Matthew 8:5

‘And when he was entered into Capernaum, there came to him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, “Lord, my servant lies in the house sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.” '

Jesus now entered Capernaum, where He had ministered from the start (Luke 4:23), a town at the top western end of the Sea of Galilee, on one of the major trade routes through Palestine, and a port for shipping coming across the Sea of Galilee. And there he was approached by an officer, probably of the local auxiliaries, a centurion. This centurion had not, however, come to command, but to plead. He ‘beseeched' Jesus. He acknowledged in Him a higher authority.

In Luke 7:1 we are informed that in fact his approach was through a number of intermediaries. But it is typical of Matthew to personalise the approach of intermediaries in terms of the sender (compare Matthew 9:18). It is in fact quite common to speak in such terms. We may say a general did this or that, while all the time we know that it was done by his troops, and he may not even have been involved. We say Wellington defeated Napoleon. But what we mean is that he did it, not personally, but by issuing his orders. (Compare how Nebuchadnezzar had said in his records, ‘Forty six cities of Judah I besieged and took,' even though he probably approached few, if any, of them). The same principle applies here. But Matthew wants to bring out the distinctiveness and personal nature of the centurion's faith and therefore emphasises the one who was actually responsible for the orders, rather than the messengers who carried them out and articulated them to Jesus.

The centurion addressed Him as ‘Lord'. There is in this at least the same deference as he would have shown to a superior officer, only for a different reason, and possibly even a sense of his awe in speaking to a prophet of God. He had recognised that this Man had the might of God behind Him. Being a Gentile it might even indicate a recognition of at least semi-divinity, as what he goes on to say suggests. (When this term is used we always have to consider its implications, which can vary from ‘Sir', through a number of alternatives, to LORD as translating the name of YHWH). But Matthew, in this subsection regularly uses ‘Lord' (kurios) on the lips of different people in the face of great wonders. Consider the confident hope of the leper which results in his cleansing, the less confident hope of the disciples which results in the stilling of the tempest, and the hope of the two blind men who believe that He can heal them. There was more in these approaches than just a polite ‘sir'. In each case they attributed to Him a certain level of supernatural power, and their address must be read accordingly. It was not a full blown declaration of His divinity, but it did recognise that He was above and beyond ordinary men. They recognised a certain uniqueness about Him that set Him above ordinary men, even important men. Matthew therefore probably intends us also to see in it the unconscious submission of this Gentile to Jesus as the LORD of glory, even though recognising that the Gentile might not yet have realised that full significance (compare another such centurion in Matthew 27:54, a pagan, who speaks of Him as ‘the Son of God'). In Luke also Jesus is called ‘Lord' by the centurion's representatives.

The centurion (through his representatives) lays out the position without more ado (in Luke more detail are given. As usual Matthew leaves out extraneous material so as to stress the main points). “Lord, my servant (pais) lies in the house sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.” This sums up the whole position neatly. Note the threefold ‘lies in the house', ‘sick of the palsy', ‘grievously tormented'. The idea is to emphasise how ill the servant is. He cannot rise to his feet, he has this dreadful disease, and he is suffering greatly. (We do not know the identity of the disease). The compassion of the centurion comes out in this description. His concern is not in the fact that the slave is now useless to him. He is genuinely concerned about the details of his state.

The word ‘pais' can mean servant or son. In its use in the New Testament it is sometimes ambiguous, but it regularly means ‘servant' (compare Matthew 14:2; Luke 1:54; Luke 1:69; Luke 12:45; Luke 15:26 and regularly in LXX. Note especially its use in Acts 3:13; Acts 3:26; Acts 4:30). Luke uses doulos (slave) in Luke 7:2 which makes it unambiguous. Thus there are no grounds for suggesting otherwise. Nor are there any real grounds for connecting this healing with that of the nobleman's son (John 4:46) simply because in both Jesus healed at a distance. Other than that fact the details are all very different, and the ability of Jesus to exercise such authority at a distance also comes out both in His giving of that authority to His Apostles when He sends them out (Matthew 10:1), and in the case of the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:28). It was thus a regular feature of His ministry, and not unique to here. What was unique to here was the centurion's recognition of the significance of it.

Note the great emphasis on the suffering of the servant. In the chiasmus this parallels the sufferings of the damned (Matthew 8:12). It is a reminder that the One Who can deliver from the one, can also inflict the other. The point is being made that Jesus has come to heal men, but if they will not be healed then there is no hope for them.