He was a heathen and a Gentile. The Herod, who then ruled over Galilee,
had a little army, officered by Romans, of whom probably this centurion
was one; the commander, perhaps, of some small garrison of a hundred
men, the sixtieth part of a legion, which was stationed in Capernaum. If
we look at all the features of his character which come out in the
story, we get a very lovable picture of a much more tender heart than
might have been supposed to beat under the armour of a mercenary soldier
set to overawe a sullen people. 'He loveth our nation,' say the elders
of the Jews,--not certainly because of their amiability, but because of
the revelation which they possessed. Like a great many others in that
strange, restless era when our Lord came, this man seems to have become
tired of the hollowness of heathenism, and to have been groping for the
light. His military service brought him into contact with Judaism and
its monotheism, and his heart sprang to that as the thing he had been
seeking. 'He hath built us a synagogue,' thereby expressing his adhesion
to, or at least his lofty estimate of, the worship which was there
carried on. Just as, if an English officer in India were, in some little
village or other, to repair a ruined temple, he would win the hearts of
all the people, because they would think he was coming over to
Brahminism; so this soldier was felt to be nearer to the Jews than his
official position might have suggested.
Then, there was in him a beautiful human kindliness, which neither the
rough military life, nor that carelessness about a slave--which is one
of the worst fruits of slavery, had been able to sour or destroy. He was
tenderly anxious about his servant, who, according to Luke's expression,
was 'dear to him.' Then we get as the crown of all the beauty of his
character, the lowliness of spirit which the 'little brief authority' in
which he 'was dressed' had not puffed up. 'I am not worthy that Thou
shouldest come under my roof.' That lowliness is emphasised in Luke's
version of the story, which is more detailed and particularly accurate
than Matthew's summary account. By it we learn that he did not venture
to come himself, but sent His messengers to Jesus. If we take Matthew's
version, there is another lovely trait. He does not ask Christ to do
anything. He simply spreads the necessity before Him, in the confidence
that His pitying love lies so near the surface that it was sure to flow
forth, even at that light touch. He will not prescribe, he tells the
story, and leaves all to Him. Christ's answer, 'I will come and heal
him,' throbs with the consciousness of power, and is gentle with
tenderness, quick to interpret unspoken wishes, and not slow to answer,
unless it is for the wisher's good to be refused. When He was asked to
go, because the asker considered that His presence was necessary for His
power to have effect, He refused; when He is not asked to go, He
volunteers to do so. He is moved to apparently opposite actions by the
same motive, the good of the petitioner, whose weak faith He strengthens
by refusal, whose strong faith He confirms by acquiescence. And that is
the law of His conduct always, and you and I may trust it absolutely, He
may give, or retain ungiven, what we desire; in either case, He will be
acting in order that our trust in Him may be deepened.
That brings us to the remarkable and unique conception of our Lord's
manner of working and power to which this centurion gives utterance. 'I
also' (for the true text of Matthew has that 'also,' as the Revised
Version shows), 'I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under
me, and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; to another, Come, and he
cometh; to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. Speak thou with a word
only and my servant shall be healed.' A centurion was likely to
understand the power of a word of command. His whole training had taught
him the omnipotence of the uttered will of the authoritative general,
and although he was but an officer over a poor sixtieth part of a
legion, yet in some limited measure the same power lay in him, and his
word could secure unhesitating submission. One good thing about the
devilish trade of war is that it teaches the might of authority and the
virtue of absolute obedience. And even his profession, with all its
roughness and wickedness, had taught the centurion this precious lesson,
a jewel that he had found in a dunghill, the lesson that, given the
authoritative lip, a word is omnipotent. The commander speaks and the
legion goes, though it be to dash itself to death.
So he turns to Christ. Does he mean to parallel or to contrast his
subordination and Christ's position? The 'also,' which, as I remarked,
the Revised Version has rightly replaced in the text here, is in favour
of the former supposition, that he means to parallel Christ's position
with his own. And it is much more natural to suppose that a heathen man,
with little knowledge of Christ and of the depths of the divine
revelation in the past, should have attained to the conception of Jesus
as possessing a real but subordinate and derived authority, than to
suppose that he had grasped, at that early stage, the truth which
Christ's nearest friends took long years to understand, and which some
of them do not understand yet, viz. that Christ possessed as His own the
power which He wielded.
But if we take this point of view, and consider that the centurion's
conception falls beneath the lofty Christian ideal of Christ's power in
the universe, as it is set forth to us in the New Testament, even then
His words set forth a truth. For if we believe on the one hand in the
divinity of our Lord and Saviour, we also believe that 'the Son is
subject to the Father' and listen to His own words when He says, 'All
power is _given_ unto Me in heaven and in earth.' So that whatever
difference there may be between His relation to the power which He
wields and that of a prophet or miracle-worker, who derives his power
from Him, this is true, that Christ's power, too, is a power given to
Him. But the other side is one that I desire to emphasise in a few
words, viz. that the centurion's conception falls short of the truth,
inasmuch as, if we believe in Christ's witness to Himself, we must
believe that the power which acted through His word, dwelt in Him, in an
altogether different relation to His person from that in which an
analogous power may have dwelt in any other man. 'He spake and it was
done, He commanded and it stood fast.' Diseases fled at His word. 'By
the breath of His mouth He slew' these enemies of men. He rebuked the
storm, and the howling of the wind and the dashing of the waves were
less loud than His calm voice. He flung a word into the depths of the
grave, strangely speaking to, and yet more strangely heard by, the dull
cold ear of death, and Lazarus, dazzled, stumbles out into the light.
Who is this, that commandeth the waves, and the seas, and the
sicknesses, and they obey Him? My brother, I pray that you and I, in
these days of hesitation, when many a truth is clouded by doubt, may be
able to answer with the full assent and consent of understanding and
heart, 'this is God manifest in the flesh.'
And remember that this prerogative of dealing with physical nature, by
the bare forth-putting of His word, is not only a doctrine of
Christianity, but that more and more physical investigation is coming to
the unifying of all forces in one, and to the resolving of that one into
the force of a will, and that all that will, as the Christian scheme
teaches us, is lodged in Jesus Christ. His lip speaks, and it is power.
He moves in nature, in providence, in history, in grace, because in Him
abides now in the form of a man, that same everlasting Word which was
with the Father, and by whom all things were made. The centurion bows
before the Commander, and the Christ says, 'as Captain of the Lord's
host am I now come.' Such, then, is the faith of this soldier taught him
by the Legion.