There is no doubt that healing and resurrection are nothing other than manifestations of the power of the Kingdom and its breath...
There is no doubt that healing and resurrection are nothing other than manifestations of the power of the Kingdom and its breath. But how does this power affect a person of this world, still living the old, untransformed life?
Here is the woman who risked touching Jesus in the hope of receiving healing. She really did risk it: her illness made her ritually unclean, and she risked defiling the One she touched if she did not receive healing from Him. And He did not even notice her; He only felt the power of that Kingdom which He bears within Himself going out from Him, going out because someone needed it, someone who did not dare address Him personally. And here is the dead daughter of Jairus, whom Jesus raises by taking her by the hand. Here too the power of the Kingdom is at work. Yet outwardly, from the point of view of the Savior's relationship with those whom He heals and raises, the situation is exactly the opposite.
He knows nothing about the healed woman until the very moment when she touches Him, and even then He understands what is happening not because He singles her out from the crowd surrounding and pressing Him on every side, but because He feels the power going out: the woman healed by Him has touched the Kingdom, has shared in its life, and the Savior immediately felt it. But Jairus's daughter, whom He raised, wanted nothing by the time He came to her: she was dead. His touch brought her back to life. In both cases, the relationship between the Savior and those He helped is initially one-sided: in the first case the initiative belongs entirely to the woman seeking healing, and in the second to Jesus Himself.
But the miracle happens when the relationship becomes mutual. And here, apparently, it is no longer so important what happens outwardly at the moment when such a relationship is established, or how this process is projected into our transforming but still untransformed world. From here it may seem to us that the Savior does not notice the one He heals, or, on the contrary, that the person He raises knows nothing about his Savior. In the Kingdom, what must happen happens all the same: those seeking salvation find the Savior, and He finds them. It cannot be otherwise, for only in this way can one share in the life of the Kingdom. And only in this way can the Kingdom enter our transforming but not yet transformed world.
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2:4 Mercy removes misery: love confers salvation.
2:5 He hath quickened us together with Christ - In conformity to him, and by virtue of our union with him. By grace ye are saved - Grace is both the beginning and end. The apostle speaks indifferently either in the first or second person; the Jews and gentiles being in the same circumstance, both by nature and by grace. This text lays the axe to the very root of spiritual pride, and all glorying in ourselves.Therefore St. Paul, foreseeing the backwardness of mankind to receive it, yet knowing the absolute necessity of its being received, again asserts the very same truth, Eph 2:8, in the very same words.
2:6 And hath raised us up together - Both Jews and gentiles already in spirit; and ere long our bodies too will be raised. And made us all sit together in heavenly places - This is spoken by way of anticipation.Believers are not yet possessed of their seats in heaven; but each of them has a place prepared for him.
2:7 The ages to come - That is, all succeeding ages.
2:8 By grace ye are saved through faith - Grace, without any respect to human worthiness, confers the glorious gift. Faith, with an empty hand, and without any pretence to personal desert, receives the heavenly blessing.And this is not of yourselves - This refers to the whole preceding clause, That ye are saved through faith, is the gift of God.
2:9 Not by works - Neither this faith nor this salvation is owing to any works you ever did, will, or can do.
2:10 For we are his workmanship - Which proves both that salvation is by faith, and that faith is the gift of God.Created unto good works - That afterwards we might give ourselves to them.Which God had before preprepared - The occasions of them: so we must still ascribe the whole to God. That we might walk in them - Though not be justified by them.