Redeemed Failures, Day 21: Naaman – When Pride Gets In the Way

2 Kings 5:1–19

Naaman commanded armies and won victories. As Syria’s top general, he enjoyed the king’s favor and his nation’s acclaim, a man whose very presence commanded respect (2 Kings 5:1). Yet beneath the polished armor lay a wound no military triumph could hide: he was a leper.

The disease worked its quiet destruction beneath his royal honors, a daily reminder that human achievement has limits. Power cannot heal what pride refuses to acknowledge, and wealth cannot purchase what grace alone provides.

When whispers from a household servant spoke of a prophet in Israel with power to heal, Naaman saw an opportunity. He would approach the holy man as he knew best: with pomp and generosity, chariots loaded with silver and gold, and garments fit for kings. Surely this display would secure what he needed. After all, isn’t that how the world works? Wealth commands attention, and powerful men receive special treatment.

The Humiliation of Simple Faith

Elisha’s response upended all of this. The prophet didn’t even meet him. Instead, a servant appeared at the door with humiliatingly simple instructions: “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored” (v. 10).

Naaman’s anger was predictable. Where was the ceremony? The dramatic invocation? The acknowledgment of his rank? He had imagined a scene fit for his stature: the prophet summoning heaven with great fanfare, restoring him before his entourage. Instead, he was told to bathe in a muddy stream like a commoner. “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?” he raged (v. 12). His pride blinded him to the simplicity of God’s grace.

How close he came to walking away from the very healing he sought.

The Humility of Wise Counsel

It was Naaman’s servants who saved him from himself. With quiet wisdom they reasoned, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it?” (v. 13). If Elisha had demanded something costly or heroic, Naaman would have complied. Why balk at something so simple?

Reluctantly, Naaman yielded. He stepped into the Jordan: once, twice, again. Each immersion must have felt like a further blow to his dignity. But on the seventh descent, something marvelous occurred: “his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child” (v. 14). The general who came in power left in humility, confessing, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel” (v. 15).

The Gospel Pattern

Naaman’s story foreshadows Christ and the gospel. We approach God with our credentials—our morality, achievements, or religious devotion—imagining He must be impressed. But salvation is never earned on our terms. God delights to save through means that seem weak and ordinary.

The cross itself is the ultimate Jordan River: foolishness to the wise, weakness to the strong, scandal to the religious (1 Cor. 1:23). Baptism is just water, communion only bread and wine, preaching mere words. Yet through these ordinary means, God displays His saving power in Christ. They point us to Him, proclaim His finished work, and direct our faith to the One who saves. The power never lies in the elements or the preacher’s voice, but in the God who works through them to magnify His Son. And Christ Himself came this way: not in royal splendor, but as a carpenter from Nazareth, whose greatest triumph looked like defeat on a Roman cross.

Overcoming Pride

Naaman’s hesitation exposes the essence of pride. Pride resists grace unless it comes clothed in dignity. It insists that God conform to our expectations, confirm our wisdom, and leave us in control. That same resistance appears in the rich young ruler who walked away sorrowful (Mark 10:22), in the Pharisees who rejected Christ despite searching the Scriptures (John 5:39–40), and in Nicodemus, who stumbled over the mystery of the new birth (John 3:4). The real obstacle was never the mind’s capacity to understand, but the heart’s refusal to bow.

For Naaman, the Jordan became the place where pride sank and grace broke through. What seemed beneath his honor proved to be the very means of his healing. This is God’s way in every generation: “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).

So too the gospel calls us to our own Jordan: the humbling admission of spiritual bankruptcy, the surrender of self-sufficiency, the willingness to appear foolish in the world’s eyes if only to be made clean in Christ.

Grace for the Proud and the Ashamed

Naaman’s story holds hope for both the proud and the broken. For the proud, it insists that no one is too great to need grace. For the broken, it shows that shame itself can become the very doorway to God’s mercy. His leprosy isolated him, yet it was this affliction that drove him to the prophet. In the same way, the wounds we would never choose often become the places where God meets us.

The waters Naaman despised became the waters that saved him. The cross that looked like defeat became the tree of life. And the God who met a Syrian general in a muddy river still meets sinners today through the ordinary means of Word and sacrament, offering extraordinary grace to all who will stoop low and believe.

Enjoy all 31 devotionals in the Redeemed Failures series here —stories of grace, second chances, and the God who still restores.