Detail of St Luke altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna, 1453-54

Luke: a Man With An Eye for the Ladies (Part four)

Monday July 28 2014

A weekly series of reflections by the Rev Billy McMillan on the women in Luke's Gospel

Part four

The Women Who Followed Jesus: Turning Adversity to Advantage (Luke 8:1-3)

It has been rightly said that through the grace and power of Jesus, adversity can be turned to advantage. 

Here is a group of people for who this was true.They were women who had been healed of evil spirits and diseases by Jesus and who had become His followers. They teach us four important lessons:

1. The importance of remembering our indebtedness to Jesus

These women recognised that having been healed and exorcised by Jesus, they owed Him a great debt. An essential part of the Christian life is recognising our indebtedness to Jesus. We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:10)

Let us not be like so many people who avail them selves of the grace of Christ and then disappear.  Instead let us be like these women.

2. The importance of recognising the needs of our fellow believers.

We are told in verse 3 that 'they  used their own resources to help Jesus and his disciples'.

Jesus was able to feed five thousand men with five loaves and two fish (Luke 9: 10-17). Here He and His disciples are in need of  help.

As we look around, we will see and hear of some of our fellow believers who need food, clothing, homes, shelter, the Scriptures, prayer, churches and much else. Let us not close our eyes or ears to their needs.

3. The importance of using the resources that God has given us in the right way

They could have used these resources selfishly and frittered them away on trivialities but they did not.  They used them to help the cause of Christ.

God has given us different resources. To spend some of them on ourselves is not wrong, but the first claim upon them is the work of Christ.

Let us be generous with what we have.

4. The importance of working together as a team

Whenever we read of these women - here, or at the cross (Mark 15: 40), or on the morning of Easter Sunday (Mark 16: 1-5) - we see complete harmony and unity. The grace of Jesus and their love for Him welded them together as a team.

So the grace of Christ can enable us to see that, as His followers, we are part of something bigger than ourselves and so work together in unity and harmony.

Part five will appear next week

Part three

Part two

Part one