Without all those Strings

The way of love without demanding a return

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. (Mk 1.29-34)

The ways in which Jesus operated his healing ministry always seem to catch me by surprise. In Mark’s account, Jesus and his entourage have entered the ancient city of Capernaum. Aside from being an important town, it was the home of two of Jesus’ disciples—Simon Peter and Andrew. After attending a Saturday synagogue service to worship, read Scripture, and cast out a demonic spirit, Jesus and a crowd walk just down the dusty city street to visit Peter’s mother-in-law. There, quietly, lay a bedridden woman who was suffering from a severe fever. 

The ensuing miracle is one of the most fascinating in the New Testament. How does Jesus cure this woman’s fever? Matthew adds an important detail to the story: “Jesus touched her hand, and the fever left her” (Mt 8.15). The woman would be freed from her nagging illness. But Jesus accomplishes this in the oddest of ways. Sure, the power of true healing is unmistakably present. But Jesus doesn’t touch her head; the place one might expect a healing touch to be needed for a fever. No. Jesus touches her hand.

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

This little detail reframes, I believe, the way in which we can expect to experience healing from Christ today. Jesus heals one part of the woman by touching another seemingly disconnected part. God’s methods of healing, it seems, are often mysterious and counterintuitive. He heals us in indirect, roundabout ways. In pastoral leadership, I often found myself in places of connecting the dots between the parts of people’s lives that they assumed had nothing to do with one another. The loneliness one was facing was not remedied only through more Bible study but by a renewed freedom to spend time in much-needed friendship. That God often addresses our existential pains not only through the laying on of hands but through therapy, spiritual direction, or pastoral care. Or, that the Spirit mends a broken spirit not through grand experiences but by showing His love in quiet moments of the darkness. Sometimes God heals one part of our lives by touching a seemingly unrelated one. 

To add to this perplexing dynamic of this healing, Jesus disappears after healing Peter’s mother-in-law. Almost immediately, Jesus leaves Capernaum to pray (Mk 1.35-38) and then scurries off to the other Galilean villages to preach, teach, and heal (v. 39). In departing as quickly as he does, Jesus asks for nothing in return from the woman. Nor does he ask people to raise their hands in some conversion. He simply heals. Leaves. And never appears to ask for anything in return.

Why?

This confronts me. We all have aspects of our lives we wish to change. One of mine is the sin of expecting unfair amounts of gratitude from those I have either helped, served, or been generous to. Let me illustrate. A few years ago, Quinn and I felt led by Christ to anonymously give some friends a substantial financial gift. We did so without revealing our identity. This act exposed a major flaw in me. Quinn and I knew what we had done. But our friends did not. And the result was that I secretly expected them to reciprocate the generosity. Our secret gift led to a hidden desire for something in return. Sharing this almost feels wrong—I even feel a sense of self-condemnation writing this that it comes off as a humble brag. I’m a complex man. 

But this exposed a sin in my heart. What I soon gathered from this story is the simple fact that all of us tend to be willing to offer love with secret, unspoken, unseen strings attached. But love—done in the way of Jesus—is stringless. Christ teaches us to be obedient and faithful in a manner that reflects His way. In the Gospels, Jesus heals, feeds, and teaches, and then immediately leaves town. He demonstrates a love devoid of unfair expectations. Yes, Christ calls people to follow Him. But their refusal does not disqualify them from His kindness, mercy, and love. Jesus loves (and heals) indiscriminately and without strings attached.

This theme can be found elsewhere. Similarly, when we read the early chapters of Scripture, we see that God created out of sheer, boundless love. Critics of Christianity often claim that the God it worships is narcissistic and needs followers, along with their endless love and praise. Which is a sad caricature of a glorious While God calls us to follow, love, and praise Him, it is not for His benefit but ours. To live without knowing and enjoying one’s Creator is inhumane, like living a life with lungs but never being willing to take a really big deep breath.

God created out of pure love—not out of need. As theologian D. Stephen Long wrote:

God does not create because God is lonely. God does not create because God needs friends. God is not the lone patriarch, the strong silent type who secretly desires to ‘open up’ to us but cannot do so without our help. God does not create because God has to.¹

All of creation is not out of obligation or frustrated loneliness. God creates out of his own bubbling-over, boundless, and unforced self. Which is why Jesus can heal and leave so freely. If I were in that position, I’d heal, then stick around to start a church, sell some books, and ask for recompense. Not Jesus. Jesus does not leave because he is disinterested or disengaged. What we are seeing on full display is his capacity to love without strings—to give of himself time and time and time again without doing so only for the purposes of what will be done in return. This is the call, the goal, and the way of Christ. God is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” (Lk 6.35) He blesses “the evil...and the good.” (Mt 5.45) And, as Greg Boyd has wisely written:

So our love must be given without consideration to the relative merits or faults of the person we encounter. We are to love like the sun shines and like the rain falls: indiscriminately...We are to give to beggars, lend to those in need, not resist evildoers, and give without expecting anything in return. In other words, we are to love without strings attached, without conditions, without any consideration whatsoever of the apparent worthiness of the person we encounter.²

Life feels better with strings because it makes the world feel a little more controlled—and inflames our ego just enough for us to believe we are owed something. But to follow Christ means traversing a different path. On this path, there are no strings in our love. And the path to being healed comes not from rooting out all our own selfishness as though we can heal ourselves. This can never happen. Rather, it is from being touched and loved by Christ over and over in the parts of our lives that he determines, even when the place where he is touching seems irrationally disconnected from the place where we see the real problem. He is the wise healer.

We must simply be the willing patients.

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Thanks, as always, for reading this week’s post. You can always find me wasting time on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Or you can listen to my podcast, Slow Theology. If you found this content helpful to your journey, yay! Consider enjoying my most recent book The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for our Wants, which was released with Zondervan in February of 2024. Within, I explore what the topic of human desire from the perspective of Scripture, theology, and experience—with particular interest to how we can be formed into the image of Christ through our desires. In short, it’s about why our cultural mandate to “you do you” is so profoundly unhelpful to the follower of Jesus. You can support my work by reading it! And sharing about your experience. Click on the image below to get yourself a copy.

1. Long, D. Stephen, “God Is Not Nice,” in God Is Not...Religious, Nice, “One of Us,” an American, a Capitalist, ed. Laytham, D. Brent (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2004), 51–52.

2. Boyd, Greg, Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), 54.