John Calvin Commentary Matthew 10:8

"Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely ye received, freely give." — Matthew 10:8 (ASV)

Cure the diseased. As He has bestowed power on them, so He urges them to be faithful and generous in dispensing it. He charges them not to suppress that power, which had been entrusted to them for the common benefit of all.

By these miracles, He shows why He was sent by the Father and what was the design of His Gospel. It is not without purpose that He commands them to raise the dead and heal the sick, instead of bringing diseases on the healthy and inflicting death on the living.

Therefore, there is an analogy and resemblance which these miracles bear to the office of Christ. This is intended to inform us that He came to bestow every blessing upon us, to rescue us from the tyranny of Satan and of death, to heal our diseases and sins, and to relieve us from all our miseries.

Freely you have received.⁵⁷² So that they may be more willing to communicate the gifts which He had bestowed on them, He declares that these gifts were not entrusted to them for their own individual renown. Instead, they were given so that they might be, as it were, channels for transmitting the free bounty of God. “Consider from where you derived this power. As it flowed without any merit of yours from the pure grace of God, it is proper that, through your agency, it should flow freely to others.”

We know how unwilling everyone is to communicate to others what they consider to belong to themselves, and how anyone who excels the rest of the brethren is apt to despise them all. No higher commendation could have been given to a generous communication of spiritual gifts than by the warning which Christ gives them: that no one surpasses another through their own industry, but through the undeserved kindness of God. Now Christ has presented to us in His ministers a proof of that grace which had been predicted by Isaiah (Isaiah 55:1):

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

At the same time, He shows that no one will be a sincere minister of His word or dispenser of His grace until they are prepared to bestow their labor gratuitously,⁵⁷³ and that all hirelings basely corrupt and profane the sacred office of teaching. Yet it is not inconsistent with this principle of free service that the teachers of the church receive public salaries, provided that they willingly and generously serve Christ and His church, and that their support is, in a way, an accessory to their labor.

⁵⁷² “Vous l'avez receu pour neant;” — “you have received it for nothing.”;” — “you have received it for nothing.”

⁵⁷³ “S'il n'est prest de s'y employer, et d'y mettre son labor gratuitement, et sans consideration de son profit;” — “if he is not ready to be employed in it, and to bestow his labor on it gratuitously, and without regard to his own gain.”;” — “if he is not ready to be employed in it, and to bestow his labor on it gratuitously, and without regard to his own gain.”