Christ the King, Christ the Healer

Luke 4:31 – 44

 

4^th century BC philosopher, Aristotle, taught, in his work Poetics, that art—especially drama and poetry—is a form of mimesis (mee-meh-siss; Greek for “imitation” or “representation”). By this he meant that art, especially through the written word, reflects human actions, character, emotions, and experiences drawn from real life. Essentially, “Art imitates life.”

 

I’ve mentioned it up here before, my favorite author is J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien himself was born into an Anglican family, but at the age of 8 he converted to Roman Catholicism. Because art naturally imitates life, his Christian theology quietly informed his writing. This especially comes through in the character of the last remaining heir to the throne of men.

 

There’s a part in the story where the heir to the throne goes into the houses of healing to tend to three of the story’s main characters who were severely wounded by dark forces in battle. One of the attendants seeing him work utters these words, “For it is said in old lore, ‘The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.’ And so shall the rightful king be known.”

 

The act of healing serves as a sign of true kingship, revealing the heir not merely as a warrior or claimant to the throne, but as the legitimate king whose authority restores life and wholeness. Tolkien in his literary masterpiece presents kingship not primarily as dominion or power, but as service and restoration. Instead of having the king prove himself by conquest, he has him prove himself by service, healing, and restoration.

 

Sound familiar? It sounds familiar because it is profoundly biblical, and it describes so well Jesus’ first coming in light of his future second coming. Let’s look at the first instance of His works in the Gospel of Luke, 4:31 – 44.

 

In Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, He declared for Himself that He is the Christ. By quoting the prophet Isaiah, Jesus declared that His mission is to proclaim good news, the gospel, to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoner’s held captive by sin and shame, proclaim the recovery of sight for the blind, and proclaim the year of Jubilee, when all debts are forgiven.

Jesus declared that the messianic prophecy in Isaiah was fulfilled that day, and forevermore, by Him, the one full of the Spirit of the Lord because of His perfect union with the Holy Trinity. After the people got angry with Him because He revealed their inner thoughts about Him, Joseph’s son, he miraculously walked through the murderous crowd untouched and unharmed.

 

Now, the Bible says He went down from Nazareth to Capernaum, where our passage today takes place. Whenever you see in Scripture that people went up or down, it is usually an accurate description of an elevation change.

 

Luke and his attention to detail specifies that Christ went down to Capernaum because He literally descended about 1,800 feet in elevation. Nazareth sits at about 1,200 feet above sea level, and Capernaum on the shore of the Sea of Galilee sits at about 680 feet below sea level.

 

In Capernaum, Jesus again teaches on the Sabbath, and again, the people were astonished at His teaching. Their astonishment wasn’t just about the subject matter, but as the Bible points out, they were astonished because His words had authority.

 

To you and me, we think to ourselves, well of course His words have authority, he’s the Chosen One, the Christ, the Savior, He’s God incarnate. But to the people in Galilee, He was a Rabbi, a Good Teacher. Look at the parallel to our passage in the Gospel of Mark, where he writes, “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.”

 

Jesus taught with authority never before seen on earth, and the people recognized that. Unlike the scribes who cited tradition, Jesus speaks as the source of truth. He wasn’t merely a good teacher, but as the Logos, the Word Himself, His word carried with it the authority of God.

 

Luke showed us that Jesus, and His authority, was rejected in Nazareth, and here in Capernaum his authority is affirmed. While they recognized that He had authority, they didn’t recognize the truth about His authority, namely where it comes from and what it means. But someone in the synagogue on that Sabbath did recognize, not only Jesus’ authority, but His identity also.

 

Christ was recognized by the most unlikely creature, a demon who was possessing a man in there in the synagogue. While Jesus is proclaiming the good news to those in the synagogue on the Sabbath, while His authoritative word is being heard by all in ear shot, this demon responds to Jesus’ authoritative word.

 

Jesus’ teaching is interrupted by this demon when he cries out with a loud voice, “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are— the Holy One of God.” Yes, demons know who Jesus Christ is, they know that God is three one, and as James writes, they shudder.

 

Satan is powerful, he’s cunning, and he’s not constrained to moving about the earth the way the rest of us do. We saw that when He tempted Jesus in the wilderness and took Him to a high mountain and the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem seemingly at the snap of a finger. But Satan is not God.

 

God is all powerful, He’s omnipotent. God is all knowing, He’s omniscient. And God is present everywhere, He’s omnipresent. Those are some of the divine attributes that Christ set aside when He took on flesh.

 

But Satan never had those attributes, and as such he is not all powerful, but he is dangerously powerful. He is not all knowing, but he is smart and knows human nature. And he cannot be everywhere at the same time (Job 1:6-7; 1 Pet. 5:8), so, he operates through his army of demons.

 

Demon possession is a rare phenomenon, and that’s why we have a hard time imagining it. Even in Scripture, outside of the Gospel’s it is only mentioned twice in the OT and twice in the rest of the NT. Demon possession occurred almost exclusively during Jesus’ time on earth, and was a sign of His coming to destroy the power of darkness.

 

But it’s real because it’s in the Bible and God’s Word is truth. While I’ve never encountered a clearly demon possessed person in my life, the demonic still exists today and so this passage is quite relevant.

 

The W.H.O. estimates that approximately 70 million-plus children worldwide are killed each year before they ever take a breath because of abortion. No disease or weapon takes that many lives. Tell me that the abortion industry, and yes, it’s an industry, is not the work of demons.

How about human trafficking? Multiple estimates suggest that between 1.2 and 1.7 million children are victims of human trafficking, and they represent about a quarter to a third of all trafficking victims globally. The demonic exists in plain sight, as long as we’re willing to call it out.

 

C.S. Lewis captures so well in his classic, The Screwtape Letters, one way that demons operate. They prey upon our inherent sinful nature, tempting us with our weaknesses, our chink in the armor because they know it. But our sin is our own, and mankind suffers the consequences of their own sin.

 

It’s why we so desperately need a Savior who has authority over demons, over the spiritual realm as well as the earthly realm. It’s why we need Jesus Christ, who has authority over demons as we see in our passage today.

 

Now, the demon possessed man in our Scripture today is possessed, not acting of his own accord and out of his own sin, notice Jesus doesn’t say that his sins are forgiven. There is a difference between the two, with falling to our own temptations being much more common than demon possession.

 

So, when the demon speaks out against Christ in the synagogue (why on earth would he even open his mouth, he knew what was coming), he identifies Jesus as “the Holy One of God.” The Spiritual realm already acknowledged the King. He knew Jesus was the Christ and he knew the Christ could destroy him. And Jesus immediately displays His authority and power over Satan’s minions by rebuking the demon.

 

He rebukes him and commands him to be silent, to shut his mouth, and to come out of the poor man he was possessing. And the demon had no other choice. He threw the man down, and when he did, he came out him without having done any harm to the man. That man had been held captive by this demon, and Jesus, by His word, freed him from his oppression.

 

And everyone there was amazed, again by witnessing Jesus’ authority and power. They asked, “What is this word?” He is the Word of God, He has the authority and power of God, and He commands the unclean spirits because He is the Holy One of God, the rightful heir to David’s throne, Christ the King.

From there, he leaves the synagogue and goes to Simon Peter’s house, the apostle Peter. And lying sick in bed is His mother-in-law, she has a high fever. Dr. Luke emphasizes here by his attention to detail that she was deathly ill, and the people in Simon Peter’s house appealed to Jesus on her behalf. Please heal her they say.

 

And so Jesus does a seemingly odd thing. He rebukes the fever. The same Greek verb used here against the fever is used elsewhere in Luke against demons, and even storms later.

 

Now, to rebuke a demon is one thing. They seem to possess intelligence and the capacity to listen, to think, and to decide. But a fever, possess none of those abilities. But Jesus rebukes the fever, like the demon, and the fever leaves her like the demon did the man. Christ rebukes demons, illnesses, and storms because He has authority and power over all of it, over everything.

 

And once the fever left Peter’s mother-in-law she immediately got up and began to serve them. God’s saving grace must be followed by gratitude and service. What else are you saved for if not for if not for a restoration to God’s purpose for your life?

 

I believed in Jesus Christ, received Him and was born again as a child of God. I professed that belief and got baptized, but my life did not reflect real gratitude and service until after I inexplicably recovered and survived my fight with COVID pneumonia and subsequent complications.

 

God saved me, both spiritually and physically, because He had a purpose for me, and that purpose is to serve Him and serve others for Him. Peter’s mother-in-law did just that, she rose and served them immediately.

 

The Greek term here is diekonei, and it is used throughout the NT for service for Christ. Don’t wait until you are deathly ill, or experiencing something just as awful, to commit to serving God. Seve Him now, in whatever capacity you can.

 

Now, after this, it was getting late and the sun was going down. The rest of the town who had any sick among them brought them to Jesus, and he laid His hands on every one of them and healed them. Jesus didn’t recoil at the sight of the sick, the King placed His hands on them and healed them.

We already got to see how Jesus’ word had authority and power to drive out demons and fevers; He could have just spoken to the sick people (which He does many times in the Gospel’s) and healed them. But He chose instead to show compassion and genuine care by touching the sick.

 

Christ’s healing is personal. His love for the sick, for the poor, for the oppressed, for the sinner, for the saint, for me, and for you is all personal. His atoning sacrifice on the cross for the sin of all who believe in Him is personal. His salvation for everyone who receives Him is personal, everything Christ has done is personal.

 

Then we see Christ again drive demons out of many more people too. Like the previous demon, they all knew who He was, the Son of God. And again He rebukes the demons as they came out of people, and He commands them, He doesn’t allow them to speak because they knew that He was the Christ.

 

Luke uses the titles, the Holy One of God, the Christ, the Son of God interchangeably. They all mean the same thing, Jesus is the Messiah, the heir to David’s throne, Christ is King. Despite being demons, their witness to Jesus, their testimony of who Jesus is, must be taken as valid.

 

Because if it wasn’t credible, then Jesus would have no reason to silence them. Instead, their testimony is true, and Jesus silences them because just like it wasn’t His time to die yet on that hill in Nazareth, it was not yet the God ordained time for Christ’s full revelation to the world.

 

Even His disciples didn’t fully understand Christ’s revelation until after His death, resurrection, and ascension and when the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost.

 

Finally, when it was day, Jesus left the home of Peter and went into a desolate place. Jesus often sought solitude to find quietness and rest, and to pray after having worked miracles. But, as typically is the case after the people witness Jesus’ miracles, they went and sought Him out.

 

And when they came to Him, they didn’t want Him to leave. They would have kept Him for themselves. They wanted more miracles without the mission; they wanted a local healer instead of global Savior. It’s our human tendency to claim Jesus for our own needs but resist His larger reign, both in our own lives and the world.

But Jesus Christ cannot be held back. He said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” There was a divine imperative, a divine purpose controlling Jesus’ ministry. Jesus could do nothing else except the will of the Father, because Him and the Father are one.

 

God’s kingdom was proclaimed by Jesus as a present reality and a future hope. The kingdom of God was at hand, and Christ the King was ushering it in. Often times miracles are thought of as means of proving that God exists. Rather, Jesus’ miracles, His driving out demons and healing the sick, were signs pointing to the source of His authority and power.

 

In fact, the NT in its original Greek does not contain the word miracle. What we call a miracle, the Bible calls a sign, a mighty work or power, and a wonder. In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ miracles are repeatedly called “signs.”

 

They are signs because their purpose is not to prove the existence of God, but rather to prove that the one doing these signs has authority and power from God. The healing that Jesus did authenticated His message, but it does not replace His message. His miracles are signs, but the gospel, preaching the good news is the mission, and salvation is the outcome.

 

So Jesus went on preaching, and thank God that He did. The kingdom of God at this point in Jesus’ ministry was expanding outward, beyond the borders of Judea to the rest of the world. The King will not be contained.

 

The Jewish people expected the Messiah to come as a conquering king freeing them from political oppression. Instead, He came in peace and compassion, healing people and forgiving their sins. So they missed His first coming. But when Christ comes again, it will be as a conquering King, seated on His throne and consummating the kingdom of God.

 

Jesus reveals Himself as the true King not first by taking a throne, but taking the broken by the hand—driving out darkness, healing the sick, and restoring lives through the authority of His word and His compassionate touch. Jesus’ healings are not random acts of kindness – they are royal signs that God’s saving reign has arrived in Christ. The true King is known by the healing His hands bring.

Trust the authority of Jesus today and submit every area of your life to the true King whose power drives out darkness, restores the broken, and has defeated sin and death granting you salvation and new life.

 

In Capernaum, Jesus commands demons and lifts the sick with a touch – and we are meant to ask, what kind of King is this? A king whose authority does not crush the broken but restores them.

 

Luke’s Gospel will carry us forward to a darker day, when those same healing hands will be pierced, when the King who rebuked demons and fevers will Himself be struck down, when the One who forgives sin will bear sin’s full weight upon His own body.

 

The healings of Luke 4, and the rest of the Gospel and Gospel’s for that matter, are not the end of the story – they are signs pointing to the greater healing to come, the true purpose of Christ’s mission on earth. The truth of the gospel, the good news, is the healing of our souls, the forgiveness of our sins, and the restoration of our relationship with God.

 

Because at the cross, Jesus does what no miracle in Capernaum, or anywhere for that matter, could fully accomplish:

 

He doesn’t merely heal sickness – He forgives sin.

He doesn’t only silence demons – He defeats the powers of darkness.

He doesn’t simply restore bodies – He reconciles souls to God.

 

The prophet Isaiah in chapter 53 was right, “By His wounds we are healed.” The King is revealed not only by the hands that heal, but by the hands that were wounded for us.

 

And when He rose from the grave, those scarred hands became the eternal proof that the kingdom has truly come – a kingdom where one day there will be no more sickness, no more demons, and no more death. Because the hands of the true King are forever the hands of a healer – first in mercy, then in sacrifice, and finally in everlasting restoration.

 

So the question that Luke leaves us with is not merely: Can Jesus heal? But rather: Will you trust and submit to the King who heals you by giving His life for you?

 

You can answer the question of trusting in Christ by bringing your brokenness honestly to Jesus instead of trying to manage it on your own, because you can’t manage it alone. Whether it’s sin, suffering, exhaustion, or doubt, come to Jesus openly in prayer and in faith, trusting that the King who healed in Capernaum still restores today.

 

You can answer the question of submission to the King by submitting daily to Christ’s authority, not just in belief but in obedience. I’ve heard it said that if you truly believe in something you’ll do it, your actions will reflect your belief. So, ask yourself each day: Where am I resisting Jesus’ word – in habits, relationships, fears, or priorities? The King’s authority brings freedom, but only where it is welcomed and followed.

 

And lastly, you are to live a healed life that serves others in the power of the kingdom. Like Peter’s mother-in-law, let Christ’s grace move you from restoration to joyful service – using your time, gifts, and compassion to advance His kingdom in everyday life.

 

Let’s pray.