I’d never considered that Jesus could be astonished about anything until I read about the Roman Centurion. The Bible says his faith caused Jesus to “marvel,” which means be “astonished.” The book of Matthew recounts this remarkable event:
Now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, pleading with Him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.”
And Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”
The centurion answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have NOT found such great faith, not even in Israel! And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you.”
And his servant was healed that same hour. Matthew 8:5-13
This Roman Centurion demonstrated the kind of faith that Jesus said He had not seen in the Jews—who claimed to be followers of God! Let that sink in for a minute. Doesn’t that make you curious about the faith of this man? It sure did for me, so I decided to study it! This Centurion understood a basic principle about authority and that is…
…the outside limitations of authority are directly related to the nature of the person who possesses it.
The Centurion clearly believed that Jesus was the incarnate Almighty God and thus, he had no problem believing that the authority of Jesus was supernaturally unlimited. He also knew Jesus was not limited by physical circumstances, time, or space. Thus, it was logical to him that Jesus did not need to be physically present to command the cells in the body of his servant to heal. He saw the supernatural power of Jesus for the tremendous force that it actually was instead of placing it in the box of his “common sense” or own personal physical limitations. He clearly was spiritually alive and had some idea of who God is.
My friend, the size of our faith is directly proportional to the size of our God; so the question we should ask is NOT how to grow our faith, but HOW to grow our perspective about God.
The Bible is plain—faith “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) We all experience faith on a daily basis. I just got on a plane and flew 800 miles with two pilots I’ve never seen before. I didn’t even check their credentials. I didn’t make sure there was qualified ATC personnel at both airports. I didn’t make sure airport security hadn’t been infiltrated by a terrorist. Nope, I just got on that plane and knew that because of what my eyes had seen, my ears had heard and my brain had deduced that I could place my faith in a system run by humans—even though they make mistakes.
But, when we are born again, our spiritual senses are made alive to the presence of God—who makes no mistakes—and Who is all powerful; Who loves us like no other; and Who knows everything.
The more we train ourselves to see God for who He is instead of who we make Him—the stronger our faith in Him becomes.
In Christ, we can develop faith that goes beyond the boundaries of human reason.
Just like the Centurion.
Faith was not something he learned in his military training. It is what he learned by seeking to know God for Who He is. It is a spiritual knowledge and it transcended his physical intellectual understanding. As a result of his faith, the Centurion went down in history as a person who “astonished” Jesus. He was like the heroes of the Old Testament in the Hall of Faith discussed in Hebrews Chapter 11. Wow!
