The disciples ask for more faith, and Jesus tells them even a seed-sized amount would be enough to uproot a tree by the word alone. Ten men with leprosy call out to Jesus from a distance — the only kind of contact people with their disease are still allowed — and all ten are healed on the same road at the same moment. Only one of them turns around.
A study in Luke 17 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 25 min read
Lord, Increase Our Faith
This site’s own study of Matthew’s eighteenth chapter already covers the warning against offending “little ones” and the call to forgive without limit.
“It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”
Luke 17:1-2
“If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.”
Luke 17:3-4
Found in no other Gospel, this exact number — seven offenses in a single day, seven separate returns of “I repent” — is what prompts the disciples’ next request.
“And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.”
Luke 17:5-6
The disciples ask for a bigger reservoir of faith. Jesus answers with a seed — not more faith stored up in advance, but a small enough kind, genuinely believed, that is already sufficient for whatever it is asked to do.
We Are Unprofitable Servants
“But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?”
Luke 17:7-8
“Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”
Luke 17:9-10
Found in no other Gospel, this small parable arrives right after a request for more faith, and quietly resets the whole frame of the conversation. Great faith is not a performance owed applause. It is only ever a servant finally doing the ordinary work that was always his to do.
Where Are The Nine
“And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
Luke 17:11-13
Ten men, standing “afar off” because the law required it of anyone with their disease, call out together with a single voice. The border region between Samaria and Galilee that Luke names here is itself telling — a shared misery had apparently done what religious and ethnic hostility could not, and brought Jews and Samaritans together into the same small, desperate company.
“And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.”
Luke 17:14
No touch this time, no word spoken directly over their disease — only an instruction to go and do the thing the law required of a healed leper, before the healing has actually happened. The cleansing occurs somewhere on the road, between the command and its obedience, to men who are still walking toward the priests in faith rather than in confirmed fact.
“And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.”
Luke 17:15-16
This is not a small detail Luke mentions in passing. It is the whole point of the story, held back until the very last word of the sentence for full effect — the one man who came back was the one man in the group of ten who had the least social or religious standing to lose by returning to a Jewish healer’s feet.
“And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.”
Luke 17:17-18
The question is not rhetorical scolding aimed at the nine who are absent. It is grief, spoken out loud, over how easily a genuine miracle can be received and then simply absorbed into an ordinary day, as though it were owed rather than given. This is the same chapter that has already warned the disciples not to expect thanks for doing their duty (vv.7-10) — and here stands the mirror image of that warning: nine men who received an undeserved gift and, without a word, treated it as no more than what they were due.
“And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”
Luke 17:19
All ten were cleansed of leprosy. Only one is told he has been made “whole” — the same word this Gospel has already used for the woman healed of her twelve-year hemorrhage. The nine got their bodies back. This one, in coming back to say thank you, got something more.
The Kingdom Of God Is Within You
“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:20-21
“More than three years had passed since John the Baptist gave the message that like a trumpet call had sounded through the land, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ … The kingdom of God begins in the heart. Look not here or there for manifestations of earthly power to mark its coming.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 506
The Pharisees are still waiting for the same visible, political sign John’s own preaching had led them to expect years earlier. Jesus answers by relocating the entire question — not a place to watch, but a heart to examine.
“And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. … For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.”
Luke 17:22, 24
“Because it is not attended by worldly pomp, you are in danger of failing to discern the glory of My mission. You do not realize how great is your present privilege in having among you, though veiled in humanity, Him who is the life and the light of men.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 506
The very ordinariness of Jesus’s presence — walking, eating, teaching in villages, healing men who then walk on without looking back — makes Him easy to underestimate. His second coming will carry none of that ambiguity.
This site’s own studies of Matthew’s twenty-fourth chapter and Mark’s thirteenth chapter already cover the warnings about the days of Noah and Lot, the two in a field, and one taken and one left, in fuller detail.
“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.”
Luke 17:26-27
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot… But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”
Luke 17:28-30
Only Luke pairs Noah’s flood with Lot’s Sodom in the same breath, and adds a two-word warning found nowhere else in the Gospels.
“Remember Lot’s wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.”
Luke 17:32-33
She had already been rescued, already walking away from the judgment falling behind her, and lost everything in a single backward glance. It is the same warning this Gospel has already given once before, to the man who wanted to say goodbye at home before following Jesus — a hand on the plow, or feet already on the road out of Sodom, cannot afford to look back.
