Luke 7:1

Luke brought the love of Christ into sharp focus in this chapter, along with the ethic derived from it, namely, that it is in the love of God and the love of man that a soul may hope to commend itself to the Lord. First, there is the centurion who loved his servant (Luke 7:1-10); then, Jesus showed his love for the bereaved by raising the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17); next, Jesus offered his love of the afflicted and the poor as proof of his Messiahship to John the Baptist, laying stress on the publicans and harlots who accepted John's message (Luke 7:24-25); and then, he gave the explanation of how publicans and harlots were saved and the Pharisees were not, this explanation growing out of a dinner in the house of a Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50).

THE HEALING OF THE CENTURION'S SERVANT

In my Commentary on Matthew this miracle was referred to as being identical with the one in Matthew 8:5-13, this view being that of Lamar, Boles, McGarvey, and many others; and it is reaffirmed here that it may be so interpreted, all of the variations in the two accounts yielding easily to harmonizing suggested by many commentators. It should be noted, however, that it is by no means CERTAIN that Matthew and Luke have recorded the same incident.

More mature study has convinced this writer that the two episodes COULD be different miracles, and that the higher probability is that they WERE separate wonders. The Greek words translated "my servant" (Matthew 8:6) are from terms which are literally "the boy of me,"[1] an expression which MacKnight affirms would have been translated "my son" except "for the supposition that the miracles are the same."[2] About the only objection to viewing the miracles as separate wonders springs from the alleged unlikelihood that there would have been two centurions, one with a sick son, another with a sick slave, who would have approached Jesus with approximately the same words, manifesting exactly the same attitude.

MacKnight, however, suggested that:

There might have been two centurions. Both made the same speech to Jesus, one through his friends, and the other in person; but this circumstance may be accounted for. As the faith of the first centurion, who was a heathen, took its rise from the extraordinary cure wrought on the nobleman's son (John 4:46-54), the faith of the second centurion might have taken its rise from the success of the first, which could not fail to be well known both in the town and in the country.[3]

MacKnight elaborated the above argument in his harmony of the Gospels in such a manner as to foreclose any logical objections to it. He concluded thus:

To conclude that two centurions should have had, the one his son, the other his slave, cured in Capernaum with like circumstances, is no more improbable than that the temple should have been twice purged, the multitude twice fed, and the fishes twice caught by miracle, and with the same circumstances.[4]

This consideration has been introduced here, not because of any bearing the question has with reference to interpreting the miracles themselves, but because of the implications bearing on the two great sermons, the one on the mount, the other on the plain. The big argument for making those sermons the same depends upon making these two miracles the same; but it is clear enough that the uncertainty of their being indeed but one wonder totally removes the principal argument for viewing Luke's record of the Sermon on the Plain as merely an abbreviated account of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. Significantly, some of the commentators who treat these two miracles as one refuse to view the sermons as one (Boles, for example). It appears that it is more logical to view the miracles also as separate wonders.

[1] The Nestle Greek Text (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1958), en loco.

[2] James MacKnight, Harmony of the Gospels (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1950), p. 468.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. 469.

After he had ended all his sayings in the ears of the people, he entered into Capernaum. (Luke 7:1)

The first clause here, according to Boles,

Shows that the discourse which had just been narrated was delivered at one time, and was not a mere collection of sayings or detached parts of different discourses.[5]

A great deal of Jesus' teaching was done in Capernaum, which was his residence for a long while; and the event of our Lord's finishing a discourse at some place near the city and then returning to the place where he stayed must have recurred often. Nothing is plainer in the sacred Gospels than the fact that the sum total recorded by all of them put together was merely the tip of the iceberg, compared to all that Jesus said and did. The last word that has come down to us across the long centuries since Jesus walked on the earth is that "the world itself could not contain the books that should be written" (John 21:25), if men had recorded all that Jesus did and taught! This monumental truth destroys the conceit which would explain similar teachings or miracles of Jesus as inaccurate, garbled accounts of but one event or sermon.