The Centurion and the mother pleading for her daughter were the only two people Jesus said had the greatest faith he had seen in all Israel.
What did they have in common?
They were both Gentiles—meaning they had not grown up under the law.
Paul’s mission to the Gentiles makes a whole lot more sense.
It makes missions make a whole lot of sense too. When we encounter people who have never heard of the law out there, they jump far more quickly into faith than those who grew up in America in church, yet don’t know Jesus as Savior—because they grew up under the law.
Jesus came to fulfill the law for us so that we don’t have to, and we, being Christians, have put the law back in its place! We rebuilt the temple—but not the temple Jesus meant for us to have (Him); we rebuilt the stone temple with the holy of holies and the curtain separating us from God, demanding acts of righteousness to atone for our sin. We reinstituted the law, when Jesus came to remove it from us for all eternity.
We have thrown His blood back in His face.
I was thinking about it yesterday, how Mary Magdalene (or whoever the woman was Jesus saved from being stoned as an adulterer) was able to go and sin no more after Jesus forgave her. I mean, she was at the Cross when He died and at His tomb 3 days later. She knew the meaning of grace. She did not walk in condemnation. I think that’s why that, aside from the obvious impactfulness of the beatings and cross and blood and holes-in-His-hands-resurrection, the scene where Mary looks up at Jesus after He rescues her is my favorite scene in “The Passion.” If Mary could walk around Jerusalem following Jesus and feeling accepted by Him and free from her sin even before the cross, can I, one born after the Cross, not walk in her same freedom to an ever greater degree?
I can just imagine her after Jesus went back to Heaven working with the suddenly bold and fiery disciple-apostles. She was surely part of the glory days of the early church, you know? She was probably just as on fire as the other guys. I wonder if one of them married her? Or if she just hung out with Mary mother of Jesus the rest of her life? Man, I want to be like her…so confident in her righteousness and full of love that she can be a part of the intensely loving community of Believers at the very start of it all, probably even discipling women like herself, telling them the Good News and freeing them from prostitution. All because she knew she was forgiven, and that because she believed, she would never have to walk in shame or go back to her old life.
I want to be like that…I want to be as one who never knew the law, allowing my faith to rise and be known as one of the greatest faiths in all Israel.
