Where Is Your Hope?Sample

Cleansed, Whole, Healed

Jesus’ journey to his execution starts with ten lepers begging for healing. Rather than healing on the spot, Jesus tells them to show themselves to the priests. And as they go, they are healed.

Jesus gave instructions that required specific obedience. But how often do we improvise on God’s revelation, adding our subtle modifications and improvements? Unfortunately, exchanging obedience for our own ideas often leads us to idolatry because it makes our will ultimate and God’s will arbitrary. It makes God subservient to us.

Let’s be real, the process didn’t make a lot of sense: just go to the priests. He didn’t tell them what would happen—when, how, etc. Jesus often gives specific yet minimal instructions and asks people to trust Him. When He turned water into wine, the miracle wasn’t obvious until people chose to obey Him against all reason. These people didn’t create miracles. They simply trusted that Jesus was good enough and strong enough to be trustworthy.

And the truest miracles aren’t always what we expect.

In Luke 17:14-19, the concept of healing shows up four times using three Greek words. First, the men are cleansed, referring to the clean/unclean categories of Old Testament law. Leprosy legally required people to be cut off from society. So a cleansed person became legally acceptable and restored to their community.

One leper also recognizes he had been healed. The word here implies he sees that his sickness is cured—he is whole, has been freed.

Yet Jesus takes it one step further. All the lepers are made socially acceptable. One recognizes he has been cured of the physical and emotional bondage of his sickness. But then Jesus tells the leper his faith has made him well. From the Greek word for saved.

He’s not simply socially acceptable, physically cured, or even emotionally made whole. He is spiritually saved.

Our God cleanses—He restores broken relationships, fractured communities, and shattered societies.

Our God heals—He cures diseases and makes people whole. But if we stop here, we miss our deepest need: Our God saves.

Will you choose to obey Him or improvise on your own? Will you trust Him even when it doesn’t always make sense? And will you let Him heal you, not just at the surface level, but to the deepest places of your soul? He can, and He will. Because He is trustworthy.