Grace Goes Beyond the Narrow Limits of Our Faith

But let no one imagine that we have brought forward these examples to try to make out that the chief share in our salvation rests with our faith. That is the impious notion of some who attribute everything to free will, and lay it down that the grace of God is given out according to what each man deserves. We, on the contrary, plainly state our unqualified opinion that the grace of God overflows, and sometimes runs over the narrow limits of man’s lack of faith. This, as we remember, happened in the case of the ruler in the gospel. He believed it was easier for his son to be cured while sick than to be raised when dead, and so he begged the Lord to come at once, saying, “Lord, come down before my child dies.” Christ rebuked his lack of faith with these words: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Yet he did not show the grace of his divinity in proportion to the weakness of the man’s faith. Nor did he drive out the deadly disease of the fever by his bodily presence, as the man believed he would, but by the word of his power, saying, “Go your way; your son lives.” [a]

We read also that the Lord poured out this overflowing grace in curing the paralyzed man. The man asked only for the healing of the weakness that had crippled his body, but the Lord first brought health to his soul, saying, “Son, take heart; your sins are forgiven.” After that, when the scribes did not believe that he could forgive men’s sins, he confounded their unbelief. By the power of his word he set the man’s limbs free and put an end to his paralysis, saying, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”; then he said to the paralyzed man, “Rise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” In the same way, in the case of the man who had been lying for thirty-eight years beside the pool, hoping for a cure from the moving of the water, he showed the royal generosity of his kindness without being asked. Wishing to rouse him toward the remedy that would save him, he had said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The man complained that he had no one to help him, and said, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.” Then the Lord in his pity pardoned his unbelief and ignorance, and restored him to his former health, not in the way the man expected, but in the way he himself willed, saying, “Rise, take up your bed, and go to your house.”

And what wonder is it if these acts are told of the Lord’s own power, when the grace of God has actually done similar works through his servants? When Peter and John were going into the temple, the man who had been lame from his mother’s womb, and had no idea how to walk, asked them for alms. They gave him, not the paltry copper coins the sick man asked for, but the power to walk. When he was expecting only the smallest of gifts to comfort him, they enriched him with the prize of a health he never looked for, as Peter said, “Silver and gold I have none, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”