When we read of the various miracles in Scripture, the faith of the people involved is at the forefront of the narrative in many cases, which can lead us to think that not only miracles but all of the blessings of God are somehow dependent on the faith of the recipient.  This has led to some gross misapplications of these miracles to say that if we exhibit enough faith, God is somehow compelled to bless us.  The obvious counterpart to this would be to say that if God does not bless us, it can only be because we lack the appropriate level of faith.  This distortion is most clearly seen in the prosperity gospel that exhorts people to display their faith by “planting seeds” in the form of monetary donations, thus compelling God to bless them with health, wealth, and happiness.  However, it is not only the false teachers of the prosperity gospel that hold this view.  In a more subtle form, it dwells in many American Christians, particularly in how they approach suffering.  This view is so prevalent in large part because the miracles of Jesus seem to support it.  However, as we examine a few of His miracles, we will see folly of this view.

Faith as the Key (But Not Magical) Ingredient

Jesus healed many people, drove out many demons, and even raised three people from the dead.  These people were both male and female of various ages and from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.  But a common trait is seen in many of them: faith.  When He healed a woman while enroute to raise the daughter of Jairus, He told her that her faith had healed her (Matthew 9:22).  He said the same to blind Bartimaeus as He restored his sight (Mark 10:52) and to ten lepers as He healed them (Luke 17:19).  At other times, faith seemed to move Jesus to heal people, such as when the paralytic was lowered into the room through a hole in the roof that his faithful friends had made (Luke 5:20).  Similarly, Paul observed that the crippled man in Lystra “had the faith to be made well” before healing him (Acts 14:9).  These incidents seem to suggest that the faith of these people caused them to be healed, especially since Jesus told His disciples that if they prayed in faith, they would receive what they asked for (Matthew 21:22).  But is faith really the stimulus to which Jesus responded by healing these people?  Is it our faith that causes God to answer our prayers and work on our behalf?

To answer this, let’s look at a couple of Christ’s more spectacular healings.  Of all of the people Jesus healed, only three were healed without interacting with Him at all.  Interestingly, two of these three involved Gentiles.  A centurion’s slave, a Gentile woman’s daughter, and a Capernaum official’s son were all healed by Jesus without ever meeting Him.  We will look at the first two in some detail and contrast the third with the first to see the role faith played in these incidents. 

The Centurion’s Faith

The first of these involved the Roman centurion in Capernaum.  Not long after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus entered Capernaum and had a remarkable encounter with the centurion there that resulted in Jesus healing the centurion’s slave, recorded in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10.  A centurion was an officer in charge of one hundred Roman soldiers.  At one point, I was an officer in charge of about one hundred enlisted personnel, so I can relate.  This particular centurion also has the distinction of causing Jesus to marvel at him.  When we consider that Jesus, being fully divine, was omniscient, it is remarkable that anything or anyone could cause Him to marvel, but one thing did: faith (both its abundance and its lack).  Jesus was astonished at the incredible faith of this centurion, but was equally astonished by the lack of faith in His own hometown of Nazareth (Mark 6:6).  In contrast to Christ’s friends and relatives who should have known who He really was, this centurion had remarkable insight into His true identity that no one else had at the time.   But he was also remarkable in his character and reputation.  Despite being a Gentile in general and a Roman occupier in particular, he was highly regarded by the Jews in Capernaum.  Local Jewish leaders described him to Jesus as one who loved their nation and who had built their synagogue.  Therefore, when his slave was seriously ill, he did not hesitate to ask the local Jewish leaders to go to Jesus on his behalf and ask him to heal his slave, and those leaders emphatically and wholeheartedly fulfilled that request. They even went as far as to say that this centurion deserved Jesus to heal his slave because of his righteousness in their eyes.  You would he hard pressed to find a Roman official in all of Judea or Galilee at the time with such a reputation among the Jews. 

But it was not this centurion’s upstanding reputation that amazed Jesus.  Instead it was his faith, both understanding who Jesus is and who he was.  This began with a proper understanding of who Jesus is.  While Jesus was on His way, the centurion sent friends to tell Jesus that he was unworthy of Jesus even coming into his house.  This stands in stark contrast to the Jews telling Jesus that he was worthy of not only a visit from Jesus but also a miracle.  He knew that regardless of how righteous and upstanding he was, he did not deserve for Jesus to do anything for him, especially not for Jesus to make Himself ceremonially unclean by entering a Gentile’s house.  So the centurion asks Jesus to heal his slave without entering the house but merely speaking the words.  This reveals his unparalleled understanding of who Jesus was.  The Jews debated over who Jesus was, with many seeing Him as some form of prophet.  As such, they would have had certain expectations as to what Jesus could and could not do as a prophet.  There were various stories of prophets healing people in the Old Testament, but in all of them the prophet was present with the person either before or during the healing.  Instead, this centurion realized that such proximity was not required because Jesus had authority, which is something he as a military officer understood well regardless of his knowledge of Israel’s past prophets.  To him, it was incredibly simple for Jesus to heal his slave.  He was used to both giving and receiving orders, knowing that the power of any order comes from the authority behind it rather than in the manner in which it is given.  He therefore heard about the previous miracles of Jesus and deduced that Jesus had authority to command nature just as he had authority to command his soldiers.  Therefore, Jesus didn’t need to by physically present to heal his slave but merely had to give the order and nature would obey just as his soldiers obeyed him.  When I was in charge of a hundred personnel, they obeyed my orders because I had the appropriate authority from my rank and position, just as I obeyed my commander I because he had been appointed over me and thus had the appropriate authority.  He could be on the other side of the country or the world, but if he gave me an order, it was just as valid as if he gave it to me personally.  That is how this centurion understood the authority of Jesus over nature. So to him, healing his slave was as simple as Jesus giving the order, regardless of His location.

Contrast this with the account of Jesus healing the official’s son in John 4:46-54, in which the official asked for Jesus to travel with him from Cana to Capernaum and heal his son there, leading Jesus to lament the general lack of faith of the Jews who required signs in order to believe.  Conversely, this centurion believed before witnessing a miracle, realizing that Jesus had authority over nature and was therefore divine.  Not even His disciples understood this yet, as evidenced by their bewilderment when He calmed the storm later in His ministry (Matthew 8:27, Luke 8:25).  That was something no prophet was able to do.  The closest was Elijah who prayed for a drought and then prayed for it to cease.  It was understood that only God controlled the weather, so the disciples were shocked when Jesus didn’t pray to God to calm the storm but simply commanded the storm to cease.  Had this Gentile centurion been in that boat, his faith would have kept him from being startled as they were.  Of course Jesus could calm the storm, just like He could heal over vast distances, because He has authority.  What was illogical to the disciples by faith was obvious to this centurion.  It is this faith that astonished Jesus, leading Him to proclaim that this centurion’s faith was unparalleled among the Jews.  He then granted his request and spoke the words, at which point the centurion’s slave was instantly healed.

The Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith

Another remarkable incident of remote healing happened later in his ministry to another Gentile, this time a woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon with a demon-possessed daughter recorded in Matthew 15:21-28 and Mark 7:24-30.  Mark refers to this woman as a Gentile in general and a Syrophoenician in particular, while Matthew refers to her as a Canaanite.  For Matthew’s Jewish audience, this implied that she was not only a Gentile but also under the special curse of the Canaanites that dates all the way back to Noah, which I discussed in a previous post.  In their understanding this woman was especially cut off from the blessings of God.  Therefore she, like the centurion, knew that she did not deserve for Jesus to perform a miracle for her.  Referring to Jesus as the Son of David, she asks Him to have mercy on her just as blind Bartimaeus would later do (Mark 10:48, Luke 18:38-39).  Christ’s response is puzzling, first silence before a cryptic response that many have taken as an insult.  Jesus seems to indicate that he will not heal her daughter by saying that He was sent to Israel, of which she was not a part.  He then says it is wrong to give the children’s bread to dogs.  This has often been misunderstood as Jesus calling her a dog, which has led some to even accuse Jesus of sin.  Such an interpretation would undermine the entire Gospel, as a sinful Jesus could not rescue sinners from God’s wrath.  Therefore, that interpretation cannot be true.  Instead, Jesus is clearly speaking metaphorically, which we will discuss shortly.  Why did He speak metaphorically to her rather than simply healing her daughter as he healed the centurion’s slave?  Some have postulated that Jesus was testing the woman’s faith.  This is possible as He similarly delayed before healing Bartimaeus.  Regardless, both this woman and Bartimaeus demonstrated faith and were subsequently granted their requests.  But did Jesus do miracles for them because of their faith or for another reason?  The answer to this question helps us see the true role faith plays in all of Christ’s miracles.

The Purpose of Miracles

While we often focus on the miracles of Jesus as being central to His ministry, all of His miracles were actually secondary to His primary purpose of revealing who He is and ushering in the Kingdom of God.  All of His miracles prove His divinity, but the three miracles He performed on people who were not present showed His authority over all of nature and even the demonic realm.  But Jesus also used miracles to support His teaching.  Whether public or private, the miracles of Jesus always have the purpose of teaching someone, usually the disciples.  His miracles often accompanied His teachings, and even when they didn’t someone was observing them.  Driving the demon out of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter was no exception.  Therefore, it was quite possible that Jesus interacted with the woman as He did in order to teach His disciples.  In responding to the woman, He refers to Israelites as lost sheep before likening then to children who have first priority to receive His blessings.  She correctly understands this metaphor and responds with an extension of it, pointing out that the dogs still get fed by what falls from the table.  In other words, the blessings of God cannot be contained to Israel so this Gentile could still be blessed by the natural overflow of God’s blessings even without the direct access to God that the Jews enjoyed.  Therefore, she—like the centurion at Capernaum—understood who Jesus was and trusted in His plan of salvation that could not be contained to ethnic Israel but was destined to extend to all the nations. 

This dialog essentially created a parable that the disciples would see played out. He was about to break down the barrier that stood between Gentiles and God, but the Gentiles were already beginning to experience the blessings of God.  Eventually, the Church—comprised of Jews and Gentiles—would replace ethnic Israel as the chosen people of God, which was a difficult lesson for the disciples to learn.  As a result, both the teachings of Jesus and people’s response to Him slowly taught that lesson.  The Jews generally rejected Jesus despite numerous signs, thus leading to the steady replacement of ethnic Israel with the Church made up of Jews and Gentiles as the true people of God.  The disciples had undoubtedly noticed this and were puzzled by it.  The exchange between Jesus and the woman essentially put this response into a parable by likening the Jewish response to Jesus to children dropping crumbs on the floor which the dogs were eager to enjoy.  So she was merely asking for the blessings that the children had refused.  After admiring her faith, Jesus heals her daughter instantly showing that while He came first to the Jews, He would not exclude the Gentiles from His blessings. 

The gradual exclusion of ethnic Israel and inclusion of the Gentiles is a major theme of this section.  Before this, Jesus had pointed out the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders who defied God’s commands through their traditions, teaching that people are defiled by the evil that comes from their evil hearts rather than anything external (Matthew 15:1-20, Mark 7:1-23).  Not long after this encounter, Jesus fed the four thousand in another Gentile area (Matthew 15:32-39, Mark 8:1-10) as the Jews continued to reject Him.  Thus, in healing the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, Jesus was showing His disciples that this transition of God’s blessings from the Jews to the Gentiles was beginning.  The disciples who had originally asked Jesus to send this Gentile woman away would later see her metaphor fulfilled with the inclusion of the Gentiles beginning during His ministry but especially in the early days of the Church.  Jesus was teaching His disciples to have a heart for the nations as God does, a lesson that lasted long after His death and resurrection.  Before Peter was sent to share the Gospel with the centurion Cornelius in the same region as the Canaanite woman, God gave him a vision to drive that lesson home to Peter in Acts 10.  Before healing the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter Jesus had declared all foods clean, and the encounter with the woman should have taught Peter that Jesus was about to declare all ethnicities clean through His blood, even the remnant of the cursed Canaanites, if they place their faith in Him.  In Acts 10, God uses the analogy of food again to teach Peter that Christ had removed the distinction between Jew and Gentile.  It was only after that vision that Peter truly understood the lesson Jesus had been teaching since His encounter with the Syrophoenician woman.  Therefore, it is safe to say that at least one reason that Jesus caused the demon to leave her daughter—and by extension why He healed the centurion’s slave—was to change His disciples’ paradigm of who the true people of God were, teaching them not to make distinctions based on ethnicity.

The Role of Faith

But what about the role of faith in these miracles?  First, the fact that Jesus was using these miracles to teach His disciples a particular lesson means that it was His Will and not their faith that caused Jesus to perform those miracles.  Scripture is clear in many places that God does whatever He pleases regardless of the action or even faith of anyone.  It is absurd for us to think that the omnipotent God is somehow dependent on the amount of our faith, as if He must wait until our faith reaches a certain level before He is able to act.  He has mercy and compassion on whoever He wills, and we can by no means restrain Him—not even by our faith.  This leads to a second reason that faith did not cause Jesus to perform miracles.  If faith was required in order for Jesus to perform miracles, we cannot account for the people He healed who did not exhibit faith.  While the centurion and Syrophoenician woman both exhibited extraordinary faith, the Capernaum official did not, yet all three saw Jesus perform miracles remotely on their behalf.  Similarly, Jesus pointed out how the many widows and lepers in Israel did not receive miracles from God through Elijah and Elisha, but only the widow of Zarephath (in the same region as the Syrophoenician woman) and Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:25-27).  Doubtless some of the Israelite widows and lepers had more faith than they did.  This is especially true of Naaman, who exhibited no signs of faith. 

So why do the Gospels emphasize faith in so many of Christ’s miracles?  If all of His miracles were to prove His divinity and usher in His Kingdom, it naturally follows that the prominence of faith surrounding these miracles demonstrates its centrality in His Kingdom.  In this new Kingdom of God, faith would be the primary distinguishing factor of its citizens—not heredity, gender, social status, upbringing, good works, or any other human factor.  Faith is so important that it is impossible to please God without it (Hebrews 11:6) and any thought, motive, word, or deed that is not rooted in faith is actually sinful, no matter how good it may appear (Romans 14:23).  But this faith was not general faith in God but specific faith in Jesus Christ, both who He is and what He has done.  It was this specific faith in God and His promises that was counted to Abraham as righteousness (Genesis 15:6), to which Paul refers when explaining that salvation is by faith and not works (Romans 4, Galatians 3) and James cites when explaining that saving faith produces good works and is not mere intellectual ascent (James 2:21-24).  I explain this faith in more detail in a previous post and on my theology page, but for now it will suffice to say that saving faith is a complete dependence on God such that if He does not fulfill His promises to us we are doomed.  God has chosen that such faith is the means through which He gives us salvation.  It is not that such faith itself saves us—Jesus Christ alone saves us—but that Christ’s saving work comes to us and is made effective in us through the medium of faith.  And even that faith is itself a gift of God (Romans 12:3, Ephesians 2:8-9).  Therefore, we do not earn salvation—or any of the blessings of God for that matter—from our faith, but God has chosen that we receive His blessings through the faith that He freely gives according to His Will. 

Conclusion

After looking at a few of Christ’s miracles, it is clear that the faith of the recipients did not compel or even encourage Jesus to perform those miracles.  Jesus performed miracles for who He willed according to His own purposes that are largely beyond our understanding.  Instead, when the faith of the recipients is noted, Jesus was showing the centrality of faith in the new Kingdom He was inaugurating.  By healing the centurion’s son and the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter at a distance, He was both proving His supremacy over all of nature and teaching His disciples that faith in Him by Jews and Gentiles alike was replacing ethnicity as the marker of the people of God—although as Paul points out in Romans 9-11 faith has always been the marker of the true people of God anyway.  This faith is not some currency that we deposit to God as if He was a cosmic vending machine that is therefore somehow compelled to bless us.  Instead, that faith is a complete dependence on God, trusting that whatever He does to us and for us is under His sovereign control and ultimately for His glory and our own good, whether we recognize it or not.  Christians must understand this to avoid being led astray by both prosperity gospel preachers and the more subtle man-centered view of faith that is much more common in our churches.  The miracles of Jesus show that faith is not a human product that moves mountains or moves the heart of God but a dependence on the God who moves mountains and has set His heart toward His people.