AP

Luke 7:12-15   As he approached the town gate [at Nain], a dead person was being carried out – the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.  And a large crowd from the town was with her.  When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”  Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still.  He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”  The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

The Evangelist, John, calls Jesus’ miracles ‘signs’, because they give clear evidence of Jesus’ true identity.  We note that John records Jesus’ saying: “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; (and he had just said to Philip: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”!) or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.”

And the wonderful thing about the Gospel record as a whole (from all four Evangelists) is that we see the full range of Jesus’ miracles: his power over the forces of nature; his power over evil spirits; his power over disease and sickness; his power over sin and death; etc.  And his raising to life of the dead son of the widow of Nain has an important lesson for us: Jesus demonstrated God’s unmerited grace in taking the initiative; his action was not a response to the son’s expressing enough faith, or even to the mother’s asking.   It was all of Jesus from start to finish!

There are other healing miracles, even in this same chapter, where Jesus was able to say to woman who was a ‘sinner’: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:36-50).  But what I like about the raising of the son of the widow of Nain is that it was clearly all of grace, and that speaks to me of my own experience of conversion.  God’s Holy Spirit did his work in and on my heart to heal my sin, self-centredness and pride, so that it was by his grace alone that I was ‘born again’ and given new (eternal) life in Christ.

I’m very happy to sing with Augustus Toplady: “A debtor to mercy alone, of covenant mercy I sing; nor fear, with his righteousness on, my person and offering to bring.  The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do; my Saviour’s obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.  The work which his goodness began, the arm of his strength will complete; his promise is ‘Yes’ and ‘Amen’, and never was forfeited yet.”; and with City Alight: “Your grace that leads this sinner home from death to life forever, and sings the song of righteousness, by blood and not by merit.  Your grace that reaches far and wide to every tribe and nation, has called my heart to enter in the joy of your salvation.”

As the Apostle Paul reminds me: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5).  Like the widow’s son, (spiritually) dead people are not able to express ‘enough’ faith to be made alive – it must be done to them!

– Bruce Christian