Thus, without a miracle, the Lord has been owned, as we see, in Samaria, first, as a prophet by one, finally, as Savior of the world by all, who believed on Him there. Thus the fullest confession of His grace was found where one might have looked for least intelligence; but faith gives new wisdom so different from the old that those who are wise must become fools if they would be wise according to God. How blessed for those who have no wisdom to boast, whom grace forms with all simplicity according to its own power! Such were the Samaritans among whom the Lord abode for this little while.
“And after the two days he went forth thence into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.” (Vers. 48, 44.) He resumes His place among the despised and lowly. The first Gospel points out that this sphere of His ministry was according to prophecy, for Isaiah, in setting forth the sins and judgment of Israel from first to last, had spoken of the light shining in Galilee when darkness enveloped the favored seats in the land. All the evangelists indeed, for one reason or another, dwell upon His ministry in Galilee—John alone bringing into prominence some characteristic incidents in Jerusalem. Mark speaks much of Galilee, because his office was to describe the Lord's ministry, and there in fact we must follow Him if we would trace its details, Luke again gives it as illustrating the moral ways of God in the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the activities of One who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. John, on the other hand, as usual, lays it on a ground that pertains more strictly to His person. It was His own testimony that a prophet hath no honor in his own country. He had come down not to seek His own honor but that of Him who sent Him. He had riches of grace and truth to dispense He was sent—He was come to do His Father's will; content to be nothing—have nothing from men, He goes away into Galilee. But if the Galileans paid Him no honor when He was in their midst, they were not unmoved by the fame that had gone out, specially by the impression made in the capital. “When therefore he came into Galilee the Galileans received him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem during the feast, for they too went unto the feast.” (Ver. 45.) Galilee was not only the place where He had spent the greater part of His earthly life in humiliation and obedience, but there He had begun to make Himself known to the disciples, and there He had first wrought a sign in witness of His glory. “He came therefore again into Cana of Galilee where he made the water wine.” (Ver. 46.) That first sign held out the promise, pledge, and earnest of Israel's future joy and blessedness, and He Himself in the day that is coming will be there in the land, no longer the guest, nor the master of the feast alone, but the bridegroom. And the barren one shall know her Maker as her husband, Jehovah of hosts His name, and her Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. The God not merely of the land but of the whole earth shall He be called.
But it is not yet the day for singing, but of sadness; not yet for enlarging the place of Israel's tent, nor of stretching. the curtains of their habitation, or of strengthening the stakes: no breaking forth yet on the right hand or on the left, no inheriting the Gentiles, or making the desolate cities to be inhabited. Contrariwise, did not Messiah come to His own things, and His own people receive Him not? Nay they were about to consummate their sin in His cross, and to seal their unbelief in their rejection of the gospel, forbidding His servants to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always, so that wrath, is come upon them to the uttermost, however grace may turn their fall to the salvation and the riches of the Gentiles. Nevertheless grace is yet to make good every sign which is hung out to Israel, and the Lord adds on this occasion a fresh and suited display of His power for their actual circumstances and present need.
“And there was a certain courtier whose son was sick at Capernaum. He, having heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, went away unto him and asked that he would go down and heal his son, for he was about to die. Jesus therefore said unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in nowise believe.” (Ver. 46-48.) How strikingly in contrast with the simpler souls in Samaria! There was faith in the power of Jesus, but it was of a Jewish sort. The courtier had heard, no doubt, of miracles wrought by Him personally present. His faith rose no higher; yet evidently, if it were the power of God, there could be no limits. Absence or presence could account for nothing—they were but circumstances, and the very essence of a miracle is God rising above ill circumstances. It is irrational as well as unbelieving to measure a miracle by one's experience. It is solely a question of God's will, power, and glory; and therefore the Lord justly rebukes the unbelief of all such thoughts.
How finely too the grace which wrought in the Gentile centurion whose servant was sick contrasts with the limited expectations of this Jewish courtier! There, just to exercise and manifest the power of his faith, the Lord proposed to go with the elders of the Jews who begged Him to come and save his bondman. But even though He was not far from the house, the centurion sent to Him friends expressly not to trouble Him, for he was not worthy that He should come under his roof, any more than he counted himself worthy to come to Him. He had only to say by a word, and his servant should be healed. This accordingly drew out the strong approbation of the Lord, not His censure, as here. “Not even in Israel” had He found such great faith.
Nevertheless the grace of the Lord never fails, and little faith receives its blessing as surely as greater faith its larger answer. “The courtier saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die.” (Ver. 49.) Here again how scanty the faith if urgent the appeal! Still faith must have a gracious assurance. “Jesus saith to him, Go, thy son liveth.” (Ver. 50.) It was better for the courtier's soul in every way and more to the glory of God, that Jesus should bid him go, instead of going With him. If it crossed the man's thoughts and words, it was meant to exercise his faith so much the more. “[And] the man believed the word which Jesus had said to him, and went away.” (Ver. 50.) He had not long to wait before he knew the blessing.
“But as he was now going down, his servants met him and brought him word, saying, Thy child liveth. He inquired therefore from them the hour at which he got better. They said to him then, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. The father therefore knew that [it was] at that hour in which Jesus said to him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed and his whole house.” (Vers. 51-58.) Thus God took care to arrest the servants, who were all the more interested and responsible because of their master's absence. They would watch the case; they would mark the changes in the malady of the patient; and they therefore were the first to see when he began to amend. They could tell their master the precise hour when the fever left the child—the very hour, as he could tell them, when Jesus spoke the word of healing power. “This again a second sign did Jesus, on coming out of Judea into Galilee.” (Ver. 54.) It is not a sign of what He is to do in the day when, giving life to the dead daughter of Zion, He will also change the water of purification into the wine of joy for God and man. Meanwhile He relieves the one ready to perish in Israel where there was the faith, however feeble, to seek it from Christ. It was true even then of His ministry in all its meaning and force.