Bill Mounce

For an Informed Love of God

Toggle navigation

You are here

Home » Blogs » Monday with Mounce
Monday, July 22, 2024

Saved or Made Well? (Luke 17:19)

In the story of the healing of the ten lepers, there is an interesting interchange of verbs. In English, we tend to use synonyms for stylistic reasons; we don’t like to repeat the same word. Greek, however, isn’t like that. Repetition was not seen poor style. So when there is variation, perhaps it signals something.

Jesus tells the lepers to go to the priests. “And as they went they were made clean (καθαρίζω)” (v 14). καθαρίζω is the normal verb for cleansing, both physical healing as well as ritual cleansing.

When one of them “saw that he had been healed (ἰάομαι),” he returned to Jesus. This is an interesting change. ἰάομαι can be synonymous with καθαρίζω, “to restore someone to health after a physical malady, heal, cure” (BDAG). But it can also mean “to deliver from a variety of ills or conditions that lie beyond physical maladies, restore, heal” such as restoring someone from the consequences of sin. The word edges away from a purely physical healing.

Jesus responds, “‘Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ [He was a Samaritan] Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well (σῴζω)’” (vv 18-19), so the NIV and most translations. But as we all know, while σῴζω can refer to being saved from danger, its most common use is for spiritual salvation, hence the translation “Your faith has saved you” (CSB). Is there something in this switching among three verbs?

I think the biggest clue is that the tenth leper had already been healed along with the other nine. He was not healed after he returned to Jesus, but before. So what happened after his personal encounter with Jesus?

And why mention his faith? The assumption was that all ten believed Jesus could heal them; why else come? But there was something special about the tenth leper’s faith that resulted in his being “saved.”

The leper was saved in that he saw something the other nine did not. He was not only grateful but he realized that something else had happened, perhaps he recognized the in breaking of the Messiah’s kingdom. “The Samaritan was not only cleansed, but on account of faith gained something more, namely, insight into Jesus’ role in the inbreaking kingdom” (Green).

Was this the same as the faith expressed in Rom 10:9? “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Probably not. But was it a faith that marked his movement toward fully believing in Jesus? I would think so.