19-11. The Healing of the Centurion's Servant

11. The Healing of the Centurion’s Servant Mat 8:5-13; Luk 7:1-10

There has been already occasion to denounce the error of confounding this healing with that of the nobleman’s son recorded by St. John (iv. 46). ’But while we may riot thus seek forcibly to harmonize two narratives which relate events entirely different, there is matter still in the records of this miracle on which the harmonist may exercise his skill. There are two independent accounts, one given by St. Matthew, the other by St. Luke; and, according to the first Evangelist, the centurion comes a petitioner in his own person for the boon which he desires; according to the third, he sends others as mediators between himself and the Lord, as intercessors, for him, with other differences which follow and flow out of this. Doubtless the latter is the more strictly literal account of the circumstance, as it actually came to pass; St. Matthew, who is briefer, telling it as though the centurion had done in his own person what, in fact, he did by the intervention of others—an exchange of persons of which all historical narrative and all the language of our common life is full.^[1] A comparison of Mark 10:35 with Mat 20:20 will furnish another example of the same.

“And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion, beseeching Him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home grievously tormented.” This centurion, probably one of the Roman garrison of Capernaum, was by birth a heathen; but, like another of the same rank in the Acts (10:1), was one of many who were at this time deeply feeling the emptiness and falsehood of all the polytheistic religions, and who had attached themselves by laxer or closer bonds to the congregation of Israel and the worship of Jehovah, finding in Judaism a satisfaction of some of the deepest needs of their souls, and a promise of the satisfaction of all.^[2] He was one among the many who are distinguished from the seed of Abraham, yet described as “fearing God,” or “worshipping God,” of whom we read so often in the Acts (13:43, 50; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7), the proselytes, whom the providence of God had so wonderfully prepared in all the great cities of the Greek and Roman world as a link of communication between Gentile and Jew, in contact with both,—holding to the first by their race, and to the last by their religion; and who must have greatly helped to the ultimate fusion of both into one Christian Church. But with the higher matters which he had learned from his intercourse with the people of the covenant, he had learned no doubt this, that all heathens, all “sinners of the Gentiles,” were “without;” that there was a middle wall of partition between them and the children of the stock of Abraham; that they were to worship only as in the outer court, not presuming to draw near to the holy place. And thus, as we learn from St. Luke (vii. 3), he did not himself approach, but “when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto Him the elders of the Jews, beseeching Him that He would come and heal his servant,” a servant, as St. Luke has before told us, who “was dear unto him,”^[3] but now “was sick and ready to die.” The Jewish elders executed their commission with zeal, pleading for him as one whose affection for the chosen people, and active well-doing in their behalf, had merited this return of favour: “They besought Him instantly, saying that he was worthy for whom He should do this; for he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue. Then Jesus went with them” But presently even this request seemed to the maker of it too bold. In his true and ever-deepening humility he counted it a presumption to have asked, though by the intervention of others, the presence under his roof of one so highly exalted. “And when He was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to Him, saying, Lord, trouble not Thyself: for I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my roof.” It was not merely that he, a heathen, might claim no near access to the King of Israel; but there was, no doubt, beneath this and mingling with this, a deep inward feeling of his own personal unworthiness and unfitness for a close communion with a holy being, which was the motive of this message. And thus, in Augustine’s words, “counting himself unworthy that Christ should enter into his doors, he was counted worthy that Christ should enter into his heart”^[4]—a far better boon; for Christ sat down in the houses of many, as of that proud self-righteous Pharisee (Luk 7:36), whose hearts for all this were not the less empty of his presence. But this centurion received Him in his heart, whom he did not receive in his house.^[5] And, indeed, every little trait of his character, as it comes forth in the sacred narrative, points him out as one in whom the seed of God’s word would find the ready and prepared soil of a good and honest heart. For, not to speak of those prime graces, faith and humility, which so eminently shone forth in him,—the affection which he had evidently won from those Jewish elders, the zeal which had stirred him to build a house for the worship of the true God, his earnest care and anxiety about a slave,—one so commonly excluded from all earnest human sympathies on the part of his master, that even a Cicero excuses himself for feeling deeply the death of such a one in his household,—all these traits of character combine to present him to us as one of those “children of God” scattered abroad in the world, whom the Son of God came that He might gather together into one (John 11:52). The manner is very noteworthy in which the Roman officer, by help of an analogy drawn from the circle of things with which he himself is most familiar, by a comparison borrowed from his own military experience,^[6] makes easier to himself his act of faith. He knows that Christ’s word will be sufficient; for, he adds, “I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.” His argument is here from the less to the greater. “I am,” he would say, “one occupying only a subordinate place, set under authority, a subaltern, with tribunes and commanders over me. Yet, notwithstanding, those that are under me, obey me; and my word is potent with them. I have power to send them hither and thither, and they go at my bidding, so that, myself sitting still, I can yet have the things accomplished which I would. How much more Thou, not set, as I am, in a subordinate place, but who art as a Prince over the host of heaven,^[7] who hast Angels and spirits to obey thy word and run swiftly at thy command, canst fulfil from a distance all the good pleasure of thy will. What need, then, that Thou shouldest come to my house; only commission one of these genii of healing, who will execute speedily the errand of grace on which Thou shalt send him.” ^[8] He contemplates the relation of Christ to the spiritual kingdom in an aspect as original as it is grand. The Lord appears to him as the true Csesar and Imperator, the highest over the hierarchy, not of earth, but of heaven (Col 1:16). In all this there was so wonderful a union of faith and humility, that it is nothing strange to read that the Lord Himself was filled with admiration: “When Jesus heard it, He marvelled ^[9] and said to them that followed, Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”^[10] St. Matthew alone records these words, which beforehand we should rather have expected to find recorded by St. Luke; for he, the companion of the Apostle to the Gentiles, loves best to give prominence to that side of our Lord’s ministry, on which it contemplated not merely the Jewish nation, but the heathen world (3:38; 10:1; 15:11-32). Where faith is, there will be the kingdom of God; so that this saying already contains a warning to his Jewish hearers, of the danger they are in of forfeiting blessings whereof others are showing themselves worthier than they.^[11] But the words which follow are far more explicit; “For I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,” shall be partakers of the heavenly festival, which shall be at the inauguration of the kingdom; “but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;”—in other words, the kingdom should be taken from them, “and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Mat 21:43); because of their unbelief, they, the natural branches of the olive tree, should be broken off, and in their room the wild olive should be graffed in (Rom 11:17-24; Mat 3:9).

“And Jesus said unto, the centurion,” or to him in his messengers, “Go thy way, and as thou hast believed,^[12].so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the self-same hour;”—not merely was there a remission of the strength of the disease, but it left him altogether. There is a certain difficulty respecting the exact nature of the complaint from which he was thus graciously delivered. In St. Matthew it is described as “palsy;” with which the “grievously tormented” which immediately follows, seems not altogether to agree, nor yet the report in St. Luke, that he was “ready to die;” since palsy in itself neither brings with it violent paroxysms of pain, nor is it in its nature mortal. But paralysis with contraction of the joints is accompanied with intense suffering, and, when united, as it much oftener is in the hot climates of the East and of Africa than among us, with tetanus, both “grievously torments,” and rapidly brings on dissolution.^[13]

Footnotes

[1] Faustus the Manichaean uses these apparent divergences of the two narratives, and the greater fulness of the one account than of the other, it being said in one that “many shall come from the east and west,. and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God,” while this is omitted in the other, to cast a slight and suspicion upon both. It is, of course, this last declaration which makes him bent anyhow on getting rid of this history. The calumniator of the Old Covenant, he cannot endure to hear of the chiefs of that covenant sitting down in the first places at the heavenly banquet. Augustine’s admirable reply contains much which is applicable still, on the unfair way in which gainsayers find or make discrepancies where indeed there are none,—as though one narrator telling some detail in an event, contradicts another, who passes over that detail,—one saying that a person did this, contradicts another who states more particularly that he did it by the agency and intervention of another. All that we demand, he says, is, that men should be as fair to Scripture as to any other historic record; should suffer it to speak to men as they are wont to speak one to another (Con. Faust, xxxiii. 7, 8): Quid ergo, cum legimus, obliviscimur quemadmodum loqui soleamus? An Scriptura Dei aliter nobiscum fuerat quam nostro more locutura? Cf. Be Cons. Evang. ii. 20.

[2] Remarkably enough all the Roman centurions who figure in the sacred narrative are honourably mentioned; thus, besides these two, the centurion who watched by the cross of Christ, and exclaimed, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Mat 27:54; Luk 23:47); and Julius, who so courteously entreated Paul on his way to Rome (Acts 27:3; Acts 27:43). Probably, in the general wreck of the moral institutions of the heathen world, the Roman army was one of the few in which something of the old virtues survived.

[3] Calvin: Lucas hoc modo dubitationem praevenit, quae subire poterat lectorum animos: scimus enim, non habitos fuisse servos eo in pretio, ut de ipsorum vitâ tam anxii essent domini, nisi qui singulari industriâ vel fide vel aliâ virtute sibi gratiam acquisierant. Significat ergo Lucas non vulgare fuisse sordid unique mancipium, sed fidelem et raris dotibus ornatum servum qui exiraiâ, gratiâ apud dominum polleret: hinc tanta illius vitae cura et tarn studiosa commendatio.

[4] Serm. lxii. 1: Dicendo se indignum praestitit dignum, non in cujus parietes, sed in cujus cor Christus intraret. Neque hoc diceret cum tantâ fide et humilitate, nisi illum quem timebat intrare in domum suam, corde gestaret. Nam non erat magna felicitas si Dominus Jesus intraret in parietes ejus et non esset in pectore ejus (Luc. vii. 36)

[5] Augustine (Serm. lxxvii. 8): Tecto non recipiebat, corde receperat. Quanto humilior, tanto capacior, tanto plenior. Colles enim aquam repellunt, valles implentur.

[6] Bengel: Sapientia fidelis ex ruditate militari pulchre elucens.

[7] The στρατιὰ οὐράνιος (Luk 2:13. cf. Rev 19:14). How true a notion this indeed was, which in his simple faith the centurion bads conceived for himself, we see from those words of our Lord’s, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels” (Mat 26:53)? Jerome (in loc.): Volens ostendere Dominum quoque non per adventum tanturn corporis, sed per angelorum ministeria posse implere quod vellet. Fuller (Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. i. p. 109) takes it a little differently—” Concluding from his own authority over his soldiers, that Christ, by a more absolute power, as Lord High Marshal of all maladies, without his personal presence, could by his bare word of command order any disease to march or retreat at his pleasure.”

[8] Severus (in Cramer, Catena): Eἰ γὰρ ἐγὼ στρατυώτης ὤν‚ καὶ ὑπὸ ἐξουσίαν βασιλέως τελῶν‚ τοῖς δορυϕόροις ἐντέλλομαι‚ πῶς οὐ μᾶλλον αὐτὸς ὁ τῶν ἄνω καὶ ἀγγελικῶν δυνάμεων ποιητής‚ ὃ θέλεις ἐρεῖς καὶ γενήσεται; and Augustine (Enarr. in Psa 46:9, and Serin, lxii. 2): Si ergo ego, inquit, homo sub potestate, jubendi habeo potestatem, quid tu possis, cui omnes serviunt potestates? And Bernard more than once brings out this as an eminent and characteristic feature of his humility; thus Ep. cccxcii.: O prudens et vere corde humilis anima! dicturus quod praelatus esset militibus, repressit extollentiam confessione subjectionis: immo praemisit subjectionem, ut pluris sibi esset quod suberat, quam quod praeerat; and beautifully, De Off. Episc. 8: Non jactabat potestatem, quam nec solam protulit, nec priorem.... Praemissa siquidem est humilitas, ne altitudo praecipitet. Nec enim locum invenit arrogantia, ubi tam clarum humilitatis insigne praecesserat. Such explanation appears preferable to any of those which make ἄνθρωπος ὑπὸ ἐξουσίαν, a man in authority. Rettig (Theol. Stud. v. Krit. vol. xi. p. 472), reading with Lachmann ἄνθ. ὑπὸ ἐξους. τασσόμενος (which last word, however, should not have been admitted into the text), has an ingenious but untenable explanation in the latter and less eligible sense. Different from all these, and entirely original, is the view of the passage taken by the Auct. Oper. Imperf., who agrees so far with the right interpretation that he makes ἄνθρωπος ὑπὸ ἐξουσίαν, a man in a subordinate position; but then will not allow, but expressly denies, that it is thus a comparison by way of contrast between himself and the Lord, which the centurion is drawing,—that he is magnifying the Lord’s highest place by comparing it with his own only subordinate, but that rather he is in all things likening the one to the other: “As I am under worldly authorities, and yet have those whom I may send, so Thou, albeit under thine heavenly Father, hast yet a heavenly host at thy bidding. “(Ego sum homo sub potestate alterius, tam en habeo potestatem jubendi eis qui sub me sunt. Nec enim impedior jubere minores, propter quod ipse sum sub majoribus; sed ab illis quidem jubeor, sub quibus sum; illis autem jubeo, qui sub me sunt: sic et tu, quamvis sub potestate Patris sis, secundum quod homo es, babes tamen potestatem jubendi angelis tuis, nec impediris jubere inferioribus, propter quod ipse habes superiorem.) This interpretation, though just capable of a fair meaning, probably expresses the Arian tendencies of the author.

[9] But since all wonder properly so called, arises from the meeting with something unexpected and hitherto unknown, how could the Lord, to whom all things were known, be said to marvel? To this some have answered that Christ did not so much actually wonder, as commend to us that which was worthy of our admiration. Thus Augustine (De Gen. Con. Man. i. 8): Quod mirabatur Dominus, nobis mirandum esse significabat; and he asks in another place (Con. Adv. Leg. et Proph. i. 7), how should not He have known before the measure of that faith, which He Himself had created? (An vero alius earn in corde centurionis operabatur, quam ipse qui mirabatur?) Yet a solution like this brings an unreality into parts of our Lord’s conduct, as though He did some things for show and the effect which they would have on others, instead of all his actions having their deepest root in his own nature, being the truthful exponents of his own most inmost being. On the other hand, to say that according to his human nature He might have been ignorant of some things, seems to threaten a Nestorian severance of the Person of Christ. But the whole question of the communio idiomatum, with its precipices on either side, is one of the hardest in the whole domain of theology. See Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 3^a, qu. 15, art. 8; and Gerhard, Loco. Theoll. iv. 2, 4.

[10] Augustine: In olivâ non inveni, quod inveni in oleastro. Ergo oliva superbiens praecidatur; oleaster humilis inseratur. Vide inserentern, vide praecidentem. Cf. In Joh. tract, xvi. ad finem.

[11] Augustine: Alienigenae came, domestici corde.

[12] Bernard (Serm. iii. Be Anima): Oleum misericordiae in vase fiduciae point.

[13] At 1 Mace. ix. 55, 56, it is said of Alcimus, who is described “as taken with a palsy,” that he died presently “with great torment” (μετὰ βασάνου μεγάλης), as here this servant is described as δεινῶς βασανιζόμενος (see Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Paralytische). In St. Matthew and St. Mark those thus afflicted are always παραλυτικοί, in St. Luke, both in his Gospel and in the Acts, παραλελυμένοι.