Luke 7:15 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 7:15

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The dead man obeyed the voice of the Son of God, and life came flooding back into him. The dead sat up and looked around; he saw Jesus Christ, his mother, and the crowds, and began to speak. He asked maybe what had happened, and one can imagine how they struggled to calm him in such a situation, to quieten his fears and their own fears. Her son speaking was perhaps an object of fear even to his own mother, even though she naturally rejoiced to have him alive again. Her mind must have been in shock, for she knew that he had been dead, knowing that they were totally out of their depth. There is always fear in the presence of God, for we are aware of a power from which there is nowhere to hide. It is fascinating what Luke leaves out. It doesn't tell us, for example, what the man died from. Yes, but we don't need to know that, and if he told us that, we would be thinking about that more than the miracle and the power of Christ. He doesn't tell us what the young man said. He seems to have said a lot. The young man began to speak, but the way it's expressed in the original suggests that he went on speaking. He had a great deal to say, and we're not told what, because it would detract from our focus on the essential point: that only Christ could do this. We can see that when that young man found himself alive and conscious, presumably he would have known that he had been in a serious state and that he had been dying and had died. Now he is conscious again and he is filled with wonder, and Christ is there and he will be full of praise and gratitude and yield himself to him. We are not told these things, but I cannot believe that he would sit up and begin to talk about general matters; there is something much more overwhelming to grip his attention.

Application

The young man sat up and those around him saw the remarkable change. They will see a great change in us also when Christ raises us spiritually from the dead. We no longer have self at the centre of our lives, but instead Christ has taken the place of self. We live to please God, and to please others. There is a new honesty and integrity in all our dealings with people.

Death is not final after all; there is a power that can reverse its terrible hold. So why does God not simply raise the dead everywhere, and bring an end to its tyranny? Because there is an even greater enemy than death: sin. Christ will not bring solution to death unless he also deals with sin: that is why the first word of the gospel is ‘repent’.

‘And he delivered him to his mother.’ When the mother set out for graveyard, it was beyond her wildest dreams that son would live again. If she was praying before he died – and she surely was – her prayers ended when death came. She would not even think of asking for help in such a hopeless situation. Do any here think their case is so hopeless that they will not even pray? We must take encouragement from what God has already done in the past. He sent his Son into the world to do the greatest work possible, something impossible for human power. Christ has come and paid the ultimate price by laying down his life as a sacrifice for sinners. Will he not now hear us when we call on him for life?

The narrative intends to convey to us that all his faculties came immediately into operation, he was entirely well, he wasn't just resuscitated into a weak condition, he became completely normalised in an instant, strength surged into him. Now this is all a wonderful picture, and it is recorded as a picture of how Christ deals with souls, for his miracles are also signs, and teach us about his greater work. I repent, I believe in what Christ has done on Calvary to save me, I yield my life, I ask him to save me. Spiritual life comes to me, I get spiritual faculties – the young man could see and could hear and could speak – and suddenly I can understand the things of God and I can pray and I love him and walk with him. Everything is different because he has given me life, and he has purged me from my sin and now I shall never die. Oh the time will come when I shall physically die and intellectually die, but spiritually my soul will live on eternally and I shall be with the Lord which is far, far better.

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Luke 7:15 Commentary and Bible Study