Stand up and go; your faith has saved you. There is a connection between faith and healing/salvation. In several healing episodes, Jesus recognizes the faith of those who have been healed, and goes ahead to credit their faith for the healing (Luke 7:50; 17: 19; 18:42, cf. Mark 2:1-12). Today’s passage about the healing of the ten lepers is no exception. As lepers, these ten had been ostracized and were living apart from the community. They were not allowed to approach the community whatsoever-at least this was the unwritten agreement between the lepers and the community. These ten lepers thus risked a lot to approach where Jesus was. If spotted, they might have lost the little support that they were getting from the community, or worse, they might have been stoned for wanting to infect the community. It took not only courage but faith to pull off what they did. And Jesus recognized this.
Faith was at work in the entire healing process. It was the faith the lepers had in Jesus-someone they had only heard about but never met-that led them to make a decision to look for Jesus at whatever cost. They believed, even without having witnessed the healing episodes of Jesus, that he had the power to make them well again. It was the faith they had in Jesus that made them believe his words: they never questioned him or press him for details. At the words of Jesus, they set out to go do as Jesus had instructed them. They were made clean without a single touch from Jesus.