Luke 5:17: Why does Luke tell us the power of God was there to heal?
Why does Luke, at the end of Luke 5:17, include the phrase, “the power of the Lord was with [Jesus] to heal”?
Did he need to inform the reader that Jesus could heal the sick before moving on to recount the healing of the paralytic?
Luke has already demonstrated Jesus’ healing ministry in earlier verses (Luke 4:31-41, 5:12-15), so the phrase clearly isn’t placed there just to let us know Jesus could heal the sick. That fact is already apparent.
Was the phrase simply a segue?
In the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Walter L. Liefield
seems to treat the phrase as a segue into a healing narrative, a “subject of
great interest” to Luke, adding that it meant “God himself was there.” The observation that the phrase indicates that God is there is odd as it seems to imply God was sometimes present with Jesus and sometimes not, but perhaps Liefield is suggesting there was present in some distinctly experiential manner. That, of course, raises the question of why mention the power to heal at all. Why not simply say “and the Lord was with him”? This line of thinking would naturally lead to the conclusion that the mention of healing was simply a segue. However, as “Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat” provides a very natural introduction of the next few verses, no other segue is needed.
Does this imply the power of God to heal was not always present with Jesus?
Just as Liefield’s saying “God himself was there” implies God may not have been there at other times, the phrase “the power of the Lord was with him to heal” seems to imply that there were times when that power was not there, that Jesus could heal the sick at sometimes but not at others. It is worth noting that unlike the other two synoptics, Luke’s Gospel does not include an account of Jesus being unable to perform mighty miracles in his hometown of Nazareth. In fact, there is no evidence anywhere in Luke’s account of Jesus ever being limited in his ability to perform miracles. Even the incident Mark reports of Jesus ministering twice before a blind man was fully healed (Mark 8: 23-25) is absent from Luke’s Gospel. It seems unlikely then that Luke intends to imply any such thing.
Looking at the Greek itself provides some light at this point. Let’s begin by addressing a textual variant that is frequently mentioned in commentaries. The end of Luke 5:17 in Nestle-Aland’s Greek reads, “καὶ δύναμις κυρίου ἦν εἰς τὸ ἰᾶσθαι αὐτόν.” Some of manuscripts have αὐτούς instead of αὐτόν, but the older, more reliable ones have the former. This change in pronoun means some versions render the translation as "And the power of the Lord was present to heal them" (NKJV) and others as "And the power of the Lord was with him to heal" (ESV).
What I find interesting is that the whole sentence structure changes in English translations depending on the pronoun. If Jesus is assumed (αὐτόν), the power of the Lord is seen as with him. If the plural is assumed, the power of the Lord is there for them. Now, I'm not suggesting the power of the Lord was there to heal Jesus (although this would seem a plausible translation of the Greek), but I do wonder if the supplied preposition "with" forces a reading that implies the power was not present at other times. Neither “with” not “for” are present in the Greek and are added by inference to improve the readability of the English, and which one a translator chooses depends on which pronoun they are assuming.
If we understand the phrase to being saying Jesus had God’s power to heal, I believe we could—with a little word reorganizing the English words—translate the sentence as, "And [Jesus] had the power of the Lord to heal." That wording doesn't have the same suggestive power to prompt English readers to infer Jesus may not have had the power to heal at other times. Furthermore, it fits well with the imperfect indicative ἦν and present indicative ἰᾶσθαι, both of which have the continuous aspect. In other words, the Greek itself would more naturally be read as saying Jesus had the power of God to heal in an ongoing way that that it was present at that moment in any way that was different from at other times.
What was Luke’s Intent?
All of this, however, still leaves us with the question of why Luke includes the phrase at all. If it does not act as a segue, and if the power of God to heal was always present with Jesus, why does Luke bother to highlight it at this particular juncture?
While most commentaries ignore this question, some do not. Alexander MacLaren’s Expositions of Holy Scripture and Joseph Benson’s Commentaryof the Old and New Testaments offer what may be the most useful insight. They both observe that the miracles Christ performed ought to have been sufficient to move the Pharisees and teachers of the law to believe. As MacLaren puts it, they displayed “a temper of mind which is sharp-eyed as a lynx for faults, and blind as a bat to evidences of divine power in the Gospel or its adherents.”
So, perhaps that is why Luke puts the phrase there: to emphasize the blindness of the Pharisees and teachers of the law in rejecting Christ. This is, of course, problematic in verse 17 itself as they seem eager to learn from Jesus. They have, after all, “come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem” and are sitting at his feet—the traditional place for a disciple when learning from a Rabbi. However, the following pericope is that of the healing of the paralytic, where Jesus ability to heal and authority to forgive sins are presented in strong association, and where the Pharisees ignore the evidence of the healing and call Jesus a blasphemer. Because of the strong association between the sin and sickness in Jewish thinking at the time (and apparently in Jesus’ own understanding), the inclusion of the phrase “the power of God was with him to heal” at the outset adds emphasis to their rejection of Jesus ability to forgive sins. More precisely, it adds emphasis to their rejection of Jesus himself.
Conclusion
This, then, seems to be the most reasonable understanding of Luke’s reason for placing the phrase where he does. If does not introduce us to Jesus miracle working capacity because that has already been shown in earlier verses. It does not act as a segue into the healing of the paralytic because that is accomplished when Luke tells us of the men bringing the sick person to Jesus. It does not inform us that this was an occasion of note due to a peculiar or unusual presence of God’s healing power because it that was not at all unusual in Jesus’ ministry. It simply draws our attention to the upcoming rejection of Jesus by the Pharisees and teachers of the law despite the fact he demonstrates his authority to forgive sins by healing the paralyzed man. As Acts 2:22 tells us, the miracles, wonders and signs, which God did through Jesus showed him as accredited by God himself, so when the Pharisees and teachers of the law rejected Jesus, they were rejecting God as well.
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