Living With Faith and Truth

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

LIVING WITH FAITH AND TRUTH

Luke 9:37-43

37 The next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him. 38 A man in the crowd called out, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 A spirit seizes him and he suddenly screams; it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him. 40 I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not." 41 "O unbelieving and perverse generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you and put up with you? Bring your son here." 42 Even while the boy was coming, the demon threw him to the ground in a convulsion. But Jesus rebuked the evil spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his father. 43 And they were all amazed at the greatness of God.

NIV

We know it wasn’t Peter, James, or John who could not drive out the evil spirit because they were on the mountain with Jesus and saw Him and Moses and Elijah in their glorified forms. However, nine others were waiting somewhere at the foothills of the mountain, and we have to believe those who were this man was referrer to. Nine men, who had been walking with Jesus and hearing all his teachings so far, saw many miracles, including feeding thousands with two fish and five loaves. Yet they were still an unbelieving and perverse generation. However, looking into the Greek we see two words, faithless and distort or turn aside. It is possible for these men, even after being with Jesus for however long they had, so far, to still not have the faith needed to do what Jesus can do, such as in this case to drive out an evil spirit. In the gospel according to John Jesus tells them a great truth. He told them, and us, that He and the Father are one, and anyone, which included them and includes us, who has faith in Jesus, will do what He has been doing. In fact, Jesus said that we will do even greater things than what he did because he was going to the Father, which is where he is now, and that He will do whatever we ask in His name so that He will bring glory to the Father. Jesus repeated this in case we did not grasp it the first time. Again, He said that we may ask him anything in his name and he would do it. This cannot be any clearer. Yet those men who heard him and watched him do all that he said and did, still were faithless and they distorted His truth. Let us not get clumped into that same category with them. Let us live with faith and pure truth. We know that because we are a people with faith, we are being transformed so that we reflect the glory of God in ever-increasing glory, and that because we are a people of faith, faith that God has given us, we can ask him anything. We should be able to ask for healing of ourselves, and healing for others. We should be able to drive out evil spirits. We should be able to ask for and perform miracles in his name. However, we cannot doubt, that we cannot be seen by Jesus as faithless and as distorting his word, as unbelievers live and do. We will live with faith and truth.