Passage: John 4:46-54. We can watch and learn from Jesus.
Let’s start off with this verse which forms the background to this startling episode.
He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. (Psalm 107:20, NIV)
This is exactly what Jesus is about to do for the dying son.
The translations are mine, but if you would like to see many other translations, please go to biblegateway.com. I include the Greek text to bring out the nuances, but readers may ignore the left column, if they wish.
Let’s begin.
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Jesus Heals the Royal Official’s Son (John 4:46-54) |
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| 46 Ἦλθεν οὖν πάλιν εἰς τὴν Κανὰ τῆς Γαλιλαίας, ὅπου ἐποίησεν τὸ ὕδωρ οἶνον. Καὶ ἦν τις βασιλικὸς οὗ ὁ υἱὸς ἠσθένει ἐν Καφαρναούμ. 47 οὗτος ἀκούσας ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἥκει ἐκ τῆς Ἰουδαίας εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν ἀπῆλθεν πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ ἠρώτα ἵνα καταβῇ καὶ ἰάσηται αὐτοῦ τὸν υἱόν, ἤμελλεν γὰρ ἀποθνῄσκειν. 48 εἶπεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς πρὸς αὐτόν· ἐὰν μὴ σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα ἴδητε, οὐ μὴ πιστεύσητε. 49 λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ βασιλικός· κύριε, κατάβηθι πρὶν ἀποθανεῖν τὸ παιδίον μου. 50 λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· πορεύου, ὁ υἱός σου ζῇ. Ἐπίστευσεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῷ λόγῳ ὃν εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἐπορεύετο. 51 ἤδη δὲ αὐτοῦ καταβαίνοντος οἱ δοῦλοι αὐτοῦ ὑπήντησαν αὐτῷ λέγοντες ὅτι ὁ παῖς αὐτοῦ ζῇ. 52 ἐπύθετο οὖν τὴν ὥραν παρ’ αὐτῶν ἐν ᾗ κομψότερον ἔσχεν· εἶπαν οὖν αὐτῷ ὅτι ἐχθὲς ὥραν ἑβδόμην ἀφῆκεν αὐτὸν ὁ πυρετός. 53 ἔγνω οὖν ὁ πατὴρ ὅτι [ἐν] ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἐν ᾗ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ὁ υἱός σου ζῇ, καὶ ἐπίστευσεν αὐτὸς καὶ ἡ οἰκία αὐτοῦ ὅλη. 54 Τοῦτο [δὲ] πάλιν δεύτερον σημεῖον ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐλθὼν ἐκ τῆς Ἰουδαίας εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν. |
46 He came back to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son was sick in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus came from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and kept asking that he would come down and heal his son, for he was about to die. 48 Then Jesus said to him, “If you did not see the signs and wonders, you would certainly not believe.” 49 The royal official said to him, “Lord, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go. Your son lives.” The man believed the word which Jesus said to him and started to go. 51 While he was coming down, his servants met him, saying that his child lives. 52 So he inquired of them as to the hour when he got better. So they told him that the fever left yesterday at the seventh hour. 53 Then the father knew that this was that hour when Jesus told him, “Your son lives.” He himself believed, along with his entire household. 54 Jesus again did this second sign, coming from Judea to Galilee. |
Comments:
This is a separate event from the centurion’s dying servant (Matt. 8:5-13 // Luke 7:1-10). The man here in John was a royal official, not a Gentile centurion. The royal official did not speak words of startling faith, as the centurion did. In fact, the royal official seemed desperate or at least did not focus on his lack of faith or presence of faith. Nonetheless, as Jesus did for the centurion, so also he does for the royal official. He heals from a distance. He can perform similar miracles for two different men.
Some speculate that he may have been Chuza, who was a manager in Herod Antipas’s household. (Luke 8:3) (Bruce, comment on vv. 46-47). This makes sense and explains why his wife Joanna supported Jesus in his ministry.
The household includes his wife and children and servants. They all believed, because the royal official calculated the time Jesus spoke his word and the time his son recovered. There is no distance in the spirit realm, when Jesus issues a command.
Jesus performed signs in Jerusalem (John 2:23), but they do not figure in to John’s calculation right now. John is thinking of the Galilean signs at this point (Bruce, comment on v. 54).
Application for Ministry
We can learn a lot, when we follow Jesus and what he did. In this section I number the points for clarity and order. In this post I borrow from an earlier one about Jesus healing from a distance.
1.. This passage contains a great lesson of faith for Renewalists. Jesus can command a blessed result (healing in this case) from a distance. He does not need to be in the room. It is the structure of the human world that orders and commands can be given, and the underlings have to obey. Disease is under Jesus, and he commands it to go. The centurion’s basic insight is the lesser-to-greater. If a centurion (lesser) can command soldiers, then Jesus (greater) can command diseases, even at a distance, with one word.
2.. Speaking of authority and power, it is small part of my calling to point out excesses of ministry practices. The Word of Faith teachers claim that their words in themselves have power. They quote verses like this one: “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Prov. 18:21, NIV). I heard Creflo Dollar teach Genesis 1 in which God spoke worlds into existence, and Dollar drew the conclusion that believers can do the same thing. (The Word-of=Faith guys all believe this inflated anthropology, which erroneuously crosses the line into deity.) Of course Dollar exaggerated an otherwise biblical teaching of speaking out loud by accumulating too much power in the speaker and cutting God out of the picture. Further, Proverbs 18:21 refers to interpersonal relationships, not an unlimited power to cause literal life and literal death by one’s own words. One should speak words of life into one’s family and not words that kill the spirit. True. However, this has nothing to do with killing, for example, the Covid pandemic with one’s words. Word-of-Faith teacher Kenneth Copeland can be seen on youtube doing this, but it did not work.
Kenneth Copeland Gets a Pacemaker
So yes, speak a word of healing out loud in Jesus’s name, not your own, but everything has to be surrendered to the Father. He’s the one who heals. In the next point, Jesus ministered as the Father directed him, not out of his own authority.
3.. As I write in all the healing posts:
Let it be noted that Jesus never went in for “decree and declare.” Name one time he used such verbiage during his prayer for the sick. Nor did the disciples use those formulaic words in Acts.
Instead, God the Father through his Son who was anointed by the Spirit performed miracles of healing. Jesus clarified that he does only what he sees his Father doing (John 5:19). He lives because of the Father (John 6:57). He speaks only what the Father taught him (John 8:28). He does what he sees the Father do (John 10:37). What Jesus says is just what the Father told him to say (John 12:49-50, 57). Perhaps the most important verse about miracles: “Many good works I have shown you from My Father” (John 10:32). (In John’s Gospel, “good works” = miracles, at a minimum.)
And so the Father through his Son who was anointed by the Spirit, performed all miracles during his Son’s ministry (Acts 10:38). The Son obeyed and followed his Father and also did the healings by the Spirit. The Trinity was working together.
4..We too should develop life in the Spirit (Gal. 5), so we can hear from the Father through the Spirit, in Jesus’s name and authority granted to us. We will never heal as Jesus did, because he is the Anointed One without limits (John 3:34). But after the cross and the Son’s ascension, the Spirit can distribute the gifts of healings (plural) as he determines (1 Cor. 12:11), not as we “name and claim” or “decree and declare.” Let the Spirit work, and you listen and obey, and then rebuke a disease (not the person) or pray for healing.
4. Gifts of the Spirit: Gifts of Healings
Is ‘Decreeing’ Biblical for Christians?
For fuller comments, see the complete chapter:
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 