“Thy Faith Hath Made Thee Whole” — Luke’s Account

Luke tells the same interwoven story Mark and Matthew tell — a dying girl, an interrupting woman, a raising — and uses the saving verb twice. Once to the woman: thy faith hath made thee whole. Once to Jairus: believe only, and she shall be made whole.

Both times the KJV says made whole. Both times the Greek is sōzō, and both times it means a body.

What makes Luke’s account worth its own page is what he chooses to include and what he chooses to leave out.

The Detail About the Physicians

Mark says the woman had suffered many things of many physicians, had spent all she had, and was nothing bettered but rather grew worse.

Luke — whom Paul calls the beloved physician — writes: “which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any.”

The sharpest edge is gone. Luke does not say the doctors made her worse. He says they could not help her.

Whether that is professional courtesy or simply a different source, it is a small honest observation about the man writing. He records the failure of his own profession without embellishing it, and he does not defend it either.

What Luke Adds About Jairus

“He had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying.”

One only. Luke uses that phrase three times in his Gospel, always of a parent’s single child — the widow’s son at Nain, the boy with the spirit, and here. Each time it is a father or mother losing the only one they have.

He also gives us her age. Twelve. And the woman had been bleeding twelve years. Luke sets the numbers side by side without remarking on them: as long as this girl has been alive, this woman has been unclean.

“Who Touched Me?”

Luke’s version of the crowd scene is characteristically precise. Peter says, essentially, everyone is touching you — the multitude throng thee and press thee.

And Jesus answers with a sentence Luke alone records: “Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.”

Virtue here is dynamis, power. Jesus is not asking because He needs information; He is establishing publicly that something has passed from Him to someone.

Which is exactly why the anonymous version would not do. The woman had hoped to take a healing without being seen — understandably, given what her condition had made of her social life. Jesus will not permit an anonymous transaction, and Luke shows why: she comes trembling, declares before all the people why she touched Him and how she was healed immediately, and receives something better than a cure.

“Daughter, Be of Good Comfort”

“Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.”

Sesōken se — a perfect: has saved you, with the result standing.

Three gifts in one sentence, and only one of them is medical. He calls her daughter, which restores her publicly to a family. He tells her to take courage. And He sends her into peace — not merely away from illness but toward wholeness.

On the question that always follows — did her faith heal her? — Luke’s own construction answers it. The power went out from Jesus. Her faith was reliance on Him, expressed by reaching. Naming the instrument is not making it the source, and Jesus deliberately moved the conversation off the garment and onto the woman herself.

The Message That Arrives Mid-Sentence

“Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master.”

Luke’s phrasing of Jesus’ answer is tighter than Mark’s: “Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole.”

Sōthēsetai — she shall be saved. Said to a father who has just been told his only child is dead.

Notice the order of the words. Not believe and then she will be healed as a transaction, but a command in the face of a fact: fear not, believe only. Jairus is asked to do the one thing available to him when everything else has been taken.

“She Is Not Dead, but Sleepeth”

The mourners laugh, “knowing that she was dead.” Luke includes that clause deliberately — he wants the reader to know the professionals were certain.

Jesus puts them out, takes the parents and three disciples in, and calls: “Maid, arise.”

Luke, alone, records what happened to her: “And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway.”

That is a physician’s way of putting it, and it is also a theological statement. Something had left, and it returned. Luke is not describing a resuscitation from a coma.

Then the same startling ordinariness Mark records: “and he commanded to give her meat.”

What the Word Means Here

Bodily restoration, in both occurrences. A haemorrhage stopped; a dead child alive and hungry. Luke does not tell us what either of them believed about Jesus’ identity afterwards, and the classification of this passage as healing is correct.

But sleep is doing the same work here that it does in John 11 and in Paul’s letters. It is not a euphemism and it is not denial — the mourners were right that she was dead. It is a claim about who has authority over the condition, made by someone who is about to demonstrate it.

Why Three Accounts

This gateway has separate pages for Matthew, Mark, and Luke on this episode, and the reason is worth stating.

Parallel Gospel passages get separate treatment here because literary context changes what a story is doing. Matthew compresses it into a sequence of authority miracles. Mark keeps the Aramaic and the woman’s full medical history. Luke keeps the physicians, the only daughter, the departed and returning spirit.

Same events. Three writers deciding what mattered. Reading them together is not repetition; it is stereoscopic.

This study is part of What Does It Mean to Be Saved?, an examination of every New Testament use of saving language in context, within Resource Cluster 3: Life in Christ. 91 of 91 passage studies are complete — see every occurrence.