Luke 17: Only One Leper Returns With Saving Faith

Introduction

"If the Gospel is true, why does it seem that so few people believe it? And why are those who do believe so often not the ones you would expect?" These two questions open this message from Église Saint-Lazare on the healing of the ten lepers in Luke 17:11-19.

The preacher admits he has asked himself the same question. Seeing so few people respond to the Gospel can be unsettling: is the Gospel false? Is God not merciful? If he revealed himself with power to my friends, they would believe, so why doesn't he? For someone who does not consider himself a Christian, this small number can become a huge obstacle to faith.

Luke is there precisely to reassure his reader: this is normal. The Gospel is true, God still has compassion on humanity, and Jesus reveals himself to it. But most people do not believe. The text reads in two parts: many experience God's mercy (verses 11 to 14), but those who have a faith that saves are rare and unexpected (verses 15 to 19).

Outline of the message

1. Jesus takes time for compassion

The story picks up Jesus' journey toward Jerusalem, where he is going to die. He knows his destiny, he has announced it several times to his disciples, and he stays the course.
The preacher confesses that, under pressure, his own tendency is to let his own problems hide the suffering of others. That is not the case with Jesus: even as he walks toward his death, he has compassion and takes the time to care for those who are suffering.
Jesus is by now known throughout the region. The ten lepers have heard of his arrival and cry out to be healed: they believe he can do it, as he has already done for others.

2. What the Bible calls leprosy

Citing the commentary of Dominique Angers, a professor of New Testament, the preacher explains that the Greek word lepra has been confused since the 8th century with what we call leprosy today, Hansen's disease.
Biblical leprosy, described in Leviticus 13 and 14, refers to a group of progressive skin diseases. The preacher uses his own example: with the vitiligo he has on his face, he himself would have been considered a leper.
This condition made a person ritually unclean. You could also become unclean by eating certain foods or touching a corpse: these things were associated with death and destruction. It was not a question of sin, but an unclean person could not enter the temple, where God's presence dwelled. "Death and the source of life, God, do not go together."
The tragedy of the lepers was that they could not wash themselves to escape this condition. They had to keep their distance from everyone, including their family. They were called "the living dead."
"They were not comfortable in their own skin, literally." Deprived of community life and of God's presence, we can imagine their tears as they cry out in verse 13: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"

3. Healed on the way, by obeying his word

This is not the first time Jesus has healed a leper, but this time he does not touch him and does not speak a simple word of healing. He announces the healing before it is accomplished by telling them: "Go and show yourselves to the priests."
The priests were the ones with the authority to declare someone clean. After that declaration, the person could enter the temple and return to society.
Jesus asks them to believe they will be healed and to exercise their faith by obeying his word. "It happened that as they went, they were cleansed" (verse 14).
This is a picture of the Christian life: it is by obeying God's word, trusting him before we see the results, that we experience our healing and our transformation. "Put it to the test. You can trust him." We are not always transformed overnight: it takes faith.

4. God shows mercy to everyone

This story reminds us that God hears prayers, even from those who are not disciples of Jesus. He invites everyone to come near to him, to find help, and to experience his power.
Whether through a miracle or through his goodness in our work, our finances, our health, or our relationships, we all live under God's common grace, which continues to bless humanity despite our rebellion against him. Many non-Christians acknowledge that their success is not only the fruit of their knowledge, their intelligence, or their skills.
The preacher cites an interview with the comedian Jim Carrey. In second grade, an Irish substitute teacher told her class during morning prayer: "Whenever I want something, I pray to Mary, I ask her to ask God, I make a promise in exchange, and I get everything I want." His family could not afford to buy him a bike. He prayed for one. Two weeks later, he found a brand-new Mustang bike in the living room: he had won it in a raffle that a friend had entered him in without telling him. "That kind of thing has been happening to me ever since."
Jim Carrey does not worship Jesus as Savior: he sees him as an enlightened teacher among others, like Buddha or Muhammad. Answered prayer is not reserved for Christians. God makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45).
This goodness has a purpose: to bring us back to him in repentance and faith. Paul writes in Romans 2:4: "Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?" Sadly, very few people respond that way.

5. Only one comes back to Jesus' feet

Of the ten lepers, only one responds with praise. "One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice" (verse 15). He goes back to Jesus halfway.
The preacher sees in this a small picture of the theology of the temple in the New Testament and the early Church: instead of going back to the temple to be in God's presence, this man comes back to Jesus, because Jesus is now God's presence on earth. He who had to keep his distance can now draw near.
He falls at Jesus' feet. It is not first of all in religious institutions that we are called to meet and follow God, but at the feet of Jesus.
Luke plays with imagery to hint at Jesus' divine identity: when the man glorifies God (verses 15 and 18), he does so at Jesus' feet. He recognizes that God's mercy comes through its mediator, Jesus Christ, the source of God's grace.
Jesus does not correct this act of worship, he approves of it. And he asks a pointed question about the other nine: "Weren't the ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there none found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?" (verses 17 and 18).
Gratitude and worship, even public, even at the cost of the shame of a man who falls at another man's feet, are the logical and fitting response to God's grace in our lives.

6. Healed or saved: the faith that saves

Jesus ends with the most important sentence of the passage: "Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well" (verse 19). The Greek word can also mean "has saved you." This man's response proves that he has a faith in Jesus that saves.
It is not the first time Jesus says "your faith has saved you," but it is the first time, in Luke's work, that he clearly distinguishes healing from salvation. The other nine were healed physically, not spiritually. This man, on the other hand, obtained salvation.
For Jesus and for Luke, healing is a picture of salvation. It helps us understand what God can do in us: transform us on the inside as he transformed these men on the outside. Healings should point us to the source of everything, what our soul thirsts for.
The problem with sin is that it makes us unclean. It cuts us off from God's presence and from others. Yet Jesus is walking toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, where he will take on himself all our uncleanness and all our sin. He will die in our place, under the just judgment of God that we deserved for our rebellion.
Paul says it in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." It is an exchange: Jesus takes our filth, our uncleanness, and gives us his righteousness.
To benefit from it, all we have to do is believe in him and in what he does for us, recognizing that it is impossible, with our dirty hands, to make ourselves clean. Only Jesus can purify us.
The preacher's first remark: you can have faith to be healed without being saved. Some streams of Christianity push people to believe that if you are not healed, or if the situation does not change, it means you do not have real faith. That is not Jesus' goal, since he cares far more about our salvation. God still heals today and performs miracles, "but that is not the goal." You can experience a miracle on this earth without drawing near to Jesus for salvation.

7. A Samaritan, the one nobody expected

Second remark: the surprising identity of the one who comes back. Luke specifies that he is a Samaritan. The Samaritans had turned away from God centuries earlier, had rebelled against the rest of Israel and allied themselves with idolatrous nations, to the point of becoming a separate ethnic group, living in a separate land. There was real animosity between them and the Jews: they were enemies.
Yet it is he, and he alone, who comes back to Jesus and recognizes in him the Messiah, the king promised by God, while the others, probably Jews, do not see it.
This answers the big question of Theophilus, the recipient of Luke's work, a non-Jewish Greek: if Jesus is truly the Messiah promised to Israel, why do so few Jews recognize him, and why is this little movement mostly Greek and pagan? Luke answers: this is normal, it was already Jesus' own experience. You can live as the people of God, experience his mercy and his miracles, and remain unbelieving.
So we should not be surprised that so few people come to Jesus, particularly in Europe, despite centuries of Christian heritage in culture, the arts, the sciences, and medicine. The preacher is speaking of a real relationship with Jesus, not a mere religious affiliation: people who want to worship him, give him their lives publicly, live in gratitude, and trust him for their salvation.
Christianity is growing today in China, under heavy persecution, and in Africa, where poverty could make people doubt God's goodness. The average Christian no longer looks like a white man, but like a rather poor black woman.
For a church located in the 8th and 9th arrondissements of Paris, which looks more like Theophilus, with means, perhaps influence and education, the question arises: are we ready to follow Jesus even if few people do, and even if those who do are not the ones we would expect, foreigners from unexpected countries? If that bothers us, it should challenge us: do I too need a Savior, whatever my plans, my level of education, or my social status?
If people were healed without coming back to thank Jesus, how much more should we expect, as we proclaim Jesus, to meet people who see no point in him. "If Jesus was rejected, it is normal that it still happens today." The message ends with an invitation: pray, see whether God is there and whether he answers when you cry out to him, then trust him and give him your life.

Key takeaways

Many experience God's mercy, but those who respond to it with a faith that saves are rare and unexpected.
It is by obeying Jesus' word, before seeing the result, that the ten lepers are cleansed on the way.
God's goodness toward everyone, believers or not, has a purpose: to lead us to repentance.
You can be healed without being saved: the faith that saves comes back to Jesus' feet to give him glory.
The small number of believers does not call the truth of the Gospel into question: Jesus himself was rejected.

Personal application

What signs of God's goodness have you received lately, and have you gone back to thank him?
Do you first look to Jesus for healing or a solution to your problems, or for salvation and his presence?
In what area is God calling you to obey his word before you see the result?
Are you ready to worship Jesus publicly, even if it makes you socially uncomfortable?
Do you acknowledge, whatever your level of education or social status, that you need a Savior?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

Why does only one of the ten lepers come back to Jesus?

All ten experienced God's mercy and were cleansed on the way. Only one, a Samaritan, comes back to glorify God at Jesus' feet. For the preacher, this is the sign of a faith that saves: he recognizes that God's grace comes through Jesus and gives him glory publicly.

What is the difference between being healed and being saved in Luke 17?

The other nine were healed physically, but not spiritually. Only to the Samaritan does Jesus say: "Your faith has made you well," a phrase that can also be read as "has saved you." Healing is a picture of salvation: it shows what God can do on the inside. You can have the faith to be healed without having the faith that saves.

Why do so few people believe in Jesus today?

The preacher shows that Luke already answers this question: many receive God's mercy, but those who respond to it with a faith that saves are rare and unexpected. If Jesus himself was rejected, it is normal that few people follow him today. This does not call the truth of the Gospel into question.