Lord willing? For certain He is.

“Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Jesus answered, “I am willing; be cleansed” (Matthew 8:1-3).

In this exchange is the theme of Matthew 8: The willingness of Jesus to heal and to save. These events may well have been in Peter’s mind when he wrote, “The Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Peter had witnessed or tasted firsthand the Lord’s compassion when Jesus encountered

• A leper whose body is rotting away;
• A centurion whose servant is “paralyzed, dreadfully tormented”;
• Peter’s mother-in-law, bedridden with a fever;
• Many neighbors sick and even possessed by demons.

Jesus tells us His perspective on these conditions when it comes time to leave that region. A disciple wants to go with Jesus but first has the duty of a son to bury his father. Jesus answers, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (8:22).

What startling words, as though Jesus were saying, “I am the Lord of the living. Your father is dead; let the perishing bury the dead. But you, follow me, for I am the resurrection and the life — life that neither they, nor you, have.”

Then Jesus bestows on the disciples the willingness to save that He has shown others. They are crossing Galilee when a storm arises, swamps their boat, and the disciples are sure they will die. They cry out, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!”

Jesus stirs from His sleep, rebukes the wind and waves, and a calm equal to the storm (Matthew calls them both “great”) ensues. The disciples experience what Peter would put into words, “The Lord is not willing that any should perish.” Lest we forget, Judas was in the boat, too.

They all were perishing: the leper in whom the decomposition of the grave was already at work; the centurion’s servant; the mother-in-law; the neighbors; and the disciples. Most came to Jesus but one time (Peter’s mother-in-law), Jesus healed without being asked. This shows how much He yearns for us to be whole.

His willingness continues in the next scene (8:28-34), but the response changes.

Jesus enters the territory of two men who have so terrorized the neighborhood that no one goes near. But Jesus doesn’t retreat. Surprisingly, the men and the demons yield to Him. As with Peter’s mother-in-law, Jesus acts again without being asked. The men hadn’t invited Jesus for a healing service. They didn’t ask Him to rout the demons. The duo apparently did nothing except emerge from the tombs — the demons did all the talking.

We would say the life these men had was no life at all. They lived among the dead. They had no self-control — they did what their demons wanted. They were perishing, which made them just the kind of people Jesus is willing to save.

And Jesus saved them. He separated the men from the demons, who took their violence into a nearby herd of swine and stampeded into the sea. The pigs perished, the men lived. Such is the willingness of Jesus to save.

Not everyone delights in this truth. The residents of this region — not unlike the leper and the centurion and the sickly in Capernaum — also came to Jesus, but not to welcome Him. The others received His mercy, these refused it. “Go away,” they said. “Go someplace else.” Although the mercy Jesus had shown the two men extended to the townspeople (after all, He freed them all from the terrifying demons), yet they wanted nothing to do with it.

Jesus complied and left. And in this He also was willing — willing to let them have their way. He had shown them mercy without being asked, then did for them what they asked, just as He did for the centurion. “As you have believed,” Jesus said, “let it be done for you.” How important to consider what I believe and what I ask.

Here are three lessons this passage teaches me.

Recognize my condition. Until Jesus came, everyone in these events was either perishing or had already gone to the grave. Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead” and Paul wrote, “You were dead in trespasses and sins.” This is a harsh diagnosis. Someone has said we are all terminal. Do I recognize this, or am I living in denial?

Rest in God’s willingness. I have been in disputes about how God works and they can be unsettling. It is important to understand — the Psalmist prayed, “Teach me your ways, Oh Lord.” — but scripture also says His ways are past finding out.

On most occasions in Matthew 8 people came and asked Jesus for something and He was true to His word, “the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:39). But sometimes Jesus acted without being asked. This tells me His willingness doesn’t depend on us. He is willing, regardless. Whether my asking prompts God or He acts from His own initiative, I can learn from Mary how to respond to His favor. “Let it be to me according to your word,” she said when the angel told her she would bear the Messiah.

Receive God’s grace. The city at the end of Matthew 8 stands in stark contrast to Capernaum and the individuals who preceded. One came to Jesus, begging Him to leave; the others came, begging Him to heal. He obliged both. This recalls Jesus’ hometown, where Mark says Jesus couldn’t do anything significant and “marveled because of their unbelief” (Mark 6:5-6). I shudder again to think how Jesus rescued Judas from perishing in Galilee’s storm, yet the disciple went to perdition anyway.

In a letter to the Corinthian church, Paul reviews how God has prepared us for an eternal home, how Jesus died for all that all might live for Him, and how God “was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5). In light of all this, Paul urges, “Do not receive the grace of God in vain” (2 Corinthians 6:1).

How willing God is! Am I?