mouth (other than three parallel accounts in Matthew and Mark) is in chapter seven of Luke. Jesus is a guest at the house of a pharisee named Simon. While he is there, “a woman of the city, who was a sinner,” came with a flask of expensive ointment. She wet the feet of Jesus with her tears, wiped his feet with her hair, and annointed them with the ointment.

Simon thought that Jesus should rebuke her, sinful woman as she was. But Jesus’ response was quite different. He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” When those at the table questioned “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman in 7:50, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

We miss it in the English, but in Luke’s original Greek, the wording is the exact same. In fact, “saved” is a more literal translation of the word that is translated elsewhere “made… well.” For all four of them, perhaps it would be better to understand Jesus’ words as meaning, “Your faith has saved you.”

This realization of the Greek behind the English helps us to see a wonderful truth. The miracles of Christ are not to be seen merely as benevolent demonstrations of His awesome power. They always point to a greater truth. In the case of the blind man, he was given physical sight, but more importantly, by faith, he had received spiritual sight as well.

Both the leper and the woman with the discharge had conditions that made them ceremonially unclean. Jesus’ healing of them meant that they indeed were no longer sick nor unclean. It also pointed to the greater truth though, that by faith, they were no longer stained by the filth of sin. Now they were clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

May we all know today the joy that they knew, the joy of being made well, truly well. And may the words of the Apostle Paul ever resound in our hearts: “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith…” (Ephesians 2:8a).