Amazing Faith

Scripture Reading: Luke 7:1-10

One of my most heartfelt personal petitions to God is for Him to develop in me His taste. I want to grow to love what He loves, hate what He hates, and marvel at the things He finds marvelous. Today we will discover something that impresses Christ. As we grow in grace, may we each develop his taste and marvel over the things He considers marvelous.

We find a story in Luke 7:1-10 about a Roman centurion who had been especially kind to the Jewish community. He had built the local synagogue. The Jews, who normally hated their Roman captors, loved this man. The centurion had a servant who was very ill, so he sent Jewish elders to Jesus asking for the servant's healing.

As Jesus drew near to the centurion's house, however, "the centurion sent friends to say to him: 'Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, "Go," and he goes; and that one, "Come," and he comes. I say to my servant, "Do this," and he does it' " (Luke 7:6-8).

Luke tells us that when Jesus heard this He was amazed and said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel" (v.9). Of course when the friends returned to the centurion, they found the servant well.

Awesome story. Christ almost seems delightfully shocked in this encounter—almost caught off guard by such faith. I'm so glad God purposed for Christ to know all things, yet know the thrill of sudden amazement.  It's one of life's sheerest joys. Don't you agree?

The original word for "amazed" in verse 9 is thaumazo, meaning "to wonder, marvel, be struck with admiration or astonishment." Perhaps you've bought into the "wretched worm that I am" mentality enough to be uncomfortable thinking about Christ being impressed by anything wretched man can do. Since we're attempting to develop God's taste, perhaps we could all use a little adjustment in our perception of the divine.

A word God used in Isaiah 66:2 blows my mind. The verse says, "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word." The word esteem means to "regard with pleasure, have respect." God is clearly saying that he respects certain people.

Do you see the like-mindedness between Christ and His Father? Our difficulty in imagining that God could have respect for a mortal is because we confuse attitudes of respect with feelings of inferiority. We tend to view respect as a feeling we have for those we perceive superior to us, and on our best day, we are so inferior to Christ that, if not for the Lord's great love (see Lam. 3:22), we would be consumed by holy fire.

If we're to have a balanced perception, we must keep in mind that God created us. We are His "workmanship" (Eph. 2:10). He loves us. At times, He actually delights in us. God could have created us void of weakness and with a complete inability to sin. He didn't. He purposely created us with free will and affections so that we could choose Him and love Him in the midst of many options and much opposition.

God didn't create robots. He created humans. When God sees humans cooperate with His good work and fulfill what they were created to be, He sees something very good. Perfect? No. Respectable? Yes. When the Father sees a human who is prone to selfishness, pride and arrogance humble himself or herself and tremble at His Word, He esteems that person. Hallelujah! Oh, how I want to be someone God could respect!

Father, thank You for loving me and delighting in me. I praise You because through your precious Son, You see good in me. I love You God.  Make me more pleasing to You. In Christ's name I pray, Amen.

Adapted from Jesus the One and Only, by Beth Moore, pages 110-112.  Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2002.  Used by permission.