Matthew 9:27-29

Christ's statement here is both an inspiration and a challenge to faith. It says we will receive according to faith. I think in many cases we misunderstand what He said. He does not mean that we will receive in proportion to our faith; but rather we will receive because we believe.

Why did He ask whether they believed? It is interesting to note that when this took place was immediately after restoring a young girl to life and there were a lot of people there milling around, undoubtedly abuzz at what they had become aware of that occurred. In verse 25: "But when the crowd was put outside...."

In verse 26, there was a report. Then Jesus left the area. Undoubtedly there was a crowd that followed after Him because even if it were just out of curiosity, they wanted to see what the next thing was that was going to occur. It is interesting that Jesus took these men inside the house and away from the crowd before He did what He did. Why? It does not say exactly but I think that there is enough here so that we can speculate and come pretty close to why He did what He did. It has to do with the question, "Do you believe?" I think that Jesus wanted to see what their response was going to be like. What kind of conviction was really there. Was it something that they were asking merely out of curiosity?

There is another part of this that I think is very important. They are called men, so undoubtedly these were not children. These were adults. Were these men going to be able to carry the responsibility of being able to see? Whenever God does something for us, even though it is a freely given gift—it is not something that He is obligated to do except as a result of His own promise—yet when He does something for us, it does put us under obligation.

I think that He wanted to see whether these mens' conviction was of a magnitude that was going to be great enough to carry through with what He was about to bestow upon them and make good use of it. When He asked the question about their faith, I think it was a test not just to see whether they believed He could do it right at this moment, but whether they were going to be able to carry the conviction over into their life that was going to result from their being healed.

If there is anything that we get out these three verses is that God does not heal in proportion to our faith. He heals because we believe.