'And He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the
Sabbath. 11. And, behold, there was a woman which had
a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed
together, and could in no wise lift up herself.
12. And when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him, and
said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine
infirmity. 13. And He laid His hands on her: and
immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
14. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with
indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the
Sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six
days in which men ought to work: in them therefore
come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.
15. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou
hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath
loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him
away to watering! 16. And ought not this woman, being
a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo,
these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the
Sabbath day? 17. And when He had said these things, all
His adversaries were ashamed: and all the people
rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by
Him.'--LUKE xiii. 10-17.
This miracle was wrought, unasked, on a woman, in a synagogue, and
by all these characteristics was specially interesting to Luke. He
alone records it. The narrative falls into two parts--the miracle,
and the covert attack of the ruler of the synagogue, with our Lord's
defence.
What better place than the synagogue could there be for a miracle of
mercy? The service of man is best built on the service of God, and
the service of God is as truly accomplished in deeds of human
kindness done for His sake as in oral worship. The religious basis
of beneficence and the beneficent manifestation of religion are
commonplaces of Christian practice and thought from the beginning,
and are both set forth in our Lord's life. He did not substitute
doing good to men for worshipping God, as a once much-belauded
but now all-but-forgotten anti-Christian writer has done; but He
showed us both in their true relations. We have Christ's authority
for regarding the woman's infirmity as the result of demoniacal
possession, but the case presents some singular features. There
seems to have been no other consequence than her incapacity to stand
straight. Apparently the evil power had not touched her moral
nature, for she had somehow managed to drag herself to the synagogue
to pray; she 'glorified God' for her cure, and Christ called her 'a
daughter of Abraham,' which surely means more than simply that she
was a Jewess. It would seem to have been a case of physical
infirmity only, and perhaps rather of evil inflicted eighteen years
before than of continuous demoniacal possession.
But be that as it may, there is surely no getting over our Lord's
express testimony here, that purely physical ills, not distinguishable
from natural infirmity, were then, in some instances, the work of a
malignant, personal power. Jesus knew the duration of the woman's
'bond' and the cause of it, by the same supernatural knowledge. That
sad, bowed figure, with eyes fixed on the ground, and unable to look
into His face, which yet had crawled to the synagogue, may teach us
lessons of patience and of devout submission. She might have found
good excuses for staying at home, but she, no doubt, found solace in
worship; and she would not have so swiftly 'glorified God' for her
cure, if she had not often sought Him in her infirmity. They who wait
on Him often find more than they expect in His house.
Note the flow of Christ's unasked sympathy and help. We have already
seen several instances of the same thing in this Gospel. The sight
of misery ever set the chords of that gentle, unselfish heart
vibrating, as surely as the wind draws music from the Aeolian harp
strings. So it should be with us, and so would it be, if we had in
us 'the law of the Spirit of life in Christ' making us 'free from
the law of' self. But His spontaneous sympathy is not merely the
perfection of manhood; it is the revelation of God. Unasked, the
divine love pours itself on men, and gives all that it can give to
those who do not seek, that they may be drawn to seek the better
gifts which cannot be given unasked. God 'tarrieth not for man, nor
waiteth for the sons of men,' in giving His greatest gift. No
prayers besought Heaven for a Saviour. God's love is its own motive,
and wells up by its inherent diffusiveness. Before we call, He
answers.
Note the manner of the cure. It is twofold--a word and a touch. The
former is remarkable, as not being, like most of the cures of
demoniacs, a command to the evil spirit to go forth, but an
assurance to the sufferer, fitted to inspire her with hope, and to
encourage her to throw off the alien tyranny. The touch was the
symbol to her of communicated power--not that Jesus needed a vehicle
for His delivering strength, but that the poor victim, crushed in
spirit, needed the outward sign to help her in realising the new
energy that ran in her veins, and strengthened her muscles.
Unquestionably the cure was miraculous, and its cause was Christ's
will.
But apparently the manner of cure gave more place to the faith of
the sufferer, and to the effort which her faith in Christ's word and
touch heartened her to put forth, than we find in other miracles.
She 'could in no wise lift herself up,' not because of any
malformation or deficiency in physical power, but because that
malign influence laid a heavy hand on her will and body, and crushed
her down. Only supernatural power could deliver from supernatural
evil, but that power wrought through as well us OB her; and when she
believed that she was loosed from her infirmity, and had received
strength from Jesus, she was loosed.
This makes the miracle no less, but it makes it a mirror in which
the manner of our deliverance from a worse dominion of Satan is
shadowed. Christ is come to loose us all from the yoke of bondage,
which bows our faces to the ground, and makes us unfit to look up.
He only can loose us, and His way of doing it is to assure us that
we are free, and to give us power to fling off the oppression in the
strength of faith in Him.
Note the immediate cure and its immediate result. The 'back bowed
down always' for eighteen weary years is not too stiff to be made
straight at once. The Christ-given power obliterates all traces of
the past evil. Where He is the physician, there is no period of
gradual convalescence, but 'the thing is done suddenly'; and, though
in the spiritual realm, there still hang about pardoned men remains
of forgiven sin, they are 'sanctified' in their inward selves, and
have but to see to it that they work out in character and conduct
that 'righteousness and holiness of truth' which they have received
in the new nature given them through faith.
How rapturous was the gratitude from the woman's lips, which broke
in upon the formal, proper, and heartless worship of the synagogue!
The immediate hallowing of her joy into praise surely augurs a
previously devout heart. Thanksgiving generally comes thus swiftly
after mercies, when prayer has habitually preceded them. The
sweetest sweetness of all our blessings is only enjoyed when we
glorify God for them. Incense must be kindled, to be fragrant, and
our joys must be fired by devotion, to give their rarest perfume.
The cavils of the ruler and Christ's defence are the second part of
this incident. Note the blindness and cold-heartedness born of
religious formalism. This synagogue official has no eye for the
beauty of Christ's pity, no heart to rejoice in the woman's
deliverance, no ear for the music of her praise. All that he sees is
a violation of ecclesiastical order. That is the sin of sins in his
eyes. He admits the reality of Christ's healing power, but that does
not lead him to recognition of His mission. What a strange state of
mind it was that acknowledged the miracle, and then took offence at
its being done on the Sabbath!
Note, too, his disingenuous cowardice in attacking the people when
he meant Christ. He blunders, too, in his scolding; for nobody had
come to be healed. They had come to worship; and even if they had
come for healing, the coming was no breach of Sabbath regulations,
whatever the healing might be. There are plenty of people like this
stickler for propriety and form, and if you want to find men blind
as bats to the manifest tokens of a divine hand, and hard as
millstones towards misery, and utterly incapable of glowing with
enthusiasm or of recognising it, you will find them among
ecclesiastical martinets, who are all for having 'things done
decently and in order,' and would rather that a hundred poor
sufferers should continue bowed down than that one of their
regulations should be broken in lifting them up. The more men are
filled with the spirit of worship, the less importance will they
attach to the pedantic adherence to its forms, which is the most
part of some people's religion.
Mark the severity, which is loving severity, of Christ's answer. He
speaks to all who shared the ruler's thoughts, of whom there were
several present (v. 17, 'adversaries'). Piercing words which
disclose hidden and probably unconscious sins, are quite in place on
the lips into which grace was poured. Well for those who let Him
tell them their faults now, and do not wait for the light of
judgment to show themselves to themselves for the first time.
Wherein lay these men's hypocrisy? They were pretending zeal for the
Sabbath, while they were really moved by anger at the miracle, which
would have been equally unwelcome on any day of the week. They were
pretending that their zeal for the Sabbath was the result of their
zeal for God, while it was only zeal for their Rabbinical niceties,
and had no religious element in it at all. They wished to make the
Sabbath law tight enough to restrain Jesus from miracles, while they
made it loose enough to allow them to look after their own
interests.
Men may be unconscious hypocrites, and these are the most hopeless.
We are all in danger of fancying that we are displaying our zeal for
the Lord, when we are only contending for our own additions to, or
interpretations of, His will. There is no religion necessarily
implied in enforcing forms of belief or conduct.
Our Lord's defence is, first of all, a conclusive _argumentum ad
hominem_, which shuts the mouths of the objectors; but it is much
more. The Talmud has minute rules for leading out animals on the
Sabbath: An ass may go out with his pack saddle if it was tied on
before the Sabbath, but not with a bell or a yoke; a camel may go
out with a halter, but not with a rag tied to his tail; a string of
camels may be led if the driver takes all the halters in his hand,
and does not twist them, but they must not be tied to one another--and
so on for pages. If, then, these sticklers for rigid observance of the
Sabbath admitted that a beast's thirst was reason enough for work to
relieve it, it did not lie in their mouths to find fault with the
relief of a far greater human need.
But the words hold a wider truth, applicable to our conduct. The
relief of human sorrow is always in season. It is a sacred duty
which hallows any hour. 'Is not this the fast [and the feast too]
that I have chosen ... to let the oppressed go free, and that ye
break every yoke?' The spirit of the words is to put the exercise of
beneficence high above the formalities of worship.
Note, too, the implied assertion of the dignity of humanity, the
pitying tone of the 'lo, these eighteen years,' the sympathy of the
Lord with the poor woman, and the implication of the terrible
tragedy of Satan's bondage. If we have His Spirit in us, and look at
the solemn facts of life as He did, all these pathetic
considerations will be present to our minds as we behold the misery
of men, and, moved by the thoughts of their lofty place in God's
scheme of things, of their long and dreary bondage, of the evil
power that holds them fast, and of what they may become, even sons
and daughters of the Highest, we shall be fired with the same
longing to help which filled Christ's heart, and shall count that
hour consecrated, and not profaned, in which we are able to bring
liberty to the captives, and an upward gaze of hope to them that
have been bowed down.