Daily Devotional

Commentators such as Davies and Allison note that Matthew tells this story in a kind of mirror. In the first half Jesus is the one acting: he enters, sees, touches, and the fever leaves. In the second half the woman is the one acting: she rises and serves. At the end of the longest day, the King who has served everyone from sunrise to sunset is finally served. Somebody finally brings him a plate, and it is the woman who was flat on her back an hour earlier.

Mark and Luke say she served “them,” the whole group (Mark 1:31; Luke 4:39). Matthew narrows the focus: she served “him.” She was surely pouring drinks for everyone in the room, but Matthew wants us to see where her heart was aimed. The verb is diakoneō, the word the early church took up for Christian service and the root of our word “deacon.” Many have suggested this may be the moment she became his disciple. Young or old, man or woman, when Jesus touches us and raises us, we rise and serve him.

The order is everything. She did not serve so that Jesus would heal her. She could not; she was in bed with a fever. Jesus healed her, and then she served. Serving is not the price of being raised; it is the fruit of being raised. Paul keeps the same order: we are saved by grace through faith, “not a result of works,” and then we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:8-10). If you are trying to serve your way into God’s favor, you are trying to serve from a sickbed. Come to Jesus first. Let him raise you. Then serve him, not to earn his love but because you already have it.