According to faith

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

ACCORDING TO FAITH

Matt 9:28-31

28 When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" "Yes, Lord," they replied. 29 Then he touched their eyes and said, "According to your faith will it be done to you";  30 and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, "See that no one knows about this."  31 But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region.

NIV

We should first consider the last of his words to these men before we explore the first. When he tells them to see that no one knows about the healing they received, it is not that no one was there when he did it. There were witnesses to his restoring their sight. It was going to get out what he did. But the point is that by their going to and fro telling everyone they met about his healing them was not in accordance with his own precepts. He had already taught not to do our acts of righteousness before men, for in doing so we would have received our reward.

Matt 6:1

6:1 "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

NIV

Jesus surely had compassion on these men, as he has on all men, and because they expressed their faith in him, he healed them, but he was not doing this to receive glory from men, but to bring glory to the Father. He did not do his acts of righteousness in a flamboyant manner, but with a loving humble heart. Although it is true each of us has very different personalities, some extraverted, some introverted, some even flamboyant while others very reserved, we all should be following his example in our doing any acts of righteousness. That could be a lesson right there, but we still need to take a look at the first part of this exchange between these blind men and Jesus. They come to him, they follow after him, and they seek him out. We are not told they asked him to heal them, but he surely gets right to the heart of the issue by asking them if they believe he can restore their sight.  They did not hesitate to respond in the affirmative, “Yes, Lord”. Again we see he tells them it is according to their faith that it will be done. People are not going to receive a healing unless they have the faith to receive it. Years ago there were people who proclaimed the reason people were not healed was because they did not have enough faith. They were blasted for being so harsh in their words, yet perhaps there is some truth there. Jesus does tell them, as he did with the woman who touched the hem of his garment. It is their faith which brings them a healing. What if they had said, “We know you can heal us, but we are not sure you will heal us”? What if they said, “We heard you heal people, and we thought we would take a chance and maybe you would heal us too”? What if they answered, “Were not sure”? It was in accordance with their faith. Would that mean we could have various amounts of faith? Surely we need faith in Jesus to be saved. Certainly we have to express our faith in him for salvation. But what if we have some doubts? What if we believe, but still have some reservations about whether all of it is really true? We are always bombarded with reasons to doubt. People ask us why God allows all the sickness in the world. They ask us  why babies are born with defects. They ask us why God allows so much evil in the world. The answer is easy. It is because of sin. But their rebuttals against God might give us a pause in our faith. Not in our faith for salvation, but maybe in our faith for a healing, or a provision, or a leading. Maybe we struggle with having faith to be healed. We visited this idea before about having faith in doctors, but not in Jesus. Has the ideologies of this world infiltrated our thinking? Jesus says it is in accordance with their faith it shall be done, and he restored their sight. We too could receive healing in accordance with our faith. There could also be an additional implication here. We could see this in respect to our insight of the word of God. If we have no faith, when people without faith, read the bible they do not see the truth within, they are blind to it. But once a person has faith, believes in Jesus, vision is restored and we can see the truth within. Either way we look at this, it still happens in accordance to our faith. How do we respond to this? Do we need to exercise our faith more? The more we exercise it the greater it will become. Do we just let it wither away and become crippled in our walk with the Lord? That seems bizarre to even think we would do that. So let us begin an exercise program, and live in accordance with our faith.