by
Pastor Paul Wolff
Then Jesus left the
vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee
and into the region of the Decapolis. There some people brought to
him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged him to
place his hand on the man.
After he took him
aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s
ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. He looked up to
heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which
means, “Be opened!”). At this, the man’s ears were opened, his
tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
Jesus
commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more
they kept talking about it. People were overwhelmed with amazement.
“He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the
deaf hear and the mute speak.” (Mark 7:31-37)
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| Jesus heals us from sin and its consequences (Liturgical clip art by Clemens Schmidt) |
No
sinner does everything well. Everything we do is tainted by sin in
some way. There is a saying, “Jack of all trades – master of
none.” This means you can’t be good at everything. The most you
can hope to do is to be good at one thing, and hope that this is a
talent for which someone will pay you handsomely. Many people have
made their fortune by specializing in one thing or another. This has
its downsides though. God have mercy on you if you see a doctor for
an ailment which is outside of his specialty.
Jesus
truly has done everything well, but because of our sinful nature we
don’t really care if Jesus has done everything well.
We each want God to say, “You have done everything well,” just as
we truly (though wrongly) believe that we already do everything well
enough. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, and measure ourselves
up against God’s Law, we must admit that we don’t even come close
to doing everything well.
Though,
here we must ask: does God really expect us to do ALL
things well? Though
we hope that the answer is “no” we read in
Leviticus 19 where
God
tells His people, “Be holy because I, the Lord, Your God, am holy.”
This passage shows
that God does
require us to be perfectly holy as God is holy. We
should remember, however,
that when
God first made people He made them holy
as He is holy,
but our first parents rebelled against God and lost
their holiness. We
continue in that rebellion. St. Paul quotes from Psalm
14
in Romans 3:10,
“There is no one righteous, not even one.” No sinner can do
everything well, because we all rebel against God and His righteous
laws. There are no exceptions “for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God.” (Romans
3:23)
If we measure ourselves against God’s Law we must join St. Paul in
saying, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I
am the worst.” (1
Timothy 1:15)
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| Faith comes by hearing and believing the Word of Christ (Romans 10:17) |
Jesus
did this out of compassion for the man. He didn’t do this for
publicity, and certainly not to be known as a miracle worker. In
fact, Jesus took the deaf man away
from the crowd and put his fingers in his ears and spat and touched
his tongue and healed him. I’m not sure what the spitting was all
about, but it is likely that he touched the man’s ears and tongue
to show the man what he was doing in healing him.
Then after giving the man
hearing and speech, Jesus ironically told the man not to tell anyone
what He had done. I think Jesus did this because since the man had
only just then received his hearing and speech, he had an incomplete
understanding of Jesus. He knew Jesus as a gracious miracle worker, but
that is all. He needed to listen more and talk less,
but he was a sinner, and it seems as though he preferred to exercise
his gift of speech over his gift of hearing, even against Christ’s
command to him. It was certainly true what the man said of Jesus, “He
has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute
to speak.” But this is an incomplete picture of
Jesus.
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| The Law of God kills the sinner, but Jesus gives Life to all who believe. |
In
order to be worthy to redeem us from our sins Jesus had to obey God’s
Law just like any other person, and He had to do it perfectly so that
He would not be condemned by His own sin. Romans 5:19
tells us, “Just as through the disobedience of the
one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the
obedience of the one man (Jesus) the many will be made righteous.”
Jesus actively obeyed all of God the Father’s commandments. But
Jesus didn’t do it for His own sake, He did it for us – to make
us righteous in God’s sight.
Galatians
4:4-5 also tells us, “When the time had fully come, God sent His
Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that
we might receive the full rights of sons.” Jesus lived under God’s
law like any other man, but He kept God’s law perfectly so that we
might receive His heavenly inheritance as sons. We call this Christ’s
Active Obedience. This is what the people were talking about when
they said, “Jesus has done all things well.”
But
in itself this doesn’t save us. Jesus had to go further to redeem
us from the guilt of our sins. Jesus offered his life in exchange for
ours. Jesus, in effect, said to the Father, “Don’t punish my
brothers and sisters for the sins they committed against You. Punish
me instead, and set them free from their sin.” This is what St.
Paul described in Colossians 1:22, where he wrote, “(God) has
reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present
you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
Since Jesus has taken the punishment for your sins, there is no
longer anything standing between you and your heavenly Father.
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| Though Jesus is the Almighty God, it was not without cost that He healed us from our sin. This was the cost. |
Jesus
not only shared in our humanity, He shared in our suffering because
of our sin. If you notice in Mark 7:34 after Jesus touched the deaf
man’s ears and tongue He looked to heaven and sighed. The word for
“sigh” here is used elsewhere in the New Testament and is
translated as “groan”, as
in
2 Corinthians 5:4 which
says,
“For
while we are still in this tent (of our sinful body), we groan, being
burdened – not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be
further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”
We
groan in our lives because sin causes us great sorrow and pain.
When
Jesus healed this deaf man He groaned because He was taking the man’s
suffering
into Himself and giving him His life and healing. Though
Jesus is the almighty God, it was not
without cost that He healed people from their infirmities. It caused
Him suffering. This is why God says in Isaiah 42:18-19
“Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind that you may see! Who is blind
but my servant, or deaf as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as
my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the Lord?”
Deafness
and all our other bodily ailments come to us as a result of sin. When
God made Adam and Eve they were perfectly healthy and immortal.
Illness and infirmity and death only came after the fall into sin.
Jesus rescues us from sin and all its consequences by taking our sin
and its consequences
into his body. This is why Scripture says in Isaiah 53, “Surely he
has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him
stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the
chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.”
This
is why when Jesus came to be baptized, John objected saying, “I
need to be baptized by you.” But Jesus said, “It is fitting for
us to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus fulfilled all righteousness
not only by obeying God’s Law perfectly, and doing all things well,
but also by taking the pain and
guilt and all consequences
of our sin into His body. St. Paul describes this in 2
Corinthians 5:21 “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so
that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
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| The miracles Jesus did give us a glimpse into what heaven is like where all believers will be healed and glorified by His grace. |
God
our heavenly Father does have mercy on us for the sake of His Son,
Jesus Christ. This miraculous healing and all of Christ’s miracles
are a little taste of His heavenly kingdom where He will rescue us
from death and restore us to perfect holiness and life and health
forever. Jesus has taken the guilt and the pain of our sins into His
body and has taken them to His grave. Yet when Jesus rose from the
dead He rose victorious over sin and death, so that He might give us, His beloved children, the gift of eternal life with Him in
paradise – without sin – without illness – without sorrow –
without death. Jesus truly has done all things well for us and for
our salvation that He might share with us the eternal riches of His
heavenly Kingdom.
