One Out of Ten

Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then He said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Luke 17:17-19 (NRSVUE)

In a story that is only present in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus encounters and heals ten men who had a skin disease. They ask for Jesus to have mercy and, in His typical fashion, the Son of God goes about healing them in a strange way. Jesus tells them to go to the priests, and as the ten walk away they were healed and made clean. While all ten were made clean, as seen in Jesus’ words above, only one, upon the realization that he had been cleansed, turned back to Jesus to bow down and thank Him.

How often it is that we become simply enamored with ourselves, our problems, and our feelings. We lose the forest for the trees, and I’ll admit that on more than one occasion I have lost the tree for the leaves. It’s bad enough when this selfish hyper-focus interferes with our earthly relationships, and how much worse it is when it interferes with our relationship with God.

God can do some incredible things in our lives. For the men in this story, they had been living, seemingly, forever with horrible, isolating, debilitating disease. Take a spin through Leviticus some time to brush up on the laws pertaining to the treatment of skin diseases among the people of Israel. If you do, I don’t think you’ll question how ecstatic all these men were to be healed.

The trap of being healed, saved, or renewed is that we focus on the outcome and not on the source. We are not healed just so we feel better, but to praise God for our healing. We are not saved just for our benefit, but to worship God and spread the Gospel. We are not renewed just so that we get to live a shiny new life doing whatever we want, but to walk in the new life that God has called us to.

I can’t pass judgement on the nine healed men who didn’t turn back and praise God. Their lives were radically changed, and they lost sight of the source of that change. But we should look to the example of the one man who remembered Christ in the midst of his newfound lease on life – because Christ was the source and reason for his new life.

Never forget why we are healed. Never forget to praise God.

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