Healing the Official’s son
John 4:46-54
This is the second of seven signs that John records to reveal that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In this sign Jesus reveals that he is the restorer of life and the key is faith in him. A faith that exhibits our belief that Jesus is who has said he is, the Son of God, and that he will then restore us to new life.
This Jewish official travels 20 miles, out of desperation for his son’s health, to seek Jesus and appeal for help. Jesus response seems harsh, but this father is not deterred and continue to plea for Jesus to come back with him to heal his son. Jesus replies to this official “go, your son lives”. This places the father in a dilemma, will he believe Jesus word and head back home or will he continue to plea for Jesus to return with him. The father responds by heading back home, trusting what Jesus has said without any tangible proof.
This is an illustration of what it means to surrender to Christ. And the key is “faith”. Not faith in miracles, not faith in anything other than the word of Christ. Rom 10:17 states “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
Saving faith in Christ is not a leap into a dark unknowing abyss or giving it your best shot, but it is believing that Jesus is God in the flesh and that we need to come to a decision about him and respond by faith. The whole of Hebrews 11 gives example after examples of individual who did just that.
We have discovered in these first four chapters that Jesus is God, that he is the sin bearer and the giver of life. We have been given testimony of these facts, by John the Baptist, Nicidemus, the Samaritan woman and the people of her village, attesting to these truths.
The key to appropriating this truth into your own personal life is “faith” as exhibited by this nobleman in our text. John is recording these events that “you might believe in Jesus and have eternal life (John 20:31).