Signs are everywhere. Especially road construction locations. Road Closed, Detour, Do Not Enter. We see these signs and we may get the thought that this is taking me away from how I want to go, or how this is slowing you do from getting to your destination, or even maybe you just do not travel at all to avoid the inconvenience of it all. But these signs are not to keep away from something but to keep you safe. Sometimes taking a different road you find something unexpected and better way of travel. These signs can be showing you a better way that you did not know about before and adding to your knowledge about the area.
After two days with the Samaritans, Jesus returns to Galilee, where the second sign of the Gospel takes place. In an account similar to the healing of the centurion’s servant in Matthew 8:5 – 13 and Luke 7:1 – 10, Jesus heals from afar the son of a royal official. The story forms a bookend with the account of changing water into wine, since both occur in Cana, both are identified as signs (the first and second), and both produce faith (“So he and all his household believed,” v. 53). What is interesting here is that Jesus first rebukes the man for seeking a sign (v. 48) but then announces his son is healed. The man believes Jesus (v. 50) even before seeing the sign and so demonstrates the kind of faith Jesus is seeking. In 20:29, Jesus will say to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” This week our sign is found in John 4:43 – 54.
43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.
46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
48 “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”
49 The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
50 “Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”
53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.
54 This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.
This healing miracle finds a close parallel in the Synoptic cure of the centurion’s servant (Matthew 8:4-13) and the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30). Both are cures effected at a distance. In John the miracle serves to display the new life promised by Jesus in the preceding discourses (John 3:16; 4:14, 36). In Cana, as in Samaria, Jesus hopes to inspire belief (John 4:50), and in this case, the official’s son is saved (John 4:51). The account in John underscores one feature of the miracle: Jesus’s word is powerful and effectual. The very hour of healing is the hour of Jesus’s utterance (John 4:52). This combination of miracle and belief (John 4:50, 53) is what distinguishes the term “sign.” The powerful works of Jesus are designed to evoke a response, to reveal who Jesus is. They are signs that lead elsewhere, to faith. This is the intent of the signs in Cana, Jerusalem, Samaria, and again in Cana. This is the aim that John has even for his reader of the Book of Signs. “Many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name” (John 2:23). John’s purpose in this Gospel was not just to bring people to saving faith, but to increase the faith they already had, to teach Jesus’ followers to believe in such a way that they could live life abundantly.
On this return to Galilee, Jesus also visited Cana (bypassing Nazareth), the location of the water-to-wine miracle recorded in chapter 2. There he encountered a request for help from a royal official who served in the court of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. This official had made the journey of twenty-five miles on the basis of Jesus’ reputation.
Notice the verbs as John draws a picture of a desperate man. He heard that Jesus had arrived, and he went to him and begged him. The word describes repeated and persistent pleas. Desperate faith drove him to Jesus and also drove him to his knees.
The Lord’s words shock us as they must have shocked the royal official. He did not address the desperate man but spoke in the plural (you) to the crowd, accusing them of wanting only more signs and wonders. But faith built only on the spectacular is not biblical faith. Perhaps Jesus drew a contrast here between the Samaritans in Sychar who believed because of his message and the Jews in Cana who were interested only in physical miracles.
Before we look at the faith factor, let us clarify a couple of common misunderstandings in this passage. The royal official of John 4 should not be confused with the centurion of Matthew 8 and Luke 7. The town was the same (Capernaum), but in the Synoptics we read about a dying slave rather than a dying son. Many scholars argue that all the Gospel writers drew from a common source and changed the flavor of the story. But John took great pains to establish his eyewitness account and also, writing much later, had opportunity to review all the Synoptic accounts while preparing his own.
Another pointed issue is the phrase signs and wonders which has taken on immense popularity in our day. John generally used the word signs (semia), but this is the only appearance of wonders (terrata). In the ancient world miracles and acts of power were linked to the presence of the miracle worker, but here the healer refused to be present. The story, therefore, is an important illustration of the purpose for which John wrote the Gospel. And again, Jesus is clearly portrayed in the Gospel as one who seeks to lead persons through stages of inadequate believing to satisfactory believing even if it means denying the person or request.
Jesus did not say you may go as the NIV translates. The word go is imperative, so the man has been commanded by the Savior of the world with a promise of life for his son. But if he left, according to his way of thinking, he would leave behind his one chance for help. Jesus demanded that his faith be desperate enough to trust his word, not just his visible works.
Wonders may produce awe, but words produce faith. Remember John’s theme: Believing is seeing. Our modern society assumes everything must be tested by science, explained with logic, or personally experienced. When it passes those tests, it can be identified as reality. But the writer of Hebrews said, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (11:1).
This story is so dramatically human because it is so like life. Any of us who has failed or flunked, been fired or flattened can understand desperate faith. In my view of the passage, Jesus did not criticize the royal official but rather the Galileans who gathered around because they had seen all that He had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast.
The man obeyed, persisted, and received the promise of a miracle. Most notable in this section of chapter 4 is the phrase that appears at the end of verse 50: The man took Jesus at his word. This kind of faith God constantly rewarded in the New Testament, and particularly in the Gospels. The total trust that Jesus will do what he has promised, a response to the Savior, culminates in faith-behavior, actually doing what Jesus says to do.
Apparently, it was too late in the day to begin the trip back to Capernaum, but the next day the royal official set out to cover the twenty-five miles. We can only imagine the anxiety of that seemingly endless trip, but the servants brought the good news before he arrived home. The father asked about the timing of the child’s recovery; and his faith was confirmed. Vague and impersonal faith became specific and personal faith. The word believed has no direct or indirect object in verse 53, so we assume the royal official and all his household exhibited intentional faith in Jesus’ person, his deity, and his messianic claims.
Not only did the royal official himself believe, but he shared the entire experience with his family. The concept of “household salvation” is certainly not uncommon in the New Testament, and we are reminded of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16. Let us keep a good balance here. While recognizing the strong influence of the major male member of a household in first-century Middle Eastern culture, we must also acknowledge that everyone in the house knew how sick the boy was as well as when and why he recovered. In fact, the faith of the members of the household, not having spoken with Jesus as their master did, represents the kind of faith John describes throughout this Gospel.
John did not record any other witnessing done by this man, but the story obviously got back to him so it could be included in the Gospel. A very private miraculous sign moved a petty politician from desperate faith to deliberate faith. Jesus came to save us from sin. But he does not want us to trust him just because we are desperate and have no other choices. He wants us to believe in his word and trust him with every part of our lives.