He begins the chapter referencing the time Jesus healed ten lepers, and only one (a Samaritan at that!), returned to give thanks.
How could that be? Did they not recognize the healing they had just been given? How could you be a leper one moment, healed the next, and not be thankful? Maybe they were. Maybe it happened later. Maybe they just didn't go back to thank Jesus. Maybe they were afraid of the consequence of thanking him (from the religious leaders), lots of maybes I will never know.
This chapter to me, speaks to one of the key elements stressed in Reformed Theology that I missed before, and that is the idea that it is not what we have to offer God that matters, it is what he has given us. I cannot live a life good enough to earn God's favor or salvation, but I can be thankful of what He has done.
Is not giving thanks a sin? I think it is more than that. I think not being thankful brings our very salvation into question. Not being thankful has an air of arrogance, pride, as if what we have been given is expected from God, the least He can do. Like with the Pharisee and the tax-collector. But we know it was the tax-collector who walked away justified.
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