Justin Appel

And he said to him, 'Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.'
- Luke 17:19

Dear Friends,

Today’s gospel reading from Luke recounts Christ’s healing of the ten lepers. I find it fascinating that Jesus often reassured those whom he healed with the words ‘Go, your faith has made you well.’ Something about these miracles suggests that they were not merely a show of Jesus’ divine power, but an indication of something deeper in the nature of what it means to be human.

The Russian theologian and economist Sergii Bulgakov, writing in the first half of the 20th century, suggested that Christ’s miracles were essentially human tasks – works of love and mercy, not simply a chance for Jesus to flex his divine muscles – tasks ‘reinforced and illuminated by God’s power.’

In other words, Jesus was not simply a divine being who performed otherworldly feats contrary to the laws of nature. In fact, Bulgakov goes so far as to assert that the content of Jesus’ miracles could have all been performed by ‘divinely inspired saintly’ individuals, ‘strengthened by God’s grace.’

Why make such a radical statement? Well, for Bulgakov, Christ’s miracles suggest something essential about human nature: that we are created in God’s image, and that as such, we have an enormous potential when we act in accordance with God’s grace. That means that these miracles, rather than wild aberrations from natural laws, are themselves glimmers of what a restored human being, acting in the grace and through the power of God, might accomplish.

Sound ridiculous? Perhaps we think so only because we have become so rationalistic that we think of the world purely in terms of particles and forces, and we have forgotten that the world was created by the Word of God, and that the Son upholds everything ‘by the word of his power’ (Hebrews 3:1).

What if it were such a natural part of human identity and the result of one’s growth in holiness, that one could heal disease by prayer and fasting, by faith, by holiness – that is, by being a human created in God’s image?

Yours in Christ,
Justin