2 Kings 5:14-16 “So he (Naaman) went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. Please accept now a gift from your servant.’ The prophet answered, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept anything.’ And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.”

You recognize we are picking this up in the middle of the story. If you went to Sunday School regularly as a child, you probably remember that Naaman was the commander of the Syrian army. He had leprosy, and after trying everything else, he came to the prophet Elisha to see if he could cure it. Elisha didn’t even come out of his house to talk to him. He sent a servant to tell Naaman to wash himself in the Jordan seven times and he would be cured.

Naaman was furious. He was used to VIP treatment. He felt like Elisha was blowing him off. He was about to turn around and go home when his servants convinced him to give it a try. So, we are told, he “dipped” himself in the Jordan river seven times–a kind of grudging, half-hearted performance of the prophet’s instructions. But true to the prophet’s word, Naaman came out of the river completely healed of his leprosy.

God’s grace is all over this story. Not only was Naaman’s body healed, he came back to Elisha a changed man. “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel,” he confesses. He is convinced. He is humbled. He is grateful.

But he is also a little confused. “Please accept now a gift from your servant.” But Elisha is adamant: He won’t accept a thing. He says so with an oath. Why was this so important?

It’s not that Elisha was necessarily against ever taking any gifts or pay for his work. As prophets go, he seems to have been a more prosperous one. He lived in his own house and had servants.

But he also knew that Naaman had come to him with a small fortune. Earlier in the story we hear that Naaman had come with nearly 10,000 ounces of silver, and nearly 2000 ounces of gold. At today’s rates (converted to the troy ounce) the silver would be worth over $455,000, and the gold almost $7.5 million. That wasn’t just a little traveling change to throw in the toll booths along the way. Naaman thought that he was going to buy himself a miracle. It appears now he thought he was going to pay for his cure.

God’s gifts don’t work that way. They are not for sale. Elisha wasn’t going to reinforce that kind of misunderstanding, even if it would benefit him personally. Grace, the kind of love you can’t earn, deserve, or purchase, is the single most distinguishing feature of the God we worship. It is what sets Christianity apart from every other world religion. It makes our faith counter to every human culture.

There is nothing so powerful for working faith, for changing hearts, for securing allegiance, for inspiring commitment to God than the truth that he forgives the guilty, loves the unlovely, befriends his enemies, seeks those who want nothing to do with him, who have nothing to offer to him, who are so broken they can’t be fixed, humanly speaking. Grace, by its very nature, is not a commodity you can buy, and Elisha had no intention of jeopardizing that understanding for the infant faith of Naaman. He did not want to cloud the enormity of the gift Naaman had been given, the love he had experienced, by letting him pay for something that cannot be bought.