Matthew chapter 8. Here Matthew begins to record the story concisely from verse 5 in chapter 8, continuing until I again go to Jerusalem for a feast.
We now calmly walk the remaining few hundred steps, and as I enter the city jurisdiction, the captain at once approaches Me, entreats Me and says, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home, crippled with palsy, and so suffers great torment and can do nothing.’
I say to the captain, ‘I will come and make him well.’
But the captain replies, ‘Lord, I am not worthy for You to enter beneath my roof. Only speak a word, and my servant will become well. For see, I too am a man, and like many others subject to higher authority, yet I have many soldiers under me who obey me. If I tell one, “Do that,” he does it, or if I tell him to go, he goes. If I tell another, “Come,” he comes, and if I tell my servant, “Do this or that for me,” he does it at once.
But all spirits are subject to You, and You are a Lord in all fullness over everything in heaven, on earth and within the earth. You need only give a sign to Your powers invisible to us human beings, and they will carry out Your will at once.’
The reason this captain presents his request concerning his servant to Me with such trust is that the swift recovery of the royal official’s son, together with various accounts from the colonel, had convinced him that I could miraculously heal even at a distance by the word alone. This also caused him, like the royal official, to come to Me when he heard that I was approaching the town.
When I heard this supremely trusting speech from the captain, I marveled, of course not for My own sake but for the disciples’ sake, and said not so much to the captain as to those who were with Me, ‘Truly, I have not found such faith in all Israel! But I also tell you: many will come from the east and the west and sit with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (that is, have the Father’s glory), but the children of the kingdom will be cast out into the outermost darkness, where there will be a wretched chattering of teeth.’
At these introductory words many struck their breasts and said, ‘Lord, will You then reject the children and accept the Gentiles in their place?’
And I say, ‘Neither the children nor the Gentiles. Whoever believes and has love will be accepted, whether Jew, Greek or Roman.’
Then I turn to the captain and say to him, ‘Go; let it happen to you as you have believed.’
The captain thanked Me from the fullness of his heart, then went into his house and found everything fulfilled that he had asked for out of his faith, in which there was no doubt either before or afterward. For the servant became well in the same hour in which I had said to the captain, ‘Let it happen to you as you have believed.’
This sign in Capernaum itself, like the earlier one involving the son of the royal official, who was governor in Capernaum, caused an extraordinary stir in the town, chiefly among the Romans and Greeks staying there. But among the Jews and the priests and scribes stationed in the town from Jerusalem and, as it were, permanently appointed there, it aroused only annoyance, fury and rage.