Text: John 4: 43-54
...Sign-Seeker or Savior-Seeker?
Jesus does not address the man only. He addresses the whole group he has been talking about—the whole region of his own hometown. And now he says explicitly what we’ve been arguing. Verse 48: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” You are sign-seekers. You are “wonder-worshipers.” You say you believe, but your belief—like those folks in Jerusalem in John 2:23 and like his brothers in John 7:5—is not real belief that honors me. We can call it belief, but it’s not the kind that unites you to me as one who sees and treasures me as the Son of God full of grace and truth. In fact, it dishonors me. So verse 48 is the most explicit indictment of all along with verse 44 that a prophet has no honor in his own home area.
But now what about this official? Was he in that crowd who believed but didn’t believe? Believed as a sign-seeker, but not as a Savior-seeker? A lover of Jesus’ power, but not a lover of his person?
Jesus Tests Him
It seems to me that Jesus is testing him. The official is asking for a miracle for his dying son in a milieu where people love to see miracles. And he seems to be asking for the same reason any unbelieving person would love to see a miracle—I have a health need, fix it. Not: I have sin, forgive it, and give me power to live for you. Unbelievers don’t love God; they use God. So Jesus bluntly says to the man—it says that Jesus said “to him” (verse 48)—that he and the other Galileans are sign-seekers: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”
I take it to be a test, like the time a Syrophoenician woman pleaded for help for her daughter, and Jesus at first rebuffed her, but it turned out to be a test (Mark 7:27). How does the official respond to Jesus’ rebuff?
“Go, Your Son Will Live”
He doesn’t even comment on it. He simply repeats his request. Verse 49, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Neither Jesus nor John comments on the man’s sincerity. Jesus simply gives him a gift. Verse 50: Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.”
John says (still in verse 50), “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.” What is remarkable about this is that the man had asked Jesus to come with him. But when Jesus simply spoke, “Go; your son will live,” the man obeyed without a question. He believed and went. He did not insist on seeing the miracle. He did not complain that Jesus would not come with him. And amazingly, he simply left, John says, believing. I’m inclined to think that in that moment of seeing Jesus speak so sovereignly in spite of his accusations, something awakened in the man. He saw something more than a miracle-worker.
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