Luke 7:8 Commentary and Bible Study

‘I understand a little of your authority. I am a person under authority, but I have authority myself, and I send my servants, and if there's a commotion or unrest somewhere in the Capernaum region,’ – his authority would have extended even up to 30, 40 miles away – ‘I don't go myself. I have the power just to send people and they go and they deal with it. They come back and they say, “All is at peace; everything is settled. We've arrested so many; we have cautioned so many. It's over.”‘ he understood something of power, the power of somebody who could command others, and what he is saying to the Lord is this: ‘Lord, I understand that what I can do on a human level with my military garrison and my troops, you can do at a mighty level, at a spiritual level. You can command all the powers of earth, of the universe. You can change things round, and people who are irreparably sick and maimed and suffering. You don’t have to come to my house to heal my servant; you can make him whole from where you are, at a distance, just at a word, at a command.’ The same principle of authority goes all the way up to divinity, to God. God says the word and things happen, and things change. The way he reasons, he clearly believes that Christ is God. He has the power to do remarkable things. He has clearly heard about the Messiahship of Jesus Christ. This is the important thing. He has observed this man, or he has had him watched. He knows that he is holy. The scribes and the Pharisees got up to preach and you could see the conceit rolling off them, and the self-satisfaction and the smugness and the pride. But here is this man, full of remarkably different sincerity, feeling coming out of him for the crowd to whom he preached, preaching through the day, and when anybody would be utterly exhausted, then dealing with the multitudes in healing them and having compassion upon them. He turns to a great throng, healing them all, and then turning to another poor, crippled person, gives them individual attention. He knew about this man's outstanding, remarkable, singular holiness of life and perfection. He has come to save us This healing is only a sign of the healing of the soul, and that is what I need: forgiveness.